AFS Proudly Sponsors Summer Programs

What makes a classic?

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Find  out on two Mondays this season as the “Summer Classics” series at the  Strand in Schroon Lake presents silent comedy shorts starring the  legendary Buster Keaton and TCM’s choice for the greatest Hollywood  movie ever!

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“Silence is of the gods; only monkeys chatter.”

— Buster Keaton

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SCHROON LAKE, NY — The only way to truly tell if a new work of art is  destined to be a classic is through the test of time. On two Mondays  this summer, filmgoers at the Strand Theater in Schroon Lake, New  York—itself a classic Art Deco movie house—will be treated to movies  that have not only stood the test of time but aced it:

• On Monday, July 29, at 8 pm, the 2019 edition of “Summer Classics @  the Strand” opens with an evening of three silent comedy shorts  starring one of the most physically daring actors ever to perform in  movies—the irrepressible Buster Keaton—with live piano scoring by Ben  Model, resident film accompanist at the Library of Congress and New York  City’s Museum of Modern Art. The films—One Week, The Scarecrow and The  Blacksmith, all of which date from the Golden Age of silent movies, the  early 1920s—were recently restored by Lobster Films and have been  handpicked by Model, who will introduce each short and lead a Q&A  discussion with the audience following the screenings.
• Then on Monday, August 12, at 8 pm, “Summer Classics @ the Strand”  presents one of the most romantic-iconic films ever made and what Turner  Classic Movies (TCM) hails as “Our candidate for the best Hollywood  movie of all time”—Casablanca (1942), starring the one-and-only Humphrey  Bogart as American ex-patriate saloon owner Rick Blaine and the radiant  Ingrid Bergman as Rick’s long-lost love, Ilsa Lund. The program will be  hosted by film historian Jeremy Arnold, himself a TCM contributor and  author of the TCM-tie-in books, The Essentials: 52 Must-See Movies and  Why They Matter (which, of course, includes Casablanca) and his latest  work, Christmas in the Movies: 30 Classics to Celebrate the Season.
  If you’ve only seen Casablanca on TV, your laptop or even the tiny  screen of your smart-phone, this is the perfect opportunity to view the  movie on the big screen—and in stunning digital format that is featured  at the Strand.
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Tickets to each evening’s program are $10 and will be available at  the door (cash only, please). The historic Strand Theater is located at  1102 Main Street (U.S. Route 9), Schroon Lake, NY; box office:  518-532-9077. To learn more, please contact Fred Balzac, Program  Director of the “Summer Classics @ the Strand” series, at 518-588-7272  or by e-mail at fredbalzac@aol.com or adirondackfilmsociety@gmail.com.

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And speaking of stunning digital viewing, this is the fourth  consecutive summer that the Strand is partnering on special programming  with the Adirondack Film Society (AFS)—the people who bring you the  annual Lake Placid Film Festival and the monthly (September through May)  AFS Screening Series at the Lake Placid Center for the Arts. It was a  collaboration between the two organizations resulting in a New York  State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) Regional Economic Development Council  (REDC) grant award—along with the tremendous generosity of the Schroon  Lake-area community—that helped Larry and Liz McNamara, the theater’s  owner-operators, purchase and install digital film-projection equipment,  enabling the Strand to continue as a first-run movie house.