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Darkly handsome Dana Keith, who’s done everything from modeling for Gianni Versace to managing a performing arts center in a restored 1931 movie palace in Santa Barbara, is the driving force behind the new Miami Beach Cinematheque, which opened in July in a small building on South Beach's Espanola Way. There, in a little screening room in a restored 1925 Mediterranean Revival hotel, Keith and his cohorts from the Miami Beach Film Society plan to show unconventional programs of experimental films, Latin films, foreign films, gay and lesbian films, non-narrative films, and classic silent films—as well as dance performances and other events. A veteran showman who, for the last decade has presented classic South Beach movie extravaganzas, such as the incredible Esther Williams Film Festival held poolside at some of the city’s greatest hotels, and an Indian film screening preceded by undulating classical Indian dancers, Keith says that for an alternative movie program to work in South Beach “it has to be fun.”
Keith is a dedicated film scholar, who has amassed a museum-quality collection of rare film posters, vintage movie programs and other documents dating all the way back to a screening room invitation from Thomas Edison, inventor the movie camera. Keith is intent on making the Miami Beach Cinematheque a center of cinema scholarship and education. The screening room, still under construction at the time of this interview, is at 508 Espanola Way, in the heart of a unique, old-world-styled “Spanish Village” development built in the mid-1920s as an neighborhood for artists and writers. For decades, it has also been an entertainment district amassing quite a reputation. Notably, it is said, Desi Arnaz taught America to rumba here in the 1930s. South Beach Magazine writer Bill Wisser recently spoke with Keith at the screening room about everything from the lure of cinema, to his partying experiences with celebrities, to his views on the rapid commercialization of South Beach. Dana,
show us around the cinematheque.
This location... this building... was chosen specifically because of the charm and kind of European pedestrian feeling of Espanola Way. I really can’t imagine this type of cultural venue anywhere else besides Espanola Way. Lincoln Road is well beyond this type of thing now and obviously Washington Avenue [site of many bars and nightclubs] wouldn’t be appropriate for this . . . [But] it fits in so well here. We’re right next to A La Folie Café. It goes along with the new Spanish restaurant opening up on the corner. There’s a kind of a West Village or St. Germain Des Pres feeling here. How
many people will this room seat? What
are the economics? Let’s say for an Italian theme night, maybe you show
La Dolce Vita
and you have a micro-cinema that seats 50 people, and you’re going to
rent a film. Do you get a 35 mm print?
From the viewpoint of a
film purist, is this less of an authentic experience than viewing a 35
mm print in a theater? After all, anyone can go to Blockbuster and rent
a Fellini or whatever on DVD and show it at home on their own TV. Isn’t the whole idea that, you’re
going to present it in a true movie theater context? Doesn’t DVD or
video projection lessen the experience? There’s nothing better than a social environment that brings people together for a common cause, and that is what this is meant to be. Sometimes commercial theater-going experiences are very cold; they’re not meant to encourage you to talk to your neighbor. In this case, the whole gallery aspect, the bookstore aspect, the café aspect will invite a kind of a social experience that you’re not going to be able to get at home. Tell
us about the Cinematheque's bookstore and café. Dana, you don’t look
that old! On certain nights, maybe the Avant Garde or Views From the Underground night, we’ll have more than one screen... a screen on that wall, a screen on this wall, and we might even be screening on the curtains... So it will become different experiences, different nights of the week. I saw something, I think it was
described as a "festival of film festivals," in which the winning films
from other festivals would come here.
Tell us about
the historic building that we’re standing in and the historic street it’s located
on—Espanola Way—and the nearly one million dollar "Plaza de Espana" which is
being built just outside the
Cinematheque’s main entrance. Is that going to be a
boutique hotel? Upscale? Tell us a
little about this street and the woman who owns the property, Linda
Polansky. What was
the original concept? And when was this
particular building constructed? What else is in this
building? The Miami Beach
Cinematheque developed out of the Miami Beach Film Society, which you
founded back in 1993. Tell us about the
history of the film society and some of the things you’ve done over
the last decade, such as the unforgettable screening of Fritz Lang’s silent film masterpiece, Metropolis—which, as I recall, you presented in a beautifully colored print at
the Colony Theater on Lincoln Road with the live accompaniment of an
amazing new age orchestra from New York, playing a wildly imaginative,
post-modern score, specially commissioned for this classic silent film—for 10 years you’ve been doing interesting things. Tell us about
the history of the film society. For example, the Esther Williams Film Festival at the swimming pools of Miami Beach. We actually brought Esther in... and she’s quite a gal, let me tell you ...[laughs]... she’s quite a character...we brought her in and the idea was a uniquely Miami Beach style presentation. It lasted about seven weeks and we utilized outdoor screens, which will be a big part of what we’ll do here in our courtyard and the plaza.
