After 25 years, Macon Film Guild still offers ‘different kind of rhythm’

While film junkies this week might be keen on attending the advance showing of “Superman,” the Macon Film Guild offers a different experience.

On Sunday, the film guild is set to show “The Ballad of Wallis Island,” a British dramedy about two former bandmates reuniting on a private island, a far cry from the DC, James Gunn superhero remake that was filmed in Macon.

For the past 25 years, the Macon Film Guild has been showing independent arthouse films — including international titles — year round at the Douglass Theatre, offering a “different kind of rhythm” to the blockbusters playing at Amstar.

“There are different kinds of sensibilities than the big Hollywood films, both artistically, philosophically. You get an insight into different cultures,” Macon Film Guild President Robert Fieldsteel said. 

The guild screens 12 feature films a year along with four documentaries on a quarterly basis. In July the guild will screen the documentary “Honeyland” days after “The Ballad of Wallis Island,” which will include a happy hour and a Q&A with local honey producer Joe Money.

Their filmings reel in a few dozen folks every month, a mix of regulars and people who have never visited the Douglass before.

After the shows, viewers can rate the film by sticking a clothespin into one of four bags, where four says “you liked it a lot,” and one says, “I was bitter I attended,” according to Fieldsteel. Usually, the guild’s audience aren’t fans of ambiguous endings, Fieldsteel noted.

“We don’t necessarily think that a lower or not great score is necessarily bad, but some of the times we’ll show a film that baffles some people and then some people are absolutely crazy about,” he said.

Some of the documentaries, namely the Amy Winehouse and Ruth Bader Ginsburg documentaries, sold out, especially when they serve beer, Fieldsteel said.

The guild’s board of 10 to 11 film enthusiasts meets once a month to decide what films to show. Wendy Johnston, the board’s film selection chair, curates a list of six or so recent releases that can’t be found at the Amstar.

In the past they’ve shown Oscar-nominated films like “I’m Still Here,” a Brazilian film, and A24’s “Sing Sing”.

“The great thing is you can see these films without going to Atlanta, and sometimes we show lesser known gems that haven’t played in Atlanta,” Fieldsteel said.

Bob Burnham serves on the guild’s board and was one of its founding members. He helped oversee the restoration of the Douglass Theatre in the late ‘90s when he and his fellow restoration committee members thought to utilize the newly created space as a haven for independent films.

The Douglass Theatre Film Guild held its first showing in 2000, a “rocky launch,” Burnham said, and early on the guild had difficulties procuring the films it wanted to show.

Publishers felt iffy about giving its films to a group without a proven track record, Burnham said, but things changed when collaborator Camp Bacon “took the enterprise on his shoulders.”

Bacon leveraged a connection with the established Sarasota Film Society, “piggybacking” off the society’s resources.

The Douglass Theatre Film Guild eventually divested itself from its namesake theatre to become the Macon Film Guild, allowing the organization to seek out its own grants and funding. 

The arthouse theatre is the only of its kind in Macon, and for Burnham, being able to bring something different to town makes him feel good. 

“It’s in really good shape after 25 years, I didn’t have any idea that it would last 25 years when we started this thing. It’s pretty great for the community that we’ve been able to hang in that long and bring independent films to Macon,” Burnham said.