The matter of securing an audience for repertory film — an umbrella term that covers classics, obscurities and new releases booked for less than a standard seven-day run — has become more acute in recent years as venue after venue has closed its doors. Since Film at the Prince shut down in 2004, International House has been the only Philadelphia institution showing repertory film on a regular basis. So the news that Michael Chaiken, the director of I-House's film programs, was leaving for a job at the Maysles Institute in New York quickly became a source of concern in the city's film community — concern that intensified once it became clear that Chaiken's position was not going to be filled.

DEFENDERS OF THE FAITH: International House's film staff, from left: Jesse Pires, Robert Cargni and Renae Dinerman. : Michael T. Regan

According to International House president and CEO Oliver St. Clair Franklin, the decision not to replace Chaiken was a matter of practicality rather than budget-cutting. "Why should you replace him when he's in New York?" Franklin says. "Can you do better?" Chaiken, Franklin explained, will still be booking programs from his new perch, with staffers Robert Cargni and Jesse Pires increasing their contributions to the calendar. (Cargni has previously booked such regular series as the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival and New Authors of Italian Cinema, while Pires curated last year's Kuchar brothers retrospective and a double bill of punk rock documentaries.) Franklin says Chaiken will "be doing the same thing up there that he was doing down here — except up there, he'll be in the center of the action."

Still, Franklin says, he would like to see more events like the 2004 screening featuring Senegalese legend Ousmane Sembene, a sell-out that involved collaborating, and splitting Sembene's substantial fee, with several other local organizations. "What you're going to see is more big events," says Franklin. "I don't think you'll see much less film, but I think you'll see more things that will pull you in so we can talk about what we're doing for the next few weeks."

What concerns Chaiken, and others, is the meaning of "much less." In meetings with Franklin and the board, Chaiken says he was left with the impression that "it's not going to be so focused on film. Programming is going to be cut down to some degree. And film will be just one of a variety of programs that they do."

Gretjen Clausing, former programmer for Film at the Prince and onetime I-House employee, says that it's important not to underestimate the value of smaller events in building a steady audience. "You can't just do big events," she says. "It's exhausting. You build your audience by doing some of the smaller things." But she, too, points to the Sembene screening as an example of what International House does best. "It was one of the highlights of the last several years," she says, "a great example of building alliances, having an event that was at the caliber of what other people would equate with other major cities."

That Clausing and Franklin both reach back two years for an example of an unqualified success speaks volumes about what has happened to International House's audience — and, indeed, to audiences for rep film on a national level. At the height of his tenure, in 2002 and 2003, Chaiken says programs were drawing an average of 125 admissions; by last year, that number had shrunk to less than 70. Chaiken admits that his programming could be "pretty fucking esoteric" at times, but he says he often did best with the "more out stuff," citing a screening of underground films, including Jack Smith's Flaming Creatures, that had people sitting on the floor. "Of course, Flaming Creatures cleared the room, but we had 550 people there that night."

Partly, Chaiken attributes the drop-off to a decline in grassroots marketing — fliers, posters and the like — but also pinpoints less tangible factors. There's no question that the growing availability of rep film standbys on DVD has taken its toll. "You can get Brakhage on Criterion now," he points out. But he also points at something less tangible, and more locally specific. "There's a high turnover in Philadelphia in terms of the audience," he says. "You wouldn't see the same people after a while. People who you would think would be into these films, they never came. It was always people from other disciplines."

Like most arts organizations, International House is wrestling with the problem of attracting younger audiences, once the meat of the film society crowd but now purportedly blind to the difference between watching a movie on the big screen and on their laptops. "The real challenge in film is to appreciate that viewing patterns have changed so much since the advent of online film," Franklin says. "How do we get young people to appreciate going to the cinema to see a rep film?" Although youngsters turned out for Film at the Prince's Kurosawa retrospective and Matthew Barney's Cremaster cycle in 2003, Clausing, too, struggled to find new viewers. She points to Small Change, an itinerant series programmed by filmmaker Ted Passon, as an example of a series that consistently draws an early-20s audience. "It's not a film crowd," she says. "It's an art school, gallery crowd."

Passon, surprisingly, agrees. "I don't really feel like there's a film scene in Philadelphia," he says. "I know there's film clubs and societies and stuff, but I don't feel like there's a general crew, like you go to the theater and you're going to see the same people hanging out." Instead, Passon says, he went after a pre-existing community, who also happen to be his friends. "We were already part of a scene of young artists, people we knew how to talk to. So we thought, let's reach out there." It helps that, for Small Change, 100 is a blockbuster crowd; 20, an acceptably intimate gathering.

For Passon, who screens short works by young filmmakers in multipurpose venues like Space 1026 and the Parlor, every Small Change screening is an event. The recent Valentine's Day program gave a discount to anyone in formal wear, and was followed by a dance party. Traditional rep venues, Passon says, "don't advertise where I'm hanging out," and when they do, "the brochure looks akin to something a pharmaceutical company would send out."

"There's still a group of people out there who want to see Godard films," Franklin says. "But a lot of them don't want to come out anymore. You have to market Godard just as hard as you market anybody else — probably harder. And you've got to do it in such a way that, instead of going to the Tin Angel or the Ritz, they say, 'We've got to go see this.'" The key, Franklin says, is stimulating the community. "The most important thing is to have each one bring one," he says. "We need to have people who care about culture become a marketing tool to explain why it's important. The beauty of film is having people in the audience when the lights come on. We're going to do what you do — take out ads, try and get the best films. But ultimately it depends on the individuals bringing people with them who care about film."

"More people have to be more vocal," Chaiken says. "If they're really serious about film culture in Philadelphia, they just have to take it."