The official first event of Pacific Arts Movement’s Drive-By Cinema was on El Cajon Boulevard in City Heights to celebrate the Lunar New Year with a Jackie Chan movie. | Photo Credit: Beth Accomando
By Beth Accomando
Drive-By Cinema, Aired on KPBS Radio Feb. 28, 2013
[audio:http://speakcityheights.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/20130228-BA-DRIVEBY1.mp3]
The San Diego Asian Film Foundation recently rebranded itself as the Pacific Arts Movement. One of its experimental new projects is Drive-By Cinema. Here’s how they are bringing movies to the streets.
The Pacific Arts Movement calls its new Drive-By Cinema program a “mobile cinema experiment.” The organization has a turned an old U-Haul truck into a traveling cinema that can project movies on walls or on its own portable screen. The truck simply drives up to a neighborhood and invites people to watch says the program’s co-director Angela Kim.
“This is supposed to be a community engagement project where we sort of try out what it means to show film in an unexpected area or an unexpected space. Is it possible for the community to come out and watch films not in a theater.”
This guerrilla approach makes use of what Kim calls “under-utilized spaces” like parking lots and abandoned movie theaters. At their official launch two weeks ago on El Cajon Blvd, they showed old kung fu trailers and a Jackie Chan film. Artistic director Brian Hu says they just want to surprise people.
“We have no idea what’s going to happen and that’s exactly what we want because we want the people walking through to kind of invent the experience with us. They are part of the show too. The idea is that we want to make cinema that is part of the neighborhood, literally part of the neighborhood.”
The next Drive-By Cinema is set for tonight at 5:30 at the Kroc Center on University Avenue. There will be do-it-yourself shadow puppets as well as animated films.
For updates on where Drive-By Cinema will be you can follow them on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.