MOVIE MOJO: Film makes case for buying at local indie bookstores

“It’s like the slow-foods movement —- across the country you see a growing sense of the value of local,” says Joelle Jaffe, a producer of a new film tracking the rise and fall of two famous independent bookstores in the Bay Area.

“Paperback Dreams,” released last month in California and already broadcast on several PBS stations, is making its way east this month.

PushPush Theatre in Decatur will host a free screening at 8 p.m. on Nov. 21. The event is sponsored by several metro Atlanta bookstores, including A Cappella, Blue Elephant, Charis, Eagle Eye, Little Shop of Stories and Outwrite.

The film tells the story of feisty commercial businesses with lofty ideals, but it’s also a glimpse into greater American values and culture. Reached at home in Oakland, Calif., Jaffe spoke this week about the genesis of the film and its wider implications.

Q: What’s the title about?

A: The two stores central to the story, Cody’s and Kepler’s, started when paperback books were new and suddenly a huge range of books became affordable. [The owners] saw free-speech and a sense of a community center as important. They became an intellectual gathering place that wasn’t a university or government-sponsored place, which could be shut down. That was the thing during the Vietnam War protests.

Q: Several independent bookstores around Atlanta are helping bring “Paperback Dreams” here. What’s the lesson for them?

A: Every independent bookstore faces head-to-head competition from the big box retailers. What’s important is that when you walk into those stores, there’s a display of what Atlanta is reading, what your neighbors are reading and thinking about. Go into Barnes & Noble store No. 54299 and you have no idea what’s interesting to the community. Now the Internet is even getting the big stores in financial trouble.

Q: Isn’t the counter-argument that with these big stores and online dealers so many more books are available?

A: We don’t wag our finger at people who buy books online; we’re fans of technology and the Internet. But we hope the movie wakes people up to the fact that if you buy a few books a year and just one of them was from a local store it amounts to something like a 20% increase in sales over a year for that store. That’s the projection, yet people don’t realize it might be that simple. These stores tend to exist off really thin profit margins. Something more than a place to buy books is lost when these places disappear, you’ve lost a piece of your community.

“Paperback Dreams.” 8 p.m. Nov. 21. Free. PushPush Theater, East Decatur Station, 121 New St. #4, Decatur. paperbackdreams.com.

Latin American High

The High Museum’s Latin American Film Festival at Rich Theatre is drawing to a close but saved two of the most talked-about pictures for last. At 8 tonight: Esteban Sapir’s allegorical “La Antena (The Aerial),” made in 2007 in Argentina as a silent film with scoring, where a sinister media mogul makes an entire town mute. At 8 p.m. Saturday it’s Jose Padilha’s “Tropa de Elite (Elite Squad),” a violent, award-winning Brazilian story of police special forces and the crime culture they battle. 404-733-5000, www.high.org

Met at the Movies

For more than a century, New York’s Metropolitan Opera has billed itself as America’s opera, and the Met now fills the collective consciousness with Saturday afternoon live broadcasts at high-definition movie theaters. These shows have proved wildly popular. Saturday’s show is Franco Zeffirelli’s opulent production of “La Traviata.” On Nov. 22 it’s a high-tech, video-savvy version of Berlioz’s “La Damnation de Faust,” which has received rave reviews and includes a starry cast. Screenings are at 11 theaters around metro Atlanta. www.fathomevents.com