This story is featured in CityBeat's March 6 print edition.
Stepping into a movie theater can feel like the ultimate escape, going on a journey of light and sound exploring the human condition, reveling in the human spark. Cincinnati has a vibrant and evolving film community that expands on the moviegoing experience.
There are a handful of groups putting together classic cinema events in Greater Cincinnati. A small group curates niche classic showings at The Lounge in Northside, the city shows old favorites in Washington Park, and a handful of groups present programming at the Esquire, among others, but there’s not a lot like the “Deep Dive” series presented by educator, film historian and all-around Cincinnati culture enthusiast, Joe Horine.
“Deep Dive” is a carefully curated film series that takes place at the historic Esquire and Mariemont theaters on a regular basis year-round, built around a changing theme. Each showing features an introduction from Horine and a follow-up contextualization and open discussion/Q&A with audience members.
Horine, whose parents were both involved in Cincinnati culture, his dad a musician who played with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and his mom who worked at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, initially studied literature but found himself leaning more and more toward cinema as a young man. “The older I got, I thought, ‘Hey, Cincinnati is a great theater town, it’s a great music town, I’d like to try to make it equally strong, from a cultural standpoint, a movie town,’” Horine tells CityBeat.
Horine attended Miami University, where he received a master’s in creative writing with a focus on screenwriting, followed by doctoral work in visual presentation of information spanning novels, graphical user interfaces and cinema. “So, I started thinking about, talking about, teaching and writing about that. It kind of led to a natural kind of merge between literature and technology and visual arts and mainly in the cinema and kind of was the perfect storm of things coming together for me, from an interest standpoint.”
He got an internship out of college with film producer Dan Wigutow in Manhattan and worked on screenplays (and even wrote some of his own), studied film noir with noted film theorist William Rothman and eventually began teaching at the University of Cincinnati.
His relationship with the Esquire began after operations manager and Horine’s now collaborator, Diane Janicki, contacted UC looking for someone to present a showing of Pillow Talk starring famous Cincinnati native Doris Day to coincide with the city’s dedication of Doris Day Way in 2017. Horine jumped at the opportunity. The showing was a success and Esquire asked if he’d like to do more. Horine says he’s lost track but estimates they’ve presented 300 movies since.
The “Deep Dive” series generally includes expected things like horror films in October under the name Shocktober, but there are also mainstays like Noirvember, which includes film noir classics, and other different series built around themes and topical subjects.
The films are presented on a Monday at Esquire and the following Wednesday at Mariemont. This month is the start of the newest election year-related series, “Corruption Classics.”
“If you follow politics, there are a lot of questions about corruption in politics regardless of which way you lean,” Horine says. “So, in March and April, we’re doing these three movies that are about corruption.”
The “Corruption Classics” series includes showings of All the King’s Men on March 18 at Esquire and March 20 at Mariemont; Born Yesterday on March 25 and 27 and The Wrong Man on April 15 and 17.
On programming, Horine says, it’s a mix of trying to “keep the topics sort of relevant to what’s in the news” and a touch of “this will be fun, regardless.”
The response to the “Deep Dive” series has been overwhelmingly positive. “The rooms have been selling out, they’re selling a couple hundred tickets,” Horine says. “People have gotten to know me and understand what these ‘Deep Dives’ are and what they’re going to get and so on.”
He describes the events as, “kind of film school in small chunks. You buy a $10 ticket, you show up, you get a little film professor, if that’s the kind of thing you like, but you don’t have to write papers or take tests and it’s sort of like film school for the price of a ticket.”
That has been positive for Horine who says after things moved more online during COVID and he had less interaction with students and lost the communal part of movie-watching, it became less fun for him and he says he “kind of backed off the teaching.” Once theaters started opening, he began focusing more on the “Deep Dive” events, adding that he understands the nature of college, that some students take a class just for a credit but that people who come out to the showings are all movie lovers. “If people show up to Esquire or Mariemont and pay for the ticket, they’re there because they wanna be and that’s the kind of good energy and mojo that makes it fun.
“I’m admittedly an old guy, an old school guy, these movies that I teach and talk about and love and think about and write about, they were made to be seen in an auditorium on a big screen with other people, most of whom are strangers, eating popcorn in an experiential environment and that’s not to say, and I’ve had this discussion with students, if it’s a great movie, watch it on your phone or watch it on your TV at home but don’t forgo the experience of going to a movie theater and having that go out and have a cup of coffee or a drink afterward and talk to the people you went with and see what they think.”
For the true movie lover, there was also the “Deeper Dive” film series before COVID where Horine would host screenings that included a breakdown of the film with pauses and discussions in 3-5 hour sessions that Horine hopes to bring back. He describes the “Deeper Dive” screening as, “a half-day film class on everything about (the movie), shot by shot, the lighting, the camera, the acting, the whole deal and I do that with Rear Window and Casablanca and Chinatown and Alien.”
In the future, Horine has also proposed hosting a Doris Day 100th birthday series; 70-year anniversary showings of Rear Window, La Stada and On the Waterfront; a spy-themed September series and more. In their yearslong collaboration, the team at the theaters has to figure out what will work and Horine plans accordingly.
On favorite moments over the years, he mentions showing one of his favorites, Rear Window, and a “Deeper Dive” presentation of the Hitchcock classic, as well as a memory of an enthusiastic audience for counterculture classic Easy Rider.
“They get out on the open road (in the movie) and the Steppenwolf song (Horine mimics the opening rhythm of 1968’s “Born To Be Wild”), there were a bunch of hippies in the audience at the Esquire and three or four of them, almost in unison went, ‘wooooo!’ and that was cool. They were so into it, their emotions peaked, and I was like, this is why I’m doing this because people still love these movies from decades ago. It connects them back to their youth, who they were, what they were thinking at that time, what they were feeling and that’s the beauty of cinema — it connects with your memory and it keeps that memory alive and therefore, in my mind, it’s the most vibrant art form that exists.”
For more information about the “Corruption Classics” series, visit esquiretheatre.com.
