The Cleveland Cinematheque wouldn't be what it is today, if not for John Ewing.
The founder and director has led the organization through numerous changes, watching a key part of local cinema bud and blossom over the decades. In 1991, the theater added stereo cinema. In 2015, it changed its venue, from the now-demolished Aitken Auditorium on East Boulevard to its state-of-the-art Peter B. Lewis Theater at 11610 Euclid Ave. In 2021, it moved into new territory, streaming and premiering online during the pandemic.
Through it all, there were the movies — the premieres, the classics, the experimental, the artsy, the oddball — and about 10,000 of them, Ewing thinks, since he started.
“I think that’s a very reasonable estimate,” he says, taking a moment to think the number over. “And that’s not short films. Those are feature-length films.”
Ewing is succeeded by the Cleveland Cinematheque’s new director Bilgesu Sisman. But before entirely stepping away, Ewing will screen his last movie selections this Sunday: a trio of his three all-time favorite films, The Magnificent Ambersons at 2 p.m., Late Spring at 4 p.m. and Shane at 7 p.m.
The outgoing director's cinematic journey started when he first fell in love with movies as a kid. After writing movie reviews for his school paper at Denison University, he first aimed to become a local film critic. He wrote for The Geauga Times Leader and its entertainment supplemental, Now Magazine, with occasional pieces in The Plain Dealer and Akron Beacon Journal.
Then, he got a taste of programming films when he got a job at the Stark County District Library and took over the Canton Film Society’s weekly movie night.
“I found programming films more rewarding than writing about them,” Ewing says, “and then I thought, ‘Well, how can I do this full time?’ And that’s when I started thinking about what kind of movie theater I wanted to run and where to do it. I knew I couldn’t do it in Canton. Cleveland didn’t have something like this.
“So I thought, ‘I’ll go to Cleveland,’” he continues. “I could go to the big city and build it there.”
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After working for the Cleveland Heights-University Heights Public Library, and running a film series here, he eventually connected with George Gund and Ron Holloway, who wanted to get a cinematheque project off the ground in the city. Eventually, after screening movies at Case Western Reserve University's Strosacker Auditorium in the early '80s, the group found a permanent home for the Cleveland Cinematheque at the Cleveland Institute of Art, first in the Aitken Auditorium.
Later, Ewing also ran the Cleveland Museum of Art’s film programming two days a week. (He retired from the CMA in 2020.) Meanwhile, he worked three days a week in the Cinematheque office and returned on weekends for movie showings.
“I worked 50 hours a week, probably 60,” Ewing says. “It was a lot of work, and I did that for 34 years.”
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In those many years, Ewing welcomed famous filmmakers for memorable movie nights, including the Russo Brothers, Jim Jarmusch and Peter Greenaway. Greenaway, during his visit, took time to chat with students and visit the projectionist’s booth, Ewing says.
“He walked up into the booth and he said, to whoever our operator was, at the time, he said, ‘The projectionist is my final collaborator.’ I was always going to inscribe it on the ceiling of the projection booth,” Ewing says. “He was right when he was essentially saying that all of his work, everything he puts into his movies, could be ruined if the image is out of focus or there’s some sort of glitch or something goes wrong.”
Focus — it's an important thing, for film programmers, too. Ewing's decades of focus, and many movie selections, have cemented his legacy in the local film community.
“I’m reminded over and over that now seems to be a good time [to go] because there seems to be a lot changing, and changing quickly these days,” Ewing says about his retirement. “On the other hand, I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself. I’m kind of a workaholic — and I may have to program films for somebody, sometime, somewhere.”
Tickets to Ewing’s favorite film screenings on Sunday are available at the Cleveland Cinematheque website, cia.edu/cinematheque.
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