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Twin cities arts buzz: Meet the creatives and their productions

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Published on September 17, 2009 at 1:54pm

"I don't think I'm the first one to think of it," he says, but a dedicated microcinema that doesn't piggyback on another space is a rare venture. Kryshka organized the construction of the Trylon, puts together the film programming, and manages Take-Up's finances, in and around his day job selling video production equipment.

Kryshka and many of his Take-Up brethren are cast-off volunteers from Oak Street Cinema, departing when the theater cut back its programming to concentrate on the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival. They regrouped and began running film series in collaboration with many of the big independent local movie houses—the Parkway, Riverview, and Heights theaters. Kryshka says opening Take-Up's own modest cinema seemed like the logical next step, especially when he moved his business offices to Minneapolis's Longfellow neighborhood and discovered a prime unused office space next door.

The raw space, tucked into an out-of-the-way, mixed-use neighborhood on Minnehaha Avenue just south of Lake Street, was built with a legion of volunteers, a couple of paid contractors, and about $25,000. The crew put in the screen and projection room, built the floor risers, installed used theater seats, and wired the place up using money from the nest egg Take-Up had built in three years of running repertory film series around town.

A core of 20 to 25 volunteers helps run the place, with three people working every show night to man the projector and sell tickets and concessions. The theater's tiny size and ad hoc operations mean it doesn't need to lure many warm bodies to meet its nut. With four shows a weekend, "We need to fill about 25 seats per show," Kryshka says, to break even. Monthly expenses are relatively minimal: $1,000 for rent, another $1,000 for film rights, and about $500 to ship the movies.

Just as important, the Trylon's modest needs and ambitions mean that it can take the leap to more adventurous film programs. At other venues like the Parkway, "there wasn't a lot of room to take chances," Kryshka says. Though the Keaton series was a guaranteed crowd-pleaser, Kryshka relishes the chance to screen films like the upcoming series from the thinking man's horror-meister, David Cronenberg (Scanners, The Fly, Crash)—films that even Kryshka hasn't seen. The series, he jokes, "is mostly for me, but other people can come too." If fact, that is one of the abiding satisfactions of owning your own movie house. The programs, he says, are "25 percent what I want to see, 75 percent what other people want to see."

Still, Kryshka understands the realities of running even a small, boutique film house. "He's very pragmatic and realistic about doing all of this," says Tom Letness, owner of the Heights Theatre, who has collaborated with Take-Up on a number of repertory projects, including a film noir series last February and an Audrey Hepburn festival beginning this month. "It's great to do, but you have to make money, or at least break even."

Letness believes a specialized cinema like Trylon can be genuinely important to local film life. "There are certain shows where you're not going to have 300 people at them," he says. "Barry is able to do a lot of things that are a little more limited, a little more niche, but still feed a need. I give him a lot of credit, because it is not easy."

In an age of Netflix and on-demand cable, repertory film can be a dicey proposition, but Kryshka remains optimistic. "It's also what they said about VHS and what they said about television," he reminds. "The analogy I use is that you can buy liquor at a store and drink it at home, but bars seem to be doing well." A social context, he says, is still important for people who love movies.

Though repertory film in the Twin Cities has had "a few dark years," he says, "I think it's coming back strong. Two years ago, no one was going anywhere near it. I think the success we've had is encouraging more people to go into it."

He understands, though, that success is relative. "This has no intention of returning a profit," Kryshka says. And if the Trylon does make money, "we'll find a way to spend it."

The Tech Artist

By Rod Smith


Hello World! photo by Sarah Sampedro

NOBODY LOVES contemporary networked life more than Christopher Baker. "I would absolutely love it if the internet could be truly 'free,'" the Minneapolis-based new-media artist emails from Hungary. "Free of censorship, free of bandwidth restrictions, free of cost, accessible to all, environmentally free, free of the political influence and the weight of capitalism. At the same time, I think it's extremely important the people realize that it isn't."

Baker isn't just talking out of his beret. This year alone, his web-intensive installations and public works have appeared everywhere from the Weisman to art-tech crucible Kitchen Budapest, where the artist finishes a yearlong residency next month—leaving him just enough time to prepare for the November 20 opening of his first Franklin Art Works solo exhibition. With eight shows in locales ranging from Barnsley, U.K., to Fargo, North Dakota, scheduled for the next six months, the poor devil might perish of exhaustion if not for automation.

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