CLOSING CREDITS

Retiring Cornell Cinema Director Mary Fessenden Looks Back On Three Decades Of Innovation

By Bryan VanCampen

Istarted writing about lm in February 1987 and Mary Fessenden became the manager of Cornell Cinema in May 1987. Eight years later she was named director. And now, a er 35 years and more than 7,000 movies, she’s retiring. Fessenden was kind enough to make time for one more chat about her career.

IT: When I read details about your career with Cornell Cinema, it hit me that we started within a few years of each other. I remember you working with Richard Herskowitz around ‘89-90. e rst thing that occurred to me was Mary Woronov’s visit in 1990. MF: Yes, I became the manager of Cornell Cinema in May 1987 and worked with Richard for seven years before he le to become the artistic director of the Virginia Film Festival at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Inviting Mary Woronov for a weekend tribute was Richard’s fantastic idea. She attended Cornell for a short period of time as a ne arts student before leaving to join Andy Warhol’s Factory in the ‘60s. I think my favorite part of that tribute was showing Warhol’s three-and-a-halfhour-long “Chelsea Girls” (1966), in which Mary appears, on side-by-side 16mm projectors in Willard Straight eatre. It was a very cool night. IT: I remember seeing “Yellow Submarine” and “Bread and Chocolate” at Uris Hall when I was in high school. Can you talk about the evolution from that to Cornell Cinema’s “home” in Willard Straight Hall?

MF: Cornell Cinema had a nomadic existence up until Willard Straight Theatre became available for our full-time use after the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts opened for the Department of Theatre, Film and Dance (now the Department of Performing and Media Arts), as Willard Straight was used for their theatrical productions throughout the 1980s. Cornell Cinema showed films in a variety of locations before 1990, including Statler Auditorium, Ives Hall, Anabel Taylor Auditorium and Uris Hall. After renovations took place in Willard Straight Theatre, we started showing films there seven nights a week, but we continued to use Uris Auditorium for additional shows on Friday and Saturday nights into 2012.

It seems amazing to me now that we used to o er ve or six di erent lms every weekend, including midnight screenings.

The Invincible Czars, who Fessenden brought from Austin to perform their score for F.W. Murnau’s silent classic “Nosferatu” at Sage Chapel will be returning for an encore performance this year. (Photo: Cornell Cinema) Mary Fessenden at the Willard Straight Theatre, scene of many of the memorable performances she brought to Ithaca. (Photo: Justin M. Zoll)

But by 2012, competing technologies had driven down attendance, so to sustain the program, it made sense to reduce the number of lms, and just use Willard Straight.

IT: You’ve said that a lot of your time was spent planning concerts and special events. I have fond memories of the Alloy Orchestra and the sing-along “Sound Of Music” with a costume contest at which someone came dressed as the Alps. What were some of your favorites?

MF: e rst time we did the singalong “Sound of Music” was a riot, especially all the creative costumes and local actor Richard Driscoll emceeing the event dressed as Baron von Trapp’s rst wife, the deceased Mrs. von Trapp. I rst invited the Alloy Orchestra in 1999 and they returned on a near-annual basis for 20 years. eir multiple performances with Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” almost always sold out. ey were a fun group to host, but I also really enjoyed hosting the band Yo La Tengo, who performed with Sam Green’s live documentary “ e Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller.”

Some other favorites include hosting the American-Dutch duo e Books—guitarist and vocalist Nick Zammuto, and cellist Paul de Jong—who performed with a program of their short, quirky videos, and Sza/Za—Paweł Szamburski and Patryk Zakrocki—a Warsaw-based electro-acoustic duo, who performed their original scores, inspired by Polish jazz of the ’60s, with a program of early short lms by Roman Polanski.

IT: You were a big champion of silent lm and nding new venues to show movies.

MF: Some of my favorite silent lm/live music events were the Tuvan throat-singing rock group Yat-Kha, who performed with Pudovkin’s “Storm Over Asia,” made in 1928. I think there were six singers in the group and they sat on the stage with the lm projected over their heads, and I had to continually remind myself that all the “music” I was hearing was coming from their mouths; no instruments were involved. ey were incredible. e San Francisco-based chamber group the Tin Hat Trio— three amazing musicians—performed with the silent insect and puppet animations of the PolishRussian lmmaker Ladislaw Starewicz, and that was another great show. It came about a er I just happened to meet the mother of one of the musicians, violinist Carla Kihlstedt, at the William Henry Miller Inn when she was in town on business.

I met musician Beth Custer through local lmmaker Cathy Crane; Custer has scored many of Cathy’s lms. She brought the Beth Custer Ensemble to Cornell Cinema to perform her score for the fascinating Soviet silent lm “My Grandmother,” made in 1929, which had been commissioned by the Paci c Film Archive. I also had the privilege of hosting Swedish composer/musician Matti Bye who did a solo performance playing multiple instruments with Victor Sjöström “Terje Vigen (A Man ere Was).” He ended up getting snowed in for a couple of days and while touring him around Ithaca, he sat down at a small piano for sale in the antique shop Pastimes in the DeWitt Mall and performed an impromptu concert! It was magical. Local musicians also performed with silent lms at Cornell Cinema. Anna Coogan no longer lives in Ithaca, but when she did, she and Tzar (Michael Stark and Brian Wilson) performed their original scores with the Soviet sci- lm “Aelita: Queen of Mars” from 1924 and Jean Epstein’s “House of Usher” from 1928. Both were great. We started screening lms in Sage Chapel in 2012, mainly silent lms with live music, and those shows were wildly popular. As you can imagine, I could go on and on about some of my favorites, but instead I’ll just mention that the Austin-based group we hosted there a few times, e Invincible Czars, will be returning this fall to perform their score for F.W. Murnau’s “Nosferatu,” which is celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2022. at show will be held in Sage Chapel on October 19th.