What were some of the
films you showed in the Esther Williams Film Festival – all her films? You said she was a
character. What did you mean by that? Like what for example? ...so we had to change these dramatic lillies, which, you know, were the style at the Raleigh, into something which were much more Joan Collins... She was here for a week. But for one day, she had to go to the Bahamas for some marketing thing with her swimwear line, and she asked me to baby-sit her miniature Schnauzer. The dog had this hot pink collar and leash. I was walking it by the Lincoln Theater... and these drag queens came over to the dog and were saying, “Oh, it’s so cute.” And I said, “Well, you know, this is Esther Williams’ dog.” And one of them says, “Yeah, right. And I’m Coco Chanel!” Little did they know, it really was Esther Williams’ dog. You said earlier that
Esther Williams was political. What did
you mean by that? Did she talk about war, redevelopment? What was
political?
One of the things I like is that you don’t just put on a picture, you
put on a show. For example at the
Metropolis screening: that orchestra, didn’t the ushers wear special uniforms that you got from the
1940s style, or am I just imagining that? The uniform that you saw was a uniform that I brought back from the Cannes Film Festival. In its day—about 10 years ago—it used to have usher uniforms in the classic way with the pillbox hat and the buttons down... well, they were phasing that out, and I said "what are you going to do with these uniforms," and they said "they’re going into the historical storage for the history of this festival, but you can have one of them." So we do have that on hand, and on special occasions we’ll be using that. What other special
programs have you done?
And that’s why I keep going back to the uniqueness and the unusual aspects of what we will do. “Food and Film” was a five year success with us, because it combined the fine dining aspect of what Miami Beach is all about with a screening tied in with it... For five years we partnered with Gourmet Magazine from Conde Nast and they brought in a lot of their sponsors to help us work with the chefs to create a meal tied in with the film. And it helped raise money for this [Cinematheque project] along with the Academy Awards nights, which is an annual thing we do with TMG Productions. And that is now officially sanctioned by the Academy Awards itself. They choose one party per city that’s impressive and interesting, and we were chosen as the officially sanctioned party... so therefore when you come you get the official Academy Awards program and you get the links to the Academy Awards sites. So that’s one of our major fund-raisers that’s helped make this all happen. Where were you born and when did you fall in love with the
movies. And do you remember the first movie you saw? All my life I’ve been a film buff. I’ve been interested in the creative aspects of film and even the construction elements of film, rather than merely the entertainment aspects of film, believe it or not as long as I can remember. Nineteen sixty-four—Mary Poppins—in a drive-in theater, I remember being fascinated by the special effects and how she "flew." Rather than getting involved in the story, I was thinking technically and artistically about how they were doing that. That was when I was five years old. And I started collecting graphic and historically significant documents right about the same time. In fact, the souvenir program collection I have started in 1968 with Carol Reed’s Oliver at the Bonanza Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. Now, for economic reasons, souvenir programs are given out at premiers only. But at one time, during the fifties, the sixties, and even going as far back as the twenties and thirties, when movie palaces were in vogue, there were dramatic marketing ways to attract people and to keep them interested, and souvenir programs were one of the biggest. About your
modeling years, weren’t you based in Germany for quite a long time? You also
have amassed a museum-quality collection of historic movie posters,
souvenir programs and other movie memorabilia, much of it collected in
Europe while you lived there during your modeling years. Where did you find these
things? My collection basically tells the entire history of the cinema from 1895 to today, so Thomas Edison with all the experimental work done at the end of that century, his documents, his programs, or at least announcements of his screenings. I went out of my way to choose the highlights and collect them to tell the whole history of the cinema. So I'll be supplementing our screenings appropriately with some of these stories of cinema. Some of your pieces have
been shown at the Wolfsonian Museum. Because it is a valuable
collection, where do you store it? What would be the security aspects of
having some of these things here at the Cinematheque? Your bio says you have
two undergraduate degrees from the University of California at Santa
Barbara—one in Cinema, emphasizing film history, aesthetics, and
criticism, and one in Fine Arts, emphasizing graphic arts with
photography and photolithography. Did you have to write a
senior thesis for your film course, and if so what was the topic? About what year was
this? Tell us about that. You were a greeter? There I was, as a 21 or 22 year old kid greeting people like Paul Newman, Raquel Welsh and Cher—and, you know, Dustin Hoffman, you name it, they came through those doors. I did end up at a barbecue at Cher’s house among other... several wild things Hollywood people do. That begs the question:
What are the "wild things" that Hollywood people do? Going back to the school
thing, did you ever make or act in any student or professional films, or
how about TV commercials during your modeling career? However, I was more behind the camera than in front of it during my student days. I was the apprentice of Robert Boyle who was a production designer in Hollywood. In fact, he designed some of Hitchcock’s films, like The Birds and Marnie. He kind of took me under his wing and taught me the craft. But I discovered I really was more interested in the appreciation of film rather than the production of film.
