Brian Huberman is currently bummed out.
The documentarian and longtime film professor at Rice University is saying goodbye to a building he called home base for years: Rice Media Center. “To me, this is a time for mourning,” says Huberman. “I’m 72 years old, you know. My involvement in all of this is beginning to slip away. It’s somebody else’s job. I looked after it for 46 years. When the building dies, so do I.”
After this weekend, the Center, which for five decades has been a prime destination in Houston for eclectic film programming — whether it’s indies, foreign films, revivals or avant-garde head-scratchers — will be closed for business and demolished by the end of the year. (Rice Cinema programming will still go on, as future screenings will be held at Sewall Hall.)
The Center has had its problems over the years; there was a mold issue five years ago that called for renovating. Over the past three years, $800,000 worth of maintenance and repairs were made. But the Center still carried on not just as a repertory film house, but as a location where students can learn more about the visual arts. It also held screenings for such local festivals as the Houston Cinema Arts Festival and QFest. “It was built as a temporary structure in 1970,” says Rice Cinema programmer and film-studies professor Charles Dove, “so it’s remarkable that it’s lasted as long as it has.”
On June 4, the Center will go out with a long-overdue bang. Its final feature presentation will be “Last Night at the Alamo,” a low-budget, black-and-white 1983 film made right here in Houston. It’s also a film about the final night of business at a Houston dive bar.
“Alamo” was supposed to screen in March of last year, as a part of the Center’s 50th anniversary celebration. But that’s when COVID cases were beginning to explode , forcing so many things — including the “Alamo” screening — to be canceled. Says Dove, “[The 35mm print has] been in a plastic tub sealed since last year, when we got it.”
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“Alamo” was directed by Eagle Pennell, the Houston-based, indie filmmaker whose 1978 debut feature “The Whole Shootin’ Match” has long been fabled to have inspired Robert Redford to start the Sundance Film Festival. The man was a bit of a wild card, as Huberman, who was the cinematographer for “Alamo,” can attest.
“He was not an easy guy to work with,” Huberman remembers. “He was an alcoholic. He wasn’t that bad then. It would get worse.”
Huberman says writer Kim Henkel (“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”) had to step in and finish the last two nights of shooting when Pennell went on a bender. (Henkel will also be at the “Alamo” screening for a Q&A, along with cast member Sonny Carl Davis.)
When: 7 p.m. Friday
Where: Rice Media Center, 2030 University Blvd.
Details: Free; vada.rice.edu/rice-cinema
Nevertheless, Huberman will always remember Pennell (who died eight days short of his 50th birthday in 2002) as a true maverick. “The films that Eagle made, that type of cinema, I think is often unsung and forgotten — sort of the independent voice in the wilderness,” he says. “So often, the centers of filmmaking are dominated on the East and West Coast by the East and West Coast. At least at this time, it was something that I think was quite special. And it was great to be a part of it.”
The day after the “Alamo” screening, the Center will have an open house (from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m.) where people can tour the facility one last time before it gets locked up. There may be some designs of the new Center, a building that, according to reports, will be up and running in three years.
Still, it’s still a shame that yet another local, arthouse institution — let’s not forget about Landmark River Oaks’s much-publicized shuttering in March— will be gone soon.
“I’m not super-happy about it,” says Dove, sounding just as melancholy as Huberman. “I liked working there. I do think this is the best possible situation, where they’re gonna build us a new building, you know — a really nice one — and there will be really good things in it. And I think it’ll work out really well.”
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