Sound Cinema: The Beacon

Façade of The Beacon in Columbia City

The Evergreen Echo

As the youngest theater to be featured in Sound Cinema, The Beacon emerged as a wonderful, ethereal being from beyond known space and onto our plane of existence in 2019. The theater is housed in an unassuming storefront that was once a yoga studio, which friends Casey Moore and Tommy Swenson decided to turn into a unique 48-seat cinematic experience.

This space is a movie palace. Unlike the other spaces I’ve covered, The Beacon is not a movie palace in the sense of the grandiosity of its auditorium or the ornate fixtures that adorn the walls. This is a palace to the strangeness, brilliance, and beauty that the medium of cinema can offer. It is a cinephile's paradise in the heart of Seattle's Columbia City neighborhood.

The films shown here range from the avant-garde to the Golden Age of Hollywood, from the modern to the silent, from the highest melodrama to the lowest genre film, and everything in between. It is a space where curation is not about what is en vogue, but what sparks the imagination, what pierces the veil between man and gods, and what future-thinking ideas from the past reflect to this moment in history.

You would not think that this strange black-painted storefront would house such magic, but as soon as you walk through the door it’s obvious this will be an experience worth having no matter the film you’re seeing. The lobby is warm and has cinema books available for sale on every surface. Just inside the door is a video game cabinet encouraging you to come early and play.  One side of the desk at the back is for tickets, the other side is snacks. The theater is to the right and the restrooms are ahead. The wall to the restrooms is adorned with a cutout of a great scene from the landmark film Funeral Parade of Roses in which several trans women are lifting their skirts to use urinals.

The theater space is compact and there is not a bad seat in the house. Even the front row is far enough from the screen that those who choose to sit there will not have to crane their necks to see. Without hyperbole, The Beacon has the best leg room of any independent theater around. My 6'6" frame could slouch and still have room for someone to pass comfortably in front of me. The seats themselves are classic cinema seats, but have no cup holders, so any beverage has to be held or placed carefully on the floor. One of the best aspects of the experience at The Beacon is that every film is introduced so you may get an idea of why it was chosen and what makes it special.

Screening room inside The Beacon

The Evergreen Echo

I was treated to a film I had neither seen nor heard of: Giants and Toys. The film was made in Japan in the late 1950s and satirizes the ad culture in the country at the time. The plot is about three rival candy companies who attempt to one-up each other in an effort to sell more of their new caramels. The competition is fierce and Goda (Hideo Takamatsu) has a plan to turn a goofy teenager, Kyoko (Hitomi Nozoe), into a sensation. When Kyoko's fame eclipses the original purpose of her ascent, things fall apart for Goda and his young protege Nishi (Hiroshi Kawaguchi). Giants and Toys skewers not only capitalism, but corporate structures and the gossamer threads of celebrity too. It is funny, strange, enthralling, and bitter in the end. If you can find a copy, I highly recommend it.

The Beacon hosts shows in the evenings on weekdays, late nights on Fridays, and four shows each weekend day. Many of the slots on their calendar are also taken up by folks renting out the space for their gatherings or personal viewings. Those slots are 2.5 hours long and at a super reasonable rate. 

The best part about choosing what to see there is that it brings the joy of a potential new discovery. They often run series that span decades, but stick to a common theme or the oeuvre of unsung filmmakers. The current series, running until February 8, is Super Krime, a collection of films that focus on the masked criminal underworld. In the past they have also done double features as well as longform storytelling by showing episodes of Twin Peaks: The Return. There’s also a membership called The Mystic Order of The Beacon, with three levels of perks to tantalize and delight.

For someone like me who hears, reads, and sees publicity for many new and upcoming films, it’s a refreshing change of pace to pick a film about which I know nothing. It is like a return to innocence. It is the feeling of seeing a poster at the multiplex or on the cover of a VHS or DVD at Blockbuster and wondering what this could possibly be. 

The Beacon is a place of cinematic discovery and most of the rest of the audience is going in just as blind as you are. It’s a place to truly escape and be transported to a time and an idea you may not have ever thought possible before. The Beacon is magic.