As leader for Ubuntu Ohio, I wind up facing unusual issues. One of them is Citizenfour. What makes it worse is where the film is being screened.
In general, if you want to hit the population centers for the state you have three communities to hit. Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati are your target areas to hit. The only screenings we have are in Dayton, Columbus, and Oberlin. One for three is good in terms of targeting population centers, I suppose.
I understand the film is controversial and not something mainstream theaters would take. Notwithstanding its controversial nature, surely even the Cleveland Institute of Art's Cinematheque could have shown it. For too many members of the community, these screenings are in unusual locations.
Oberlin is interesting as it is home to a college which is known for leftist politics and also for being where writer/actress Lena Dunham pursued studies. Oberlin has a 2013 population estimate of only 8,390. For as distant as Ashtabula City may seem to other members of our community, it is far larger with a 2013 census estimate of 18,673. Ashtabula County, in contrast to just Ashtabula City, is estimated as of 2013 to have a population of 99,811.
For some in the community this may be a great film to watch, I guess. Considering that it is actually closer for me to cross the stateline into Pennsylvania to drive south to Pittsburgh for the showing there we have a problem. These are ridiculous distances to travel round-trip to watch a 144 minute film.
Now, having said this, I did have an opportunity to think about how we could build from this for the Ubuntu realm in the United States of America. A company known as Fathom Events is available that provides live simulcasts in a broad range of movie theaters across the country. The team known as RiffTrax has done multiple live events carried nation-wide through them.
I have a proposition that could be neat if there was the money available to do it. For a Global Jam or other event, could we stage a live event through that in lieu of using Ubuntu On-Air or summit.ubuntu.com? The link to Fathom above mentions what theaters are participants and the list shows that, unfortunately, this would be something restricted to the USA. There is a UFC event coming up as well as a Metropolitan Opera event live simulcast.
We might not be able to implement this for the 15.04 cycle but it is certainly something to think about for the future. Who would want to see Mark Shuttleworth, Michael Hall, Rick Spencer, and others live on an actual-sized cinema screen talking about cool things?