Pasadena, California: Outdoor Movie Events Still Popular in Pasadena, California

Old Pasadenas Outdoor Film Festival. Mitch, Ellen, and Ben, local Pasadena residents, love screening backyard movies when the weather is warm (which it always is in LA!). With few drive-in theaters left in the LA area, residents are compelled to create their own outdoor cinema experience. With your favorite movie, popcorn, and a blanket spread out on the grass, the drive-in comes to you. And it's not just backyard cinemas that are catching on- cities have begun to screen films in their downtown areas and parks as well. The city of Pasadena is now host to an outdoor film festival, and many nearby cities have invested in inflatable movie screens and outdoor cinema equipment for community events. One outdoor film enthusiast recalls, "When my family and I were on vacation in Monument Valley, Arizona, a few weeks ago, we watched the 1939 John Ford-John Wayne classic "Stagecoach" as it was projected onto the outside wall of our hotel. The Navajo run hotel is on the rim of Monument Valley, enabling hotel guests from around the world to watch the movie as we looked out over the starllit buttes and mittens of the Valley. Here we were having this communal experience on a warm summer night, observing how the Valley itself hadn't changed in 70 years. Watching inside just wouldn't have been the same" (KPCC). You may not find a drive-in close by, but outdoor movies are still alive and kicking -you just won't be watching from inside your car.

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