CineSea 25 in Pictures!

[Steve Klare]

Shalimar Hotel, Wildwood, New Jersey October 6-9, 2022

A week ago today, we bid our goodbyes at the Shalimar and headed home from a very special CineSea. This was the 25^th one and in recognition of that, we enjoyed some pretty special events. We’re here today to share what went on with you.

This picture report is part of CineSea, as a matter of fact it’s the part that everybody everywhere gets to enjoy, whether they got all the way to Wildwood or not. What’s special this time is every other time it’s been either Claus Harding (our founding reporter) or me. We were both on hand this time, so we have joined forces. Claus will be your photographer with some Doug Meltzer added in, as well as some others behind the camera. I will be providing the words (-at least most of them!).

We will be going through events day by day, maybe for the sake of showmanship, maybe because if I put it all up at once it might finally happen AFTER CineSea 26! -but in any event, it’s worth taking the chance to put the spotlight on the many good things that happened and enjoy them.

As always, please feel free to comment and give your own memories. Try not to get too far ahead of me and let the air out of something I was going to post in another five minutes, but in any case, please enjoy!

As always, our story begins weeks and months before. We were talking about Number 25 even at Number 24, how an event that didn’t seem likely even to get a Number 4 at one point had not only survived but grown up over these past 13 years. “Something HAS to be done”, we all said. The good news is something was done, and it was great to have experienced it!

-Stay with us a few days and we’ll share it with you.

NEXT: Thursday
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[Steve Klare]

Thursday (all day)

October 6^th was the official opening day of CineSea 25. It’s important to add the “official” part because there were CineSea-ites in town as early as the 3^rd or 4^th. Wildwood is a nice place to hang out, especially at the ends of the season when it’s not so crazed as in July or August (-seriously: it's just as easy to find Jimmy Hoffa as a parking place in Wildwood in the peak of the Season!). So for the most of us that showed up on Thursday, things were actually pretty well-established.
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The screen was up, there were already several gauges ready to project (8mm and 16) and a couple of tables were already populated. This was just the warmup so nothing big was happening yet.

With Thursday becoming a thing of its own, we needed an opening film show to kick things off. Thursday Night Theme is the thing. Saturday night show is random shorts, kind of a grab-bag from people’s collections. The Theme is much more focused on an idea. This CineSea it was “Films about Film” -one of my favorite genres, actually. These were all related to the Motion Picture Industry or movie theaters or film collecting.

Here's a selection of what we saw on the 6^th. (-apologies if we forgot yours!)

• 3 Stooges- Three Missing Links
• 50 Years of Oscar
• Burt Reynolds, featurette about the making of Gator
• Cartoon - Hollywood Steps Out
• Edgar Kennedy - Wrong Direction
• Laurel and Hardy A Day at the Studio
• Making of Silver Streak
• Monsters We’ve Known
• Movies are Adventure
• Movies that Talk and Sing
• Reflections UK
• Reflections USA
• Salzburg - Sight and Sounds
• This Movie Theater and You

Special thanks to Steve Osborne for sending “The making of Gator”, especially since he couldn’t be there to enjoy it with us!
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It's traditional to say "-a good time was had by all!
...and why not? It's true!

Next: Friday during Daylight
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Wildwood at Night: Neon!
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[Douglas Meltzer]

Steve,

Many thanks to you and Claus for teaming up to tell the tale!

[David Baker]

Just to add a little " pre-show " pics and info -
Here are some of the " Early Birds ", who assisted in setting up the screen and doing the window covering on Wednesday , October 5th -

Shorty and Doug putting up the window covering

Hanging the banner

Ed Gower , Greg May and Dan Morello , all who assisted in the set-up

David Boland and Guy Taylor who also assisted the set-up team
And then , that evening after the small group ( about 12 of the early birds ) returned from our group dinner , I treated them to a 1-hour preview of " future possible digests " presentation - on 16mm . Below are screen shots from one of the 3 selected films . Enjoy , because we did !




This was the absolute BEST CINESEA film collector gathering I have EVER attended!!

[Steve Klare]

Thanks, Dave!

[Douglas Meltzer]

That's why people should come early to CineSea! An impromptu screening of David's digests.....I had never seen Evil of Frankenstein before and now I feel like I've seen the whole film!

[Steve Klare]

Friday, Daylight

OK, so we are getting to the real weekend now. Thursday is now what Friday used to be years ago: mostly a gathering day with a film show at night. Friday has now come into its own and frankly is giving Saturday a run for its money! (May the best day win!)

Friday Breakfast left the traditional Uncle Bill’s Pancake House in Cape May and moved way, way uptown to the Marvis pancake house in North Wildwood. It was a nice meal!

