Tonight the Red Vic has local filmmaker Alex Beckstead's 2008 documentary "Paperback Dreams" for one screening at 7:30.
Here are the details from the Red Vic's site:
Paperback Dreams is the story of two landmark independent bookstores and their struggle to survive. The film follows Andy Ross, owner of Cody’s Books, and Clark Kepler, owner of Kepler’s Books, over the course of two tumultuous years in the book business.
In the last decade, competition from big chains and the internet has put booksellers in a vice. Half the independent bookstores in America closed in the 1990s. But in the 1960s, bookstores like Cody’s and Kepler’s redefined intellectual life, democratized literature, and helped launch a counterculture. Publishers were putting the classics into cheap paperback editions for the first time. Literature—once the purview of academics and elites—was suddenly affordable for the masses. Most established booksellers dismissed the new editions as drugstore pulp. Their indifference allowed a new kind of store to emerge, and it opened the door to a new breed of bookseller.
Independent bookstores function as literary laboratories, and publishers rely on them to champion new and controversial work. To passionate booksellers, selling books remains revolutionary. PAPERBACK DREAMS celebrates what these stores offer our local communities, and mourns the cultural loss that comes when a good bookstore closes its doors.
Followed by a panel discussion with director Alex Beckstead and two local booksellers; Christin Evans (co-owner, The Booksmith) and Kevin Hunsanger (co-owner, Green Apple Books)
