Celebrating 50 Years of Cinestudio

Gillian M. Reinhard ’20

Editor-in-Chief

Cinestudio will be celebrating its fiftieth anniversary of operation in Feb. 2020. To commemorate Cinestudio’s long history with Trinity College, the Tripod met with Cinestudio coordinator Claire Pritchard ’20, who spoke enthusiastically about her time with the organization.
As she explained, Cinestudio is an independently run theater started in 1970 by a group of Trinity students, including James Hanley and Peter McMorris. Students felt a need for a space on campus to show films and chose the auditorium of the Clement chemistry building to base their project. The theater was designed to model a 1930s film house. The grand opening of Cinestudio showed a double feature of Alice’s Restaurant and Yellow Submarine and was widely attended by students. Today, Cinestudio continues to screen exciting films that might not be shown in typical movie theater. A staff of about fifty student volunteers work for Cinestudio. Pritchard became involved with Cinestudio starting her first year at Trinity. Although she is not a film studies major, she has enjoyed watching films and helping Cinestudio run its day-to-day operations, citing the location as a “refuge” for students on campus. “Students can always find something they resonate with,” explained Pritchard.
Running Cinestudio, particularly at the beginning of each semester, is a major task. Cinestudio is led, in part, by four coordinators, including Pritchard as well as Amelia Huba ’22, Suzanne Carpe ’22, and Lucia Leone ’22. Their tasks include organizing Moonlight Movies (a free film series for Trinity students), meetings with student volunteers, running social media, serving as a point person, scheduling special showings, and many other tasks.
Cinestudio hosts many events throughout the year, including the Trinity Film Festival and the LGBT Film Festival. Some of Pritchard’s favorite memories include showing 2001: A Space Odyssey in 70mm, a specific measurement of physical film in an old-fashioned style. This style was also utilized for the films Dunkirk and Roma. Always on the edge of cutting-edge film, Cinestudio has remained Trinity’s staple art house movie theater. throughout the decades.