What is it about Marin County that makes audiences so responsive to independent, noncommercial films?
I think on the one hand, the Marin audience is a special one. It’s well-educated. There are people here who are interested in culture and they’re willing to see documentaries and movies with subtitles. On the other hand, before the Rafael opened, this audience had been prepped by 20 years of the Mill Valley Film Festival. So I think there’s a give and take. What are your criteria in booking films? Personal taste is a lot of it. There’s a certain market that we feel is part of our mission. We show a lot of documentaries, we show a lot of films that don’t have campaigns behind them. We’ve shown a number of films without distribution, which is tough. There’s no poster. You have to create one. When there’s no distributor you’re just dealing with the filmmaker. I’ve done one-night shows with independent filmmakers, thinking, maybe we can’t run this for a week, but this way people at least get a chance to see it. So are independent filmmakers constantly pitching you? Oh, yeah. And I do watch