Back at the hotel, Geoff C. had set up, which meant 35mm was now on site:
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We had a little change of plans on Friday, for very special reasons our Friday Night Feature was not elected but invited. We’re going to get to that in the next chapter. What was elected was the Friday Matinee. The CineSea 25 winner was Joe Griesbach’s 35mm print of THE UNSEEN (1980). This was an audience participation event: we did our best to warn the three women on-screen not to accept the seemingly kind man's offer to stay at his house when no hotels were available. We tried to dissuade one of them from investigating the noises in the ventilation shaft. When the heroine was searching for her friends, we yelled in unison “Don’t go in the basement!”….Did they listen?

(-of course not!)
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After a short break, Bob Furmanek joined us for a presentation of his digital restoration of Abbott and Costello’s “Jack and The Beanstalk”, done to commemorate the 70th anniversary of Bud & Lou’s first color film. Bob discussed the tremendous amount of work put into finding the best 35mm archival elements including the only surviving color camera negative footage. The Cinecolor process was quite complicated, involving separate film stocks placed emulsion to emulsion in the camera. It was fun to see the film restored close to how it first appeared upon its theatrical release (keeping in mind that was a Blu-ray screening). A number of people remarked how enjoyable this version was.

Now, we have this classic problem on nights like Friday and Saturday: we have a Program we all want to enjoy, but everybody needs to eat, too! If we all go out to eat, the show is delayed while we (gradually) meander back to the hotel.

The Planning Committee came up with this really nice idea to feed the Troops, yet have everyone still on premises when it was Showtime for Friday Night Feature:
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I will grant you, this has a certain Cocktails on the Veranda look, but it’s actually Pizza on the Shalimar’s sun deck at dusk! If you really think about it, cocktails on about 40 empty stomachs really wouldn’t benefit the schedule a whole lot! ("C'mon! Get out of the pool and let's go watch some FILMS!....Of COURSE you can put on dry clothes first!" 😉)

NEXT: A Special Friday Night Feature
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A Meal with a View!
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[Douglas Meltzer]

This triple event Friday was a first for us. I was very glad the weather cooperated for our outdoor dining!

[Steve Klare]

A Special Friday Night Feature

The Friday night feature is usually by election: people put their features up for nomination and the audience votes for their choice. The runner(s)-up get so be the Friday Matinee(s). In honor of this being the 25^th CineSea, we took it in a different direction.

Peter Flynn is a Professor of media production and film history at Emerson College in Boston. He is also a documentary filmmaker.

COLDEYE FILMS

Being a film historian, Peter is interested in how the traditional ways of making and showing motion pictures have survived into the digital age. This makes CineSea interesting to him. (It’s mutual, of course!)
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For Friday night feature, we got to see the latest edit of his new film Viva Film!. Peter has been joining us since the Ocean Holiday Era and CineSea is a significant ingredient in the flavor of this film. For a change, we were not only in front of the big screen, we were up on it too!

Peter took some time and talked about the people in the film. As we have often experienced, as film collectors they are often larger than life, even while being very human. Particularly telling (-and maybe even personal!) was one sequence where a film collector talks about his hobby with his wife sitting in the shot providing...additional commentary. (Wives all around the audience nodded and whispered, a few pointed at the screen!)

Here are some clips of Viva Film, although in our hobby’s own context, we should just call them “selected scenes”!

VIVA FILM! Geoffrey Curtis at CineSea

VIVA FILM! Stu Fink

Everyone shown in these is a CineSea Regular. The shooting location of much of the footage is the Hospitality Room at the Ocean Holiday, before they closed it and before Covid-19. (It’s only been about 3 years, but they are already “good old days”!)

In a personal note: we have Peter’s film the Dying of the Light here on DVD and enjoy it a lot. Someday we hope to also have our own Viva Film! to enjoy on our screen.

After the show, Greg Perry and Dave Baker were kind enough to open up their suite for a reception for Peter to thank him for sharing Viva Film! with us. Sad to say, people enjoyed it so much we don’t have any pictures! (-anyone?!, -anyone??!)

Next: Saturday!

[Paul Adsett]

Geoffrey’s description of the mystique of film is just about the best I have ever heard.

[Lee Mannering]

Fantastic job everyone! The pictures and report are so inspiring well done.

[David Baker]

Steve , perhaps the reason no pics were taken at the " after party " is because " what happens at Cinesea , stays at Cinesea " - LOL 😜

[Stuart Finkelstein]

Well stated David, and thank you too, Steve Klare!

[Steve Klare]

Saturday!

Saturday is the big day at CineSea! The crowd gets as big as it gets that day and the sales tables are fully in operation. All day long there are films being shown on small screens and there are multiple film (and other) conversations going on all over the room.
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The Saturday night dinner was at Carini’s in South Wildwood. My table had the bonus of sitting with Peter Flynn, so we got to hear his film stories and he asked us our opinions of Viva Film! I told him if he was looking for a generally representative audience, we were probably not the one to talk to: if we had paid him to make a film for us, it would not have looked very different from what he showed us!
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NEXT: Saturday Night Show!

[Patrick Walsh]

great photos!