In It for the Movies: Steve & DeDe Leiber at Upstate Films
by Rob Schumer

When Upstate Films in Rhinebeck opened, in 1972, they showed what are known as revival films — old standbys like Murder She Said, and the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup. After about the first year, feeling established in their new community, owners Steve and DeDe Leiber decided to branch out into their true passions, documentary and foreign films. "We sent out a press release," recalled Steve. "'Foreign film series with a guest speaker from NYU,' it said." But at that time, Rhinebeck was still very rural, and the idea of a venue presenting worldly and sophisticated cinema right in its midst was still unfamiliar. "The Kingston Freeman, I'll never forget," Steve continued, with a grin, "they thought, talking to DeDe on the phone, that she didn't say 'foreign film series', but 'farm film series.'" And so was it printed in an article in the paper: 'Farm Film Series at Upstate.' But it wasn't really so incongruous: "When we would drive down to the thea-ter from where we lived," DeDe observed, "we'd have to stop, in both directions, for cows crossing the road."

For 35 years, as of this coming spring, Upstate Films has occupied its perch on Montgomery Street near West Market Street in Rhinebeck. Founded in 1972 by Steve and DeDe, along with their college friend Susan Goldman (who is still chairperson of the board that oversees Upstate's operation), it has been managed and operated by Steve and DeDe since the beginning. Week after week, year after year, Upstate has brought a neverending stream of films of unusual political, artistic and social significance to the area, and has added much to the pleasure and edification of our community.

In the late sixties, Steve and DeDe were recent college graduates and like many others were inspired by that decade's emphasis on self-expression and self-definition. Shaped by the social and political upheavals brought by the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement, Steve and DeDe found themselves, by autumn of 1971, casting about for a lifestyle and activity that suited their interests and beliefs. "People were trying to reinvent what the world could be," said Steve. They had been traveling for a few years, and were then living in the back of a VW van in the Lake Hill, NY driveway of Susan and Dick Goldman's house. Steve was working as a carpenter and DeDe as a waitress.

The three of them shared a love of the movies. DeDe had taken a number of film appreciation courses in college. Steve had worked as a production assistant with well-known documentary cameraman Don Lenzer. "Before they had steadicams, they had Don Lenzer," Steve quipped. "I was a young guy, who learned how to change magazines for a 16mm camera in a bag." While still in college, Susan had co-produced a television show for WNET, New York City's PBS station.

Back when they were still living in New York City, all three had often gone to the movies. If you loved old films, loved classic movies as well as foreign films, before the era of home video and cable TV, you went to the "art houses" — the Elgin, the Thalia, the New Yorker, the Bleecker Street Cinema, the St. Marks. "We were interested in European films and filmmakers," DeDe explained. "People like Truffaut and Fassbinder, Bergman, Bunuel, Herzog, and Fellini," "In the mid- to late-60s," Steve added, "going to the movies was what you did in New York. There was television, but just the networks. No cable TV, no home video."

So one evening, DeDe recalled, "we thought, 'wouldn't it be fun to have a movie theater?'" They traveled about the area and looked at various potential sites. "The one that really sticks in my mind is Delhi, way up near Oneonta," DeDe said. "We didn't know the landscape at all, so we went there. It was really rural. It made Rhinebeck — even 35 years ago — look bustling."

"We knew about Rhinebeck, and we knew there was a department store on the corner that also had a shoe store," Steve continued. "I needed some work boots, so we came here, and we noticed that this theater was boarded up, vacant." The boarded-up theater they saw that day was in the rear part of the brick Starr Building, built in 1862 as a library and community hall for the citizens of Rhinebeck by Mrs. Starr-Miller, granddaughter of Alexander Hamilton's father-in-law General Philip Schuyler. There was also a swimming pool in the back. The DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) was upstairs. Down in the basement were bowling alleys. In those days the Starr library was still housed in the front (it did not move to its present location on West Market Street until 1975). "It was on a north-south highway," DeDe said, "which we thought was good. And it was near a crossroads in the middle of what seemed like a viable town."

Steve and DeDe did not act quickly enough, however, and when they returned in January, 1972, to take another look, they learned that the theater had been rented out. "We went across the street to talk to a woman named Doris Tieder," Steve said, "who happened to be one of the DAR members and who was open-minded enough that my appearance didn't put her off. I had hair down to my shoulders, and in this town, at that time, that was sort of a big deal."

