Roll credits: Ewing reflects on unique Cinematheque career

When John Cameron Ewing was a child, he imagined movies he wanted to make. He drew ads for them. Sometimes he would write their plots in his head. Ewing has been devouring movies since he was in high school in his native Canton, Ohio.

In college, Ewing made several movies, but his interest in cinema ultimately took another turn: He became a film programmer, making an indelible mark in that field as director of the Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque.

Ewing retired on June 30, presenting three of his favorite movies that Sunday at the Cinematheque: Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons; Late Spring, a South Korean film shot during the Allies’ occupation of Japan during World War II; and Shane, George Stevens’ archetypal American Western.

Ewing is eager to spend time with his two grandchildren (with one on the way), leaving the running of the Cinematheque to someone else. Easing into the job already: Bilgesu Sisman, who’s an experienced film programmer with impressive credentials in higher education, grassroots organization, media and entertainment.

Also figuring in his decision: health issues, and technological upgrades to the Cinematheque he says he lacks the energy to manage.

“I also have this general sense that I’ve run the Cinematheque long enough and should try something else,” Ewing says. “Since the program is doing well, with attendance back up to pre-pandemic levels, it seems a good time to exit.”

Raising the cinema profile

As co-founder of the Cinematheque, Ewing has shown about 10,000 feature films since he screened the first one there in 1986. His has been a dedicated career, making the Cinematheque a cultural force and earning Ewing national and international acclaim. Not only did Ewing win a special Cleveland Arts Prize in 1995, he became a Chevalier, or knight, in the Order of Arts and Letters at the Republic of France in 2010. The New York Times spotlighted the Cinematheque, too.

Grafton Nunes, CIA president emeritus and a cinema savant himself, praised his friend to the skies, calling Ewing a “stalwart in maintaining the cinema culture of Cleveland. It’s about the love of being with an audience in a dark space, looking at larger-than-life images and having this communal experience, which is only possible in cinema.”

Ewing was a factor in his decision to accept the job of CIA president and CEO, Nunes said in remarks prepared for a private event honoring Ewing June 11. “I knew of him and the Cinematheque from The New York Times, which declared the Cinematheque as one of the top 10 repertory film programs in the nation, music to the ears of a film scholar and former movie producer like me.”

Known for his witty introductions to films he’s selected for the Cinematheque and the Cleveland Museum of Art, where he was coordinator of film programs until 2020, Ewing is indeed a fierce advocate for cinema. He’s also been lucky, making the right connections at the right time.

Former Cinematheque director John Ewing mics questions from the audience during a Cinematheque event in Russell B. Aitken Auditorium, the program’s Cleveland Institute of Art home prior to the Peter B. Lewis Theater.

Finding his groove

The budding film authority graduated from Denison University in central Ohio in 1973 with a double major: English, and Theater and Film. He wrote reviews for the student paper. His editor at The Denisonian was Dave Abbott, a Fremont, Ohio native who would become president of the George Gund Foundation, a high-profile philanthropic institution.

Another Gund connection, the Foundation’s George Gund III, along with Ron Holloway, an entertainment journalist and Gund associate, would found the Cinematheque in 1986 with Ewing at its helm.

Before he settled into his Cinematheque career, Ewing held a series of jobs including newspaper route manager, assistant librarian in a county library, classical music specialist in a record store, and freelance film critic for newspapers and magazines. All the while, he watched movies, traveling all over in search of celluloid bliss.

In college, in the days before videotape, Ewing says, he “would drive all over to see stuff because you couldn’t see it any other way unless you waited for it to come on TV. I drove to Kenyon College to see Strangers on a Train. I drove to Cincinnati to see The Wild Child by [François] Truffaut, which never opened in Cleveland, which was unbelievable.”

Ewing was not alone in wanting to watch unusual movies closer to home. Once he, Holloway and Gund decided to leverage their mutual interest in movies, Ewing was deputized to find a home for their vision.

Ewing scouted several sites before he settled on CIA’s Russell B. Aitken Auditorium in the College’s former headquarters on East Boulevard. It seated 600, had heating and air conditioning and a parking lot, and it wasn’t being used on weekends. Ewing called then-CIA President Joseph McCullough to express his interest. McCullough expressed doubt that people would come to the CIA campus after dark, but Ewing persuaded him to mount a test run, a screening of Vortex, a 1981 noir melodrama starring James Russo and the No Wave singer Lydia Lunch.

“It had kind of a hipster, rock ’n’ roll sensibility that would speak to art students and other young filmgoers, and it worked,” says Ewing. “I want to say we had at least 400 people over two shows that Friday night.”

Eventually, CIA applied to the Gund Foundation for a grant that brought higher tech to the facility, including two 35-millimeter projectors, a new sound system and a new screen, and the Cinematheque began to screen movies at Aitken in August 1986. About 10,000 films later, the Cinematheque is still going strong, screening all kinds of films in the Peter B. Lewis Theater at CIA 50 weeks a year.

Besides the films, Ewing has enjoyed hosting directors, including Peter Greenaway and Alexander Payne and actors such as Willem Dafoe for discussions at the Cinematheque. After all, educating audiences about cinema is one of Ewing’s goals.

One of his fondest memories is of hosting Akron, Ohio native Jim Jarmusch in 2002. The Cinematheque was almost sold out for a talk by Jarmusch, clips from his movies and a Q&A. Jarmusch entered from the back of the auditorium and walked toward the stage, stopping by the front of the rear section to embrace his mother and hug his father.

“It was very touching that he greeted his parents on the way to the stage,” Ewing says.

Ewing, who hopes to have a hand in Cinematheque programming from time to time, says he doesn’t know exactly how many films he has screened.

“I don’t want to think about it,” he says.

He just wants to watch them.