Anyone who grew up in a small town and who was interested in movies that could be read about but not easily seen in the years before Netflix or IFC--there must still be one or two of us--will want to read Eric Konigsberg's touching salute to Rachel Jacobson, founder and proprietor of the Film Streams theater in Omaha, Nebraska, and then maybe shake her hand. (Actually, she might appreciate it more if you'd throw in a couple of bucks. Like Konigsberg, who remembers how tough it was for his "film-buff mother" to deal with the local entertainment options in a place where the movie theaters seldom played "anything that didn’t star Henry Fonda or Benji," Jacobson, 29, is a native Omahan, and "is anything but a snob about Omaha — she’s just a film snob." After graduating from the University of Illinois with a major in film studies, Jacobson lit out for New York City and spent five years takinga course in arts administration at NYU (where she had to write "mock press releases" for an imaginary retrospective of films by Alexander Payne) and working for nonprofit arts organizations--galleries, WNYC, theater organizations--all so that she could develop the savvy to return to Omaha and start a nonprofit movie theater. The idea of starting a movie theater in Omaha with an eye towards showing foreign and indie movies for profit was not something that she ever viewed as an option. Not-for-profit is "the only business plan that allows you to show good movies. The multiplexes have just taken over, especially in cities like this.”
Even so, it's been an uphill battle. Jacobson started laying the floorboards in 2005 and got Film Streams up and running last summer. In between, she had to make her case to such potential contributors as the gentleman who "asked if there was a language barrier when we showed foreign films. Not everybody knows about subtitles.” She adds, “I lived in New York for five years after college, and I came back to Omaha with the attitude that everyone gets it. So I was a little bit wrong about that.” She hung in there, though, and now, Konigsberg writes, "The list of people and institutions in Omaha with a national presence is short (and overlapping), but a look at the names of the biggest contributors to Film Streams, affixed to a wall in the theater lobby, suggests that Ms. Jacobson was able to reach most of them." Among the names on the wall is that of Alexander Payne, who, Jacobson says, "comes back to Omaha once a month to see his parents.” It's a small world after all.