"Doris told us that it had been rented to Nathan and Madeline Post" but that the Posts only wanted to use the very front of the old theater, as a store front. "Doris told us 'maybe there's a way you can use the theater part,' and that's what happened," Steve said. They submitted a proposal to the Starr Library Board. "We told them our idea," DeDe said, "which was basically repertory cinema." Steve and DeDe were also clear, from the outset, that they wanted to operate Upstate as a not-for-profit. "Let's not try to do this to make money," Steve said. "I mean we knew we'd have to pay the bills, but we were young and idealistic." And it's still run that way today. "We had decided from the get-go that we didn't want to open a commercial theater," adds Steve. "Other places were already doing that. Because of our political persuasion, we wanted to do something that would be a window on the world."

The idea was also to bring cinematic diversity to the Rhinebeck area. The kind of films Upstate has brought in over the years has helped to "create the context in which people think about things," he added. "It opens their eyes, it opens their horizons, it opens their minds. It was cultural politics." Steve admitted that he has enjoyed the role of provocateur. DeDe said "I'm much more coming from: 'it's out there. You draw your own conclusions.'"

Steve and DeDe have seen the world of movies and the culture of moviegoing change drastically through the years. In the 1970s, if a person wanted to watch a movie, there were the theaters, and there was late night TV, if you could get reception. "The biggest change came" in the 1980s "in the delivery systems," Steve recalled, "more TV stations, then cable TV, and then home video." In response, "the competition changed, in order to get people to leave their couch and come to a movie theater." "Production evolved," DeDe continued, "to meet the demand for more and more videos." And with that, many young people turned to filmmaking as a means of expression.

According to Steve, "a lot of that early wave of independent features came from people who had worked on early 1970s political documentaries. They learned how to edit, they learned how to shoot. And now they're trying to tell stories." Important early films were Girlfriends, made by Claudia Weil, one of the first American "independent" films, and John Sayles's Return of the Secaucus 7, which was an early box-office hit that established the viability of the "indie" film movement. Both were shown at Upstate. Just as places like Upstate needed films to show, the new filmmakers needed places to show their films. "And then the distributors came along," Steve said, and they "would look at a film like My Dinner with Andre and think maybe it'll be a hit, so they got involved." "And the critics were helping, too," DeDe added, "finally discovering the new work." All these things were taking place at the same time, feeding each other, and it changed the world of cinema. Upstate was part of that wave of change, and it came to focus on new independent films rather than the older repertory fare, as those older films became available on home video.

Steve and DeDe have had many memorable experiences through the years, including an "electric" evening in the mid-70s with film critic Pauline Kael and an appearance by Wallace Shawn before he and director Louis Malle made the film My Dinner with Andre. "I went to college with (writer) Debbie Eisenberg," Steve recalled. Eisenberg lived (as now) with Shawn, and Steve and DeDe came to know Shawn through her. One day, recounted Steve, "Wally calls, says I've got this NEA grant — he's a playwright, besides being an actor — says 'I've written this play, with (director) Andre Gregory, it's called My Dinner with Andre, and to get this grant, I have to perform it in public 2 or 3 times. Andre doesn't want to do it in New York City, because he knows too many people, and he's never really acted, so can we do it at your theater?' This is summer of 1980. So they come up, I gave them two chairs and a table, and they sat there and performed My Dinner with Andre a couple of times for about 30 people. It was fabulous."

It's been a long trip from the back of a VW van in 1971 to Upstate in 2006, and 35 years is a long time to devote to one consuming passion. "I don't think we had any expectations that we'd be doing it for such a long time," DeDe admitted. "I don't think we had any expectations that we'd be doing it for two years." But Upstate seems to be stronger than ever, having added a second theater in 1999, involving itself in film distribution, hosting regular guest speaker programs, undertaking classroom instruction in video production (at Roosevelt High School, in Hyde Park), collaborating with the Children's Media Project of Poughkeepsie, and participating, as a venue, in the Woodstock Film Festival.

Steve and DeDe have no specific plans to see Upstate expand, or to grow into additional areas of activity. "People always ask us — what's your long term plan?" Steve said. "And we always say... to keep doing what we're doing. Small is beautiful, man. If we can keep this happening, and people still come, then we're doing great."

"We're in it," DeDe added, "because we love the movies. We're in it for the movies."