Coral Gables Independent Cinema: Cosford's 9 GEMS Screenings

The Bill Cosford Cinema will screen nine films from Miami Film Festival GEMS between October 30 and November 3, starting with I Play Rocky at 6 pm on Friday, October 30. The single-screen art house is inside the Memorial Building at 5030 Brunson Drive, Suite 225, on the University of Miami campus in Coral Gables. It is open to the public, not just students, and it bills itself as the longest-running art house cinema in Miami.

The room was built in 1947 as the Beaumont Lecture Hall. In the 1950s it became a theatrical space called the Beaumont Cinema, and for decades it brought world cinema to Miami audiences who had no other way to see it. In 1994 it was renamed for Bill Cosford, the Miami Herald's film critic and a cinema professor at the university, who had pushed to renovate and support the space because he believed Miami badly needed it.

The cinema is run by the School of Communication and draws on the university's Norton Herrick Center for Motion Picture Studies and its Media Resource Center. That academic backing shows in the programming, which leans on lectures, guest scholars and visiting filmmakers. Chantal Akerman, John Landis and Andy Garcia have all appeared here.

The manager is Rene Rodriguez, who spent 33 years at the Miami Herald, 25 of them as its chief movie critic, before moving to the university, where he also teaches as an adjunct professor. It is a fitting line of succession for a cinema named after the Herald's earlier critic.

On Friday, November 27 at 7 pm, Rodriguez sits down with Kyle MacLachlan for Fictional Selves, a conversation about the actor's new memoir, presented with Books & Books as part of the GEMS festival.

Friday, October 30: I Play Rocky at 6 pm, Peter Farrelly's film about Sylvester Stallone's fight to star in his own script. Saturday, October 31: Elsinore at 12:15 pm, with Andrew Scott as Chariots of Fire actor Ian Charleson, then James Gray's Paper Tiger at 3 pm, a 1986 New York crime story with Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson and Miles Teller.

Sunday, November 1 is the busiest day: The Gallerist at 1 pm, a dark comedy set during Art Basel Miami, then Behemoth! at 3:30 pm with Pedro Pascal as a cellist coming home to Los Angeles, and La Bola Negra at 6:45 pm. Monday brings Martin McDonagh's Wild Horse Nine at 7 pm, with John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell as CIA agents on Easter Island. Tuesday closes with Florian Zeller's Bunker at 6 pm and Pedro Almodóvar's Bitter Christmas at 8:45 pm.

GEMS is the biggest week, but the calendar is full of smaller festivals. This October the cinema hosted the first Miccosukee Indigenous Film Festival over four days from October 9 to 12, opening with Nunkui and closing with Becoming Buffalo and an awards ceremony. The 4th South Florida Greek Film Festival, run by the Hellenic Cultural Society, followed on October 17, with English subtitles on every film.

There is also a Sunday classics series, Sundays at the U with Movies. It showed Brian De Palma's The Untouchables at 1 pm on October 4, a good example of the big-screen revivals the series favors.

The Cosford projects 35mm prints as well as high-definition digital formats, which matters for repertory titles that look best on film. Its mission statement promises distinguished programming at little to no cost, a promise tied to its role inside a university rather than a commercial chain.

Accessibility is built in: there are ramps and elevators, and accessible seats are marked with an ADA decal. The seat beside each accessible spot is held for a companion or care assistant, depending on whether the guest wants to transfer out of a wheelchair.

The Memorial Building sits in the middle of the Coral Gables campus. The Metrorail's University station is across US-1 from the campus, so you can ride in from Brickell or Downtown without hunting for parking. Allow ten minutes to walk from the station to the building.

Arrive early and walk past Lake Osceola at the center of campus, where the paths are shaded by palms. The university's Lowe Art Museum, with its collections of Renaissance, Native American and Asian art, is a short walk away and makes a strong pairing with an afternoon GEMS screening.

If you can only make one night, the choice depends on taste. Theater people should take Elsinore on Saturday at lunchtime, since Andrew Scott playing an actor preparing Hamlet is the most stage-minded film of the week. Fans of Martin McDonagh's dark comedy will want Monday's Wild Horse Nine, and anyone who likes Almodóvar's late style should hold Tuesday at 8:45 pm for Bitter Christmas, which closes the Cosford run.

La Bola Negra, from Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, is the one title with a second chance: after its Sunday show here, it opens at O Cinema South Beach on November 6. So if the Sunday evening is full, you can catch it across the bay a week later.

Each screening has its own Buy Tickets link on the cosfordcinema.com calendar, and the homepage links straight to the full GEMS festival schedule. The cinema publishes no box office hours, so the simplest plan is to buy online before you leave home and keep the confirmation handy at the door.

Address: Bill Cosford Cinema, Memorial Building, 5030 Brunson Drive, Suite 225, Coral Gables, FL 33146. Email: cosford@miami.edu. Hours: there are no regular daily hours, since the cinema opens for scheduled screenings, and each event lists its start time on the calendar at cosfordcinema.com.

Upcoming: Miami Film Festival GEMS runs here from October 30 to November 3, and Kyle MacLachlan appears November 27 at 7 pm. Ask the Karpo APP to pair a GEMS screening with dinner on Miracle Mile, and it will plan the Metrorail ride back.