Outdoor Film Nights in San Francisco, California

San Francisco has always been a city that enjoys its culture outdoors—sometimes because it wants to, sometimes because the weather briefly allows it. This season, Open Air Cinema wrapped up a particularly successful series of outdoor movie events that took full advantage of both tendencies.

Throughout the 2007 season, Open Air Cinema partnered with a San Francisco–based outdoor cinema festival devoted to preserving, renovating, and protecting the Bay Area’s remaining neighborhood movie theaters—a noble cause in a region where nostalgia tends to be outnumbered by redevelopment plans. Screenings took place in several parks across the city and featured eight full-length classics, including Casablanca, The Graduate, and Rebel Without a Cause. These were not background movies; they were the kind people plan evenings around.

The appeal proved considerable. Tens of thousands of film lovers gathered with friends and family to watch familiar favorites in some of San Francisco’s most scenic locations, creating the rare experience of collective viewing without walls or ushers. Open Air Cinema has since become the city’s premier outdoor movie event, a title earned largely by showing up repeatedly and doing it well.

Last year’s turnout of more than 14,000 attendees encouraged organizers to expand the schedule, and the decision paid off. The 2007 series drew even larger crowds, with tens of thousands of San Francisco residents turning out to eat, drink, and dance beneath enormous inflatable movie screens provided by Open Air Cinema, the Los Angeles–based company that made it all possible.

It was cinema as a shared civic event—proof that even in a city with no shortage of entertainment options, a good movie, an open sky, and the right screen can still draw a crowd.