Every club needs a clubhouse. So, it seems like destiny that, after eight years, Hyperreal Film Club finally has a screening room to call its own.
This week, the lovers of the baroque, underground, experimental, and entertaining officially opens their doors and flicked on the projectors at their new 60-seat single-screen cinema/hangout at 301 Chicon.
Co-founded in 2016 by film fans Tanner Hadfield, Jenni Kaye, and David McMichael, Hyperreal is “a time and a place for people to watch good movies,” as described by McMichael. Yet that place has always been in flux. The team has become expert in pop-up cinema experiences, fitting the screening to the location. What made Hyperreal decide to get into real estate?
“For eight years,” McMichael said, “we’ve been roaming around Austin showing movies in backyards, swimming pools, movie theatres, wherever, and we wanted to open this space so we could do that but do a lot more of it, and in a slightly more personalized way.”
For Kaye, the shift to a permanent location was an inevitable progression: “We knew that, at some point, we were either going to open our own space or burn out like a dying star.” Plus, she added, “We’re entering our mid-30s and there’s only so long we can lug PA’s around town. … We’re starting to settle down, and we wanted to settle down with Hyperreal as well.”
They’d actually started considering finding a permanent space pre-pandemic, but it was the success of their post-COVID residency at Hotel Vegas that really convinced them to make the leap. McMichael was constantly on the lookout for locations, but they were always either too expensive or too small. “When we walked in [301 Chicon] for the first time,” he said, “we went, ‘This has everything we’re looking for. It’s a sign from the universe.’”
No one gets rich running a small repertory theatre, but that’s not the point. Kaye described the clubhouse as “one of those places where you can build community with like-minded people.” However, that community was already there, formed through the more than 350 screenings hosted by Hyperreal to date. It’s that community that came through with the cash to make the clubhouse possible, donating $66,263 to their Kickstarter appeal. That same community also turned up to help the buildout. “We have a team of over 200 volunteers that we can pull from to help us paint and haul ancient theatre chairs from Lockhart,” Kaye said.
The intention is to work lean in these early days, and so they’re happy to rely on Hadfield’s bargain-hunting skills on Facebook Marketplace and scavenging on bulk pickup days. He described the end result as “a fun little Rube Goldberg machine of donated secondhand eBay finds and warehouse finds. … Our technical limitations are a feature, not a bug, and it’s hopefully something people find endearing.”
After all that struggle, and a soft launch last week of four secret screenings, the clubhouse finally opens on Tuesday with the psychotropic kaleidoscope of Holy Mountain. The opening month of programming showcases that signature Hyperreal eclecticism and collaboration, from a timely screening of Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives presented with Fangoria magazine to a cast-and-crew showing of festival favorite Fantasy A Gets a Mattress, and a retrospective for Andrew Bujalski’s Support the Girls with the director in attendance. Of course, this is all a huge risk, and for Kaye, this is just another expression of the community and the team’s love of cinema. “We’re going to give it our all, but Hyperreal doesn’t need a space to exist.”
Hyperreal Film Club (301 Chicon) officially opens Tuesday, Sept. 10 with a screening of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Holy Mountain. Also screening this week: Nowhere (Sept. 11), Tampopo (Sept. 12), and Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (Sept. 13). See Hyperreal’s screenings calendar for more info.
This article appears in September 13 • 2024 and The 34th Annual Austin Chronicle Hot Sauce Festival.
