IU Cinema debuts new facility with state-of-the-art technology

It’s been over three years since President Michael McRobbie decided he wanted to elevate cinema to the same level as other forms of art on the IU campus.

Ever since, the IU Cinema has been under renovation and remodeling, and on Wednesday, the new state-of-the-art facility showed its potential with a debut screening of the digital remastering of David Lean’s “The Bridge on the River Kwai.”

The IU Cinema opens to students and the public Jan. 13.

Jon Vickers, the director of the IU Cinema, has overseen the aesthetic restoration, the technological updates and the schedule for the spring 2011 film series.

“Most students on this campus have probably never been to the theater because it’s been closed for so long,” Vickers said, “But the auditorium has received a complete face lift while still paying respect to the architecture that was there. And most importantly, it was converted from a stage theater into a world class cinema.”

Vickers explained IU hired architects and acousticians to remodel the space to be on par with art house theaters found in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. The completed cinema is THX ready, one of two in Indiana and one of 10 on campuses nationwide. THX helped optimize sight lines and viewing angles within the theater for the highest of picture and audio quality.

“This is a big step for the university to make that commitment to quality,” Vickers said.
He demonstrated that quality in stressing the significance of having the best 16mm and 35mm projection capabilities along with the 2K and 4K resolution equipment that can show digitally restored classics such as “The Bridge on the River Kwai.”

“With all of that technology, Indiana University has the ability to play any film in the best format available,” Vickers said. “We can now even borrow film prints from any archive in the world.”

The film schedule is catered to make the most of this opportunity, with showcases of French, Asian, Jewish and British films throughout the spring. The IU Cinema will kick off its opening with a film series on David Lean followed by another on John Ford.

The IU Cinema will also serve as an academic tool, namely the screening space for film studies classes. Gregory Waller, the chair of the communication and culture department and the IU Cinema’s faculty advisory board, said he is glad that the space is still a theater first.

“It’s a lot more beautiful than I imagined it would be,” Waller said. “When you finally get to see and hear something at that caliber, it seems to me that was the purpose of the thing in the first place. It was to try and come up with a screening situation that would be as good as anywhere you could imagine.”

Speaking on “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” Waller said, “You could not see that film better anywhere else, and it’s amazing to have that on campus as a resource.”

At the reception following the opening of the theater, Provost Karen Hanson spoke about what she called, “the absolutely marvelous cinema.”

“I think you can all agree that the IU Cinema is poised to take its place as one of the finest, really the finest, university cinemas in the nation,” Hanson said.