Enter through the front doors of 701 W Sheridan Ave in downtown Oklahoma City. Skip turning right into The Study, a popular winebar, and go straight. 

Hang another left, and you’re there: the screening room on Film Row. But it might not be there for much longer. This intimate, 50-seat theater, renovated in 2021 by non-profit art-house theater Rodeo Cinema, is on its very last few days of operation. 

If no one takes over the lease from Rodeo by the end of August, the projector will dim, and it will be curtains for the screening room.

Unless the Oklahoma Film Exchange has something to do about it.

Film Exchange

The screening room on Film Row has gone by many names and identities in its over 100-year history. Built by the Oklahoma Specialty Film Company in 1919, it first started as a film exchange.

“Back before films were on hard drives. We were shipping crates and crates, cases and cases of 35-millimeter reels across the country,” says Oklahoma Film Exchange operations team member Dalton Stuart. 

Stuart explains that because there was no standardized opening day, film exchanges were warehouses for all reels shipped from the coasts. Then theater owners, critics, and those in the industry would come to the screening room at a film exchange to see what was on offer to screen in theaters. Eventually, the building was taken over by Paramount Film Distributing Corporation, giving it the name the Paramount Building. 

While the film exchange model has long been extinct, the screening rooms themselves are also an almost-dead breed. The screening room in the Paramount Building is likely the last of the exchange district theaters in the country. And while the Film Row District is in the National Register of Historic Places, the screening room isn’t. 

When the lease for the space is up on August 31st, the room will be emptied and become a vacant commercial space for the building owners to rent to another tenant.

Thanks to Viewers Like You

The team at the OFX is in the throes of their $100,000 fundraiser to preserve the Film Row screening room, with the aim of raising two years' worth of operating costs before the end of August. 

“If this whole timeline seems insane, it's because we did not pick it,” says Oklahoma Film Exchange programming team member Kirsten Therkelson. “The opportunity just wasn't there until it was, and then we had to light ourselves on fire basically.”

With film, arts, and comedy programming almost every single day throughout August to bring awareness to the cause, the team knows what they’re doing is ambitious, but are throwing themselves fully behind it, hoping to make movie magic. 

Bradley Wynn, author of the book Oklahoma City: Film Row (Images of America), which chronicles the district, notes that this space is special for a reason.

“It is a space where patrons can experience and be a part of an ongoing story that first glowed to life over 80 years ago,” says Wynn. “This is among the only places in the nation that still captures and celebrates a golden era of film that can never be recaptured. If this space is lost, that era ends forever.”

The Oklahoma Film Exchange hopes that the screening room’s 80-year history doesn’t end at August’s close – and it won’t if the community comes together to ensure it lives on another 80 more. 

To donate to the campaign, visit the Oklahoma Film Exchange’s IndieGoGo. You can also find and follow the group on Instagram at @oklahomafilmexchange.

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