Mike Steinberg of the Webster Film Series strikes a delicate balance between the populist and the arcane
By Thomas Crone
For roughly 30 years, the Webster University Film Series has graced the historic theater known as the Winifred Moore Auditorium. It was once a chapel, back in the days of Webster’s affiliation with the Sisters of Loretto. These past three decades, though, the space has been devoted to a different calling: the forgotten, the unseen, and the underrated in world cinema.
The only constants throughout that period have been the consistently high quality of the programming and the series’ veteran projectionist, Dick Bauer. Playing everything from locally produced documentaries to the retrospectives of hailed European directors, the Webster Film Series has proved a cultural gem, and it’s seen a revival under Mike Steinberg’s leadership for the last two years. Attendance by students, in particular, has increased, in part because Steinberg has managed to wed the populist with the arcane, balancing the series’ previous seriousness with true camp classics and even live musical accompaniment for some of the films.
Tucked away above the Moore Auditorium is a cramped, colorfully appointed office that the effusive Steinberg shares with program coordinator James Harrison, with just a sliver of extra space granted to film-series interns. Any wall space not given over to posters, tickets and other ephemera is taken up by old shelving laden with screener copies of the many classics that have played downstairs.
Asked whether he enjoys his tight quarters, the wiry Steinberg doesn’t miss a beat: “I love the light in here. It’s great.” But thinking of a tiny computer room nearby, he adds ruefully, “I’d love the next room. We’re bulging. It’s basically like working in ... it’s a working closet. Our shelves are busted. Look at all the stuff in here. Some of it’s ridiculous accumulation. That Sam the Sham record, that doesn’t need to be there—it’s not even signed—but it’s inspiring, in a way. I would love a bigger office, for sure, or a place to keep all this stuff. It’s not widgets; it’s an accumulation of what I find interesting.”
That omnivorous approach serves Steinberg well when he develops each quarterly film calendar, a tradition that brings the schedule to life for three months at a time. Challenging himself to not only book good films but also package them in interesting ways, Steinberg outlines and themes each bracket, adding feature films, documentaries, a few shorts and as many guest artists as he can attract on a budget.
“That’s the real challenge,” he says. “Getting the person is not as easy as getting the film. If we don’t get a film, we don’t get it. Where I get obsessed is in bringing in guest artists.”
Digging into a small box on his overflowing esk, he pulls out index cards, noting, “This is a list of people who’ve blown me off or said, ‘Why don’t you get back to us’—another version of blowing me off. That’s what I’m driven about.”
In addition to programming the series and divvying up the workaday chores with fellow filmmaker Harrison, Steinberg finds enough time to teach nearly a full load at the university, along with classes at St. Louis Community College at Forest Park. He and wife Lulu are expecting their second child this fall, a fact that makes his latest documentary, a piece about his father, Phil “Phooey” Steinberg, all the more relevant.
“It’s a profile of him, of sorts, but I can’t help getting in the way of it,” says Steinberg, who recently profiled organist Stan Kann in long form. “It’s hard to profile someone you’re so close to. It’s a film about family, our relationship, what it’s like to be a father, seen through his eyes and through my own daughter.”
Steinberg’s own works have been well regarded, and his love of filmmaking can be seen almost weekly at Moore Auditorium. With rare exception, almost every weekend there is a celebration not only of film’s potential but also of the need to see it with other people, on a big screen.
“Now they have these ancillary lives through video and DVD,” Steinberg says of his presentations, especially those debuting in St. Louis, “but when a film’s in release, it is, in that moment, a big deal.”
Visit our calendar for current Webster Film Series screenings.
