BEST KEPT SECRET

In Ivy Moylan’s childhood home, films weren’t allowed and most television was off limits. Not what you’d expect from the executive director of the Brattle Theatre, one of few independent film houses in a sea of mall multiplexes. Her hippie turned charismatic Christian parents had specific ideas of what was acceptable. Breakfast Club was forbidden; she watched Purple Rain on the sly with friends. But Moylan “read everything” and her parents allowed the super heroics of Saturday morning cartoons. Keen to the irony, Moylan decides that a childhood steeped in allegorical storytelling prompted her career-driving passion. “I don’t watch film expecting normal,” she asserts.

Enter the Brattle Theatre, a reliable venue for unique cinematic experiences for more than 50 years. (The historic theatre hosted stage productions from 1890 to 1951). Moylan stakes an intuitive claim on the Brattle - that she never required an introduction to it - she just always knew it was a place where she would feel at home. “When I worked outside the Brattle, I realized I was a freak!” Moylan says, referring to how her love of film seeps into every conversation.

Moylan served as the Brattle’s operations director from 1996-1998, and then teamed up with (now) husband Ned Hinkle to buy its assets from Connie White and Maryanne Lampke in 2000. Moylan and Hinkle converted the business into a nonprofit film foundation and remain fiercely dedicated to the theatre’s long-history of providing access to inventive and cutting-edge storytelling.

Despite the fact that traditional organizational flowcharts would position Moylan as her husband’s boss, the couple started off as co-directors and have always had a friendly division of labor. “We are two bodies, one mind, as much as that can be true,” she says. As they’ve gotten to know the business, their roles have become more clear and distinct. Moylan, who recently took on the title of executive director, has the operational know-how: hiring staff, managing ticket sales, managing print traffic, and fundraising. Hinkle, the creative director, handles programming, calendar layout, the web site, and press. “We took our existing strengths and hit the floor running.”

While she admits that running is not part of her job description, the world of film exhibition can be “exhausting,” “competitive,” and requires 100% of her “brain space,” leaving no room for writing screenplays, as she once imagined. However brutal, Moylan has embraced her career in film exhibition over a preceding fascination with lighting design. She has developed relationships with peer theatres throughout the country and would like to spend more time researching their collective best practices. She believes there is a balance between leveraging the power of independent film venues while maintaining the unique thumbprint each has on programming. She perceives the Coolidge as a sister theater, for example, and communicates regularly with their staff about how maximize limited resources.

When a New York colleague tried to start an association of independent cinemas in 2002, Moylan suspected that it wouldn’t catch on. “How would you define independent? Who can be a member?” she asks. She knows that semantics can mean everything in a market of competing pseudo-independent theatres, specialized cable programming, DVD subscription services, and home theater installations. Indeed the competition, if you can call it that, is tough. The Brattle screens an average of 55 films every two months, more than a multiplex plays on one screen in a year. Moylan reports that the cost of exhibiting film in Boston just gets higher and higher, citing inflated real estate and worldwide shipping as two culprits.

Moylan and Hinkle have responded with sound nonprofit management strategies. They have revamped membership, increasing it from 250 to 400 in the last three years, and have started submitting grant proposals to diversify funding. They have also significantly increased the use of human resources, in the form of volunteers, utilizing some 50-60 people on a variety of committees when just 30 had been utilized in the past. And while these logistical tactics fall to Moylan, she has also made her personal mark on programming.

Her goal? For the Brattle to be as intellectually formative for others as it’s been for her. “I learned more about film history in two years at the Brattle than at film school,” she acknowledges. So she instituted the production of film notes, giving longer legs to programming and writers a chance to present critical and/or historical contexts to new and classic cinema. In a similar vein, she also created “Sunday Eye-Openers,” which pairs an early morning sneak or premiere with a charged post-film discussion. “I have an obsession with getting people to talk about film!” she exclaims.

And even if her work at the Brattle is all-consuming, Moylan still makes time to teach a film history course each semester at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education. If students don’t speak up, Moylan calls on them: “Mark, what do you think?” She presses for more than a mere liking or disliking. Clearly proud of easing their inhibitions, she beams, “By the end, you can’t get people to shut up.” And somehow in the middle of all this, Moylan also serves as a board member on the Chlotrudis Society for Independent Film.

So what shampoo is she using? A simple formula: she loves the movies. “I can feel almost a panic attack or elation when I really connect with a story.” Documentary? Narrative? “I love it all!” she says, though she confesses a penchant for Asian horror and French director Claire Denis. And while Moylan proposes that the Brattle’s best kept secret is its rear screen projection system, “The framing is really crisp, no bleeding,” she gushes, there’s reason to bet on her furtive passion for film-shipping, which she freelances, just for fun.

In all seriousness, Moylan and Hinkle are committed to film distribution and print restoration as future ventures to deepen the Brattle’s mission. Past owners Bryant Haliday and Cyrus Harvey, Jr. founded (and later folded) Janus films, credited for its distribution of French New Wave to US markets in the 1950s and mid-1960s. “That’s the heart of the Brattle,” Moylan says with a bit of nostalgia, a bit of reverence. Not to worry, the heart is still ticking. As for Moylan’s favorite film? It’s probably showing tonight.