AFS Cinema Announces Opening Date and Name for Third Screen

The wait is over. AFS Cinema is getting ready to open the doors on its long-awaited third screen this month, named in honor of a key figure in the theatre’s history.

On Oct. 24, public screenings will begin at the new John H. McCall Theater, featuring 169 seats, 4K digital laser projection, and 7.1 surround sound. The new space will allow AFS to expand its programming, both adding more titles and allowing films to stick around longer. As Holly Herrick, head of film and creative media at AFS, told the Chronicle in July, with only two screens, “we can’t guarantee screening time when we already have our repertory programming on one screen, and rentals on the other.”

Donors who helped get this project completed will get an invite-only sneak peek on Oct. 23, but that opening salvo of regular screenings beginning on Oct. 24 will include 4K restorations for Martin Scorsese’s sequel to pool hall classic The Hustler, The Color of Money, Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antionette, and Douglas Keeve’s 1995 look inside the dressing rooms and sewing stations of high fashion, Unzipped. And what’s a grand cinema opening without a red carpet event? On Oct. 27, audiences will get an early glimpse at Paper Tiger, the newest film from writer/director James Gray (Armageddon Time, Ad Astra) ahead of its release by Neon on Nov. 13. Gray himself will be in attendance for a special conversation with AFS co-founder and artistic director, Richard Linklater.

If the name McCall is familiar, it might be because he was inducted into the Texas Film Hall of Fame in 2018. However, unlike most members of that honored institution, it’s not because of his work in front of or behind the camera. It’s not even because of his appearance in the 2000 documentary about him, The Shampoo King. A larger-than-life character (so much so that Kinky Friedman wrote him in as himself into his 2001 novel, Steppin’ on a Rainbow), the second-generation owner of beauty product company Armstrong McCall turned the distributor into a major corporation. In turn, he channeled some of that success back into the Austin film community, becoming a major friend and donor to AFS. It was a donation from McCall that allowed the society to convert the Marchesa event space back into a working cinema. Now, a new donation from his widow, Amy, has been pivotal in getting that third screen up and running.

Linklater said, “The McCall Theater will allow us to expand our programming and better serve the filmmakers, festivals, and audiences who have made the theatre their home, It’s another step in the same journey we began four decades ago: creating a place where great films are discovered, filmmakers are supported, and a community gathers around the shared experience of cinema.”

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