For those who may not
know, what is a production designer? Most of my work done with Robert Boyle was with pre-production; it had a lot to do with conceptual designing, ideas, based on research on the project and that has a lot to do with the architectural design of the set. Your bio says your
background includes management of the Arlington Center for the
Performing Arts in Santa Barbara, and The Red Rock 11 Theatres—at the
time, it says, the world's largest theatre complex. Tell us about your
experience as a theater manager and impresario. My favorite was always the avant-garde screening that attracted fewer people than the 2,000 people that were there the night before. [laughs] You’ve had to raise a
lot of money and organize a considerable amount community support to
fund the Film Society and this Cinematheque. Our side of it came from private donations, a couple corporate sponsors here and there, and the generosity of people realizing the importance of helping at the beginning, which is a lot more difficult than bringing them on to promote funding for programming. For example, it’s a lot more difficult to convince someone to help you put in a $6,000 air A/C unit than getting a lot of acknowledgement at a sexy, fun event. You seem to have been
pretty successful over the years in raising money. I mean, wouldn’t
you say so? [Dana replies]: Well, the fund-raising aspect comes from the Board’s help as well... the Board is the base of the fund-raising activities. Well, let me bring you
back to one part of my question: how much is the renovation and rental
of this space costing? So our main cost was really more the rent, which eventually had to start, naturally... inevitably. She can’t go on forever giving us free rent. So of course the rent has started and we’ve been raising money. What sort of rent is it? How much do tickets
cost? There’s a wide variety of membership starting at $50. That’s Basic Membership. And $100 membership, what we call Premier Membership, gives you even more perks. And then the Founding Circle, the people who have really helped us out either with in kind donation or cash donation, those starts at $500. We’re still developing that, by the way, if any of your readers are interested, we’ll be happy to add to our Founding Circle, and see how they can fit in any way they can. When and how did you
come to reside in South Beach?
I
understand you were a major house model for Gianni Versace and worked
closely with him. Tell us about that. You’ve been here quite
a while. How do you see the development of South Beach? Many people
contend it has become less bohemian, much more mainstream, and far less
artistic than it was a decade ago. What’s your take on
South Beach’s development direction and the role of artists and art
institutions in its commercial success? Lincoln Road, as you can see, is basically, slowly, little by little becoming kind of a shopping mall. The day the Miami City Ballet practice space went out and Victoria’s Secret went in, was very symbolic of what Lincoln Road has become. To me, Espanola Way is still an escape from the commercialization and standardization of things. It’s got individual charm, it’s got the bohemian aspect, and now with the renovation – as I said the good and the bad – it’s enabling a combination of markets to come and enjoy it. That’s why I think we fit in, and luckily we found this space just in time. Do you have a long-term
lease? Do you think City Hall,
the politicians, and the real estate community share your vision? Or
will they say, Gee, this is the perfect place to put in another Gap or
other chain store? This street leads into a residential neighborhood. This particular west end is very residential as well as being commercial now. You know the nightclub boom in South Beach, which was a great thing economically for South Beach, was a wonderful thing that hit this town. However, there’s always been a need, I think, for small cultural activities, along with the major institutions, the anchors, if you will of the Wolfsonian, the Bass Museum the Jewish Museum . . . There’s always been a need for kind of a St. Germain Des Pres or West Village atmosphere, and this is where it should be. South Beach is changing
with the addition of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of high-rise,
high-end condos on the water. Despite a worldwide recession, these
luxury condos are selling like hotcakes.
And for many of the wealthy buyers from around the world, these
South Beach apartments are their second or third homes. Generally, these folks seem
less enamored with the nightclub culture of South Beach than the
twenty-something trendoids who congregate in the clubs. At least some of
the owners of the new condos are protesting powerfully against the
endless noise in their neighborhood. Whatever the merits of
that controversy, it’s clear South Beach’s demographics are
changing. What does that mean for the film society? Are these well-to-do
condo dwellers interested in the cinema? A lot of these people are New Yorkers. They’re used to neighborhoods with galleries and cafes and cultural things going on. And this is exactly the type of project I think a lot of these people will appreciate. When you worked as the
concierge at the rather chic and very trendy Astor Hotel—which is
near the both the Wolfsonian Museum and a whole string of nightclubs on
lower Washington Avenue—did more people ask you about going to the
clubs or going to the museum? But I enlightened many people by mentioning the Wolfsonian was right across the street and surprising them with the world class aspects of what’s right across the way.
And what about requests
for escort services—call
girls and call boys—isn’t that a part of the famous South Beach
mix? With the chic boutique-style hotel [like the Astor], luckily we got a wonderful variety of upscale and interesting people as well as interesting bohemian artist types -- that’s the best thing about working in the hotel industry. And that’s one of the things that kept me interested in staying in South Beach. What were the most
common requests you’d get as a concierge? What were the most
unusual requests you have ever received? You know, some of hotel staff maybe would complain about the details of a request, but I kind of find it interesting and challenging. So one particular celebrity guest of ours, I kept an entire list of his absolute, adamant requests that must happen every time he comes to town, so you should realize and know that without him asking. Things like, for example, no safety pins on his dry-cleaning. And no strawberries near the scrambled eggs. Just a whole list of unusual things. So as long as you knew them, everything was great. How long were you a
concierge? I actually opened The Astor, with [owner] Karim [Masri] back in 1995 and opened The Nash with Laura Sheriden and [owner] Gregg Lurie, who’s one of our sponsors by the way. So in addition to your
work with the film society and Cinematheque, you do what most people
would call a full-time time job, like 40 hours week at the hotel?
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But there was something
about awarding a “Golden Seahorse” to the best film. Is that idea
still current?
