- Why do I love movies so much?

Ah!

♪ - Movies do touch us more deeply, I feel, than any other art form.

When a movie is really working, we have an out of the body experience.

- When the lights go down and the curtain opens, we get to go into another world.

It's very beautiful.

- It's become almost a lost art to see movies in a theater.

When you see them on a big screen, you see them in an audience, especially an appreciative audience.

It's a really unique and powerful experience.

- In an age where streaming has sort of invaded the movie space, the video store, the theater, those were things that made movie watching a communal experience.

And I think that community experience is really important, and that's something like the Retro and the Carolina keeps that alive.

- My name is Jim Carl, and I am one of the founders of the Retro Film Series, which is one of the longest running genre film series in the entire United States.

♪ ♪ - When I started at the theater in 1995, the Carolina Theater had just reopened its doors after a major renovation.

There really hadn't been a lot of thought at that point about what the theater was going to be for the Durham community.

Was it going to be a performing arts space?

Was it going to be a rental facility?

Was it going to be an art house theater?

I came on board when all those questions were still being asked, and I was lucky enough to be one of the people that got to decide.

At that time in the Triangle, there was not a big community of film lovers going to see classics on the big screen, and I thought, well, there's a niche that I think is being underserved in the Triangle that the Carolina Theater could fill.

So I made it my mission from the very beginning to try to put the theater on the map with its film programming, and not just offering the same types of films that you could have seen at your local Megaplex.

I wanted ours to be something you'd see only at the Carolina Theater, and that I knew would be so difficult to replicate because of all the work that it takes, that probably no other theater in the market would even attempt it.

And that's where Retro was really born.

So if you were a first-timer coming to the Carolina Theater and coming to the Retro Film Series, here's what you would see.

- Hi, sign up for door prizes if you're here for Better Off Dead.

Sign up for door prizes.

- First thing you'd notice as you walk into our lobby is that there's this table with all these little white slips on it, and there's door prizes you can sign up for.

Prizes are always based on whatever films are playing that night.

- This one's from Better Off Dead, and this one's from 3 O'Clock High, which is the second half of tonight's double feature.

I am not necessarily a curator.

I am not this type of person who likes to provide a lot of information about the subtext of why you should be coming to see this film at the Carolina Theater.

That's boring.

- Good evening, everyone!

Hi!

[cheers and applause] What I want is for people to have a good time.

So I get up on stage, I draw the prizes, I welcome the audience, and then I get off stage because they're not here to see me.

They're here to see that show.

Thank you for supporting these classic movies on that big screen.

Enjoy it!

[cheers and applause] So once the show begins, they see a title card come up on screen that reads "Tonight's Day Is..." when that film that you're about to watch would have originally happened.

The idea is that you are watching the trailers as they probably would have played at the opening night of whatever film you're coming to see.

- Coming soon to a theater near you.

- I can't remember who met who first or who fell in love with who first.

- And that is the Retro experience.

It's not just the nostalgia.

It's not just classic films back on the big screen.

It's the idea of transporting an audience from present time back to the original night of release.

Nobody else replicates that opening night experience, that "you are there" kind of sensation that retro does.

And I think it's what brings the fans back again and again.

♪ - The philosophy for Retro today is that we want to have a film for everybody that's out there that wants to come back and see films in a theater.

So no matter if you want horror films, the golden age of Hollywood, noir, dramas, war films, science fiction, we have you covered.

And that's the beauty of Retro and that's also the challenge of programming it each season.

So King Kong 1976 is one of my absolute favorite movies of all time since I was a little kid.

And this was my original lunchbox when I was in kindergarten.

And so this nowadays has become where I store all of my slips that the retro fans give me their recommendations.

In this box is probably 3,500 slips.

And this is just from the last six months.

I read every single one of these things.

So the process for selecting films, it's always about the audience.

It's about what the audience tells me they want to see.

At each Friday night Retro, there are these little slips.

The purpose of the slip is for people to write down what is the number one film that they would want to see back on the big screen.

- What did you put down for me?

- Saturday the 14th.

- Are you the one that's been asking for that all these years?

- No.

- Somebody has been asking for Saturday.

- Really?

- Yes.

- God, I love that movie.

- And I can get it.

- Really?

- Pocket full of Miracles?

- Ooh, that would be a good one for the classic series.

- That's what I was thinking.

- Why don't you put down for me?

- I put French Connection.

- We just ran that.

- Last month for Mystery Realm.

And what did you put down?

I can't read it.

- Silence of the Lambs.

- It comes around.

It comes around a lot.

You'll be very happy.

I can honestly say that I do things for the audience that they will never know this is what actually took place.

For example, that very first season, one of the films that people kept asking for was a German film called Fitzcarraldo.

Fitzcarraldo was from a very famous director named Werner Herzog.

- This church remains closed till this town has its opera house.

- Nobody in the United States had U.S.

theatrical screening rights to the film.

If you wanted to run Fitzcarraldo, you had to reach out to Werner Herzog himself.

Well, one thing leads to another, and before you know it, I'm on the phone talking to Werner Herzog.

And he's asking me, "Well, how are you planning to exhibit my film?"

And I said, "Well, their studio has this print."

He's, "Oh, no, no, no, no.

You cannot.

That film, that print is not suitable for the American audiences.

That print is no good.

You must show my print."

So now I'm thinking, "Okay, now I have to ship probably 60 to 70 pounds of 35mm film across the Atlantic at my expense."

These are the things that sometimes you do back yourself into a corner where you didn't expect to be shipping 70 pounds of film across the Atlantic.

And now you are.

Behind the scenes, putting together a Retro is a lot of work.

It's everything that you see on that screen, I basically have cut and put together myself.

All of the montages, images, trivia, gathering the trailers.

Unless it's Christmas or Thanksgiving, I'm here every Friday.

Every single Friday.

And I would say that the thing that keeps me doing it for 30 years is the audience.

It really is.

I have fans that were at retro the very first night in November 1998 who are still attending today in 2025.

I have fans who went on their first date many years ago at a retro, got married, had kids, and are now bringing their kids to Retro.

The Retro and its legacy is broad.

It's more than just watching classic films on the screen.

After so many years, it has become a part of people's sense of where they belong.

It just gives you an idea of what you're doing is important to people.

That's always nice.

♪