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Start a volunteer program?
posted by
BinThereDunnThat
on
July 7, 2008 at 4:00 pm
So many of you may be of, or personally know members of, the film industry. What about a national fundraising program for the preservation of theaters? Or, persons of all ages could spend vacation time working on buildings.
Rather like Habitat for Humanity, film enthusiasts could have working vacations where they meet new friends with similar interests. Perhaps members of SAG and/or AFTRA (is that the correct acronym?) could attend/participate. At the end of the day, put the hammers down, take a shower, then watch the pre-scheduled film and discuss it. Imagine fans of “Casablanca”, “Spiderman”, “Rear Window”, or “The Godfather” getting together for productive fun. Heck, sign me up!
Comments (4)
Overall it sounds like a good idea. I’m assuming that the volunteers of this program would be working with the already existing group of volunteers that many of these historic theaters have set up, and with the permission of the theater owners.
Wonderful idea. The non-profit Los Angeles Historic Theatre Foundation (LAHTF) would like to help organize – on a trial basis – such a program for a few theatres in Southern California assuming liability insurance and other niggling details can be resolved. Our members really enjoy getting “hands-on” in old theatres. Our web site should be ready in a couple of weeks www.lahtf.org check in there for contact info.
I’m already doing this – with both current AND classic/avant-garde films:
http://movies.meetup.com/348
http://classicfilms.meetup.com/75
The benefits of volunteering can be extremely rewarding, just so long as there’s something for those volunteers at rainbow’s end. It doesn’t have to be money, but it must be a surefooting of some kind. For I know of cases where people have volunteered their whole lives to this or that, only for the city to step in and give it all away right out from under them, leaving those volunteers totally emptyhanded. Many of us no doubt remember the back to the earth movements of the 1960s and early ‘70s when sincere efforts were made to walk away from capitalism and get positive things done in other ways. Which was a beautiful thing to witness! But not so beautiful to witness when such wonderful outcomes were wiped out when land values started going through the roof, and property taxes and other things were introduced to gentrify these great outcomes out of existence. It’s something that all who work for free have to be wary of and ready for from the onset to make sure that never happens.