I feel compelled to add that even though all of these special events were wonderful, some of my most transformative experiences at Cornell Cinema occurred when hosting some of the most acclaimed experimental lmmakers of our time, extraordinary artists. Too many to mention here, but you can nd a list of all the lmmakers (and musicians) we hosted from 1970 to 2020 on the Cornell Cinema website at https://cinema.cornell. edu/50th-guests.

And, of course, there are all the other lms. I gured out that over my 27 years as director, I scheduled over 7,500 lms, including great international cinema, profound documentaries, canonical Hollywood and foreign titles, and so much more. I hope local movie-goers will remember to seek out all the great fare that Cornell Cinema will continue to exhibit when they reopen at the end of August. I know I will.

IT: I’m going to miss these questionand-answer sessions. It’s been quite a career. Do you have a sense of what’s next for you?

MF: For the immediate future, I’m just taking a break and taking it easy. For the longer-term, who knows, maybe I’ll start a small lm festival! anks, Bryan, for all your support and coverage of Cornell Cinema screenings and events over the years. You and Jim Catalano [longtime Ithaca arts and entertainment columnist and radio host] have been great.

Fessenden with the band Yo La Tengo, who performed with Sam Green’s live documentary “The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller.” (Photo: Cornell Cinema) Fessenden speaking in 1990, not long after she began managing Cornell Cinema (Photo: Cornell Cinema)

BREAKING STEREOTYPES

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me a hard time for anything, and they were willing to play the best player. And at the end of the day, I feel like I could do a lot of great things on the eld.” at being said, he did face racism while on the eld from opposing teams.

“It was my senior year, I was running out of bounds on the opposing sideline,” Wang recalled of a particular memory from playing high school football. “ ese kids who weren't even playing, but they were suited up. I run right by them; as I'm walking back on the eld, one of them says, ‘How do you even see on the eld?’ I'm like, wow, that's crazy.”

Ultimately, Wang hopes his story inspires more Asian Americans to pick up the sport of football.

“When you think of an Asian American, you're not gonna think of an athlete; you're gonna think more of a student,” he said. “We're just trying to break that stereotype. For me, just to prove that Asians are more than just smart in the classroom; they are great athletes as well. I don't normally think about that because I know what I'm capable of.”

PRIMARY ELECTION PREVIEW

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Sempolinski’s platform calls for protecting 2nd Amendment rights by supporting interstate reciprocity for gun permits and opposing the NY Safe Act. It also calls for opposing “the push to defund police from the radical Le ” opposing single payer healthcare, vaccine mandates, and abortion rights. He also promises to ght in ation by reducing government spending.

According to Sempolinski, “In ation is the biggest issue we're dealing with right now, because it a ects everyone.” He says it’s no shock prices have gone up because “we keep pumping loose money into the economy.” However, Della Pia says that in ation has been a result of war in Ukraine and supply chain issues caused by the pandemic and decades of outsourcing American jobs.

Sempolinski recently told e Ithaca Times, “I'm a former senior aide. I know the sta ; I know the o ces. I know the internal house procedures; I'll be able to get that up and running faster than anybody else will be able to.”

Unlike Della Pia, Sempolinski will not be running for election in the new 23rd District. However, he said that the results of the special election could provide infor-

19th Congressional District Primary

e primary election to ll the seat le vacant by Antonio Delgado in the new 19th District, which will include parts of the old 23rd District, will have Democrat Jamie Cheney running against Democrat Josh Riley.

Jamie Cheney is a founding partner of Prokanga, an employee search rm focusing on working parents and has worked as a consultant for private equity rms, hedge funds, and other investment rms since the beginning of 2021. She has received endorsements from the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Elect Democratic Women, Emily’s List, Her Time, Vote Mama, New York State Assemblymember Didi Barrett, and the Ancram Democratic Committee, among others.

Cheney’s platform calls for protecting reproductive rights by passing the Women's Health Protection Act, bringing back and pre-paying the extended child tax credit, universal Pre-K, capping the cost of childcare at seven percent—which would save the average family $14,800 per year—and raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour.

Cheney also supports comprehensive gun reform, by supporting expanded background checks, red ag laws, banning assault weapons, and new legislation to address the proliferation of ghost guns.

If elected she has promised to co-sponsor and vote for legislation that raises the Social Security cap so that the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share, expand Medicare to include vision, dental, and hearing, cut prescription drug costs by allowing Medicare to bargain over the price of drugs, and expand home and community-based care.

Cheney recently told e Ithaca Times, “If we as a community decide the priority is to ultimately be represented by a prochoice, pro-community and pro-family candidate that represents our values, we need to look at the candidate with the clearest path to building a coalition across party coalition to do that. And that's the cross-party coalition that we're already seeing emerging around our campaign, even while we're doing the work in the Democratic primary.”

Josh Riley is a lawyer that has experience in federal courts and has worked as a partner at numerous law rms and served as General Council to former Senator Al Franken. He has positioned himself as the front runner in the race a er receiving endorsements from the New York Working Families Party, the New York State Nurses

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