It’s one of the funniest scenes in Singin’ in the Rain. Gene Kelly and Jean Hagen are a pair of 1920s movie stars at an advance screening of their first sound picture—their first “talkie”—when there’s a problem: the sound is messed up. Onscreen, Kelly’s clothes squeak like rubber boots, Hagen’s pearls clink, and her shrill voice comes in, then fades out, then comes in again. In their seats, Kelly and Hagen shift anxiously as the audience laughs and cheers and heckles like it’s watching a slapstick comedy instead of a drab costume drama. The sound falls out of sync, it slows down and distorts, and then it cuts out completely. But this time, it’s for real.
The sound would cut out or stutter a few more times that night before the issue was resolved. But, in hindsight at least, Awano wasn’t too concerned.
“There are certain limits that come across from being all-volunteer,” she says. “But you get people who are just passionate, and just really want to do this, and just really want to see celluloid film, right here on campus.”
“I just thought it would be great if there were some different kinds of films shown. And one of my friends said, ‘You know, you can go to the programming meetings, that’s something that supposedly anybody can do.’ So, I started going to those meetings wanting to program different kinds of programming.”
For a student-run organization, Doc is a complex logistical operation. Board members oversee not just programming and publicity, but also the acquisition of screening rights and the actual movies, many of which are heavy and delicate 35-millimeter film prints.
“I don’t think we exist to prove that this is the more economical thing to do,” Awano adds. “it’s just something that is going to be lost to history unless we do it. . . . Doc Films is this institution where all the effort really goes to not try to advance into the new era of showing movies . . . just to preserve film and show film.”
