Dinner and a movie? We’ve got you. The El Paso Community Foundation Plaza Classic Film Festival’s popular dinner-and-a-movie event returns for its fifth year with a screening of the romantic comedy Something’s Gotta Give and a pre-show dinner called inspired by the movie.
Called A Dinner to Love, the menu is inspired by the movie. The dinner is from 5-6:30 pm Monday, July 20 in the Foundation Room, 333 N. Oregon. Seating is family style. Vegetarian options will be available.
Tickets are $40 per person and includes one ticket to the movie, $60 per couple and includes two tickets to the movie. A Dinner to Love tickets are on sale at plazaclassic.com/tickets. Seating is limited.
Something’s Gotta Give shows at 7 pm Monday, July 20 in the Plaza Theatre. Tickets are $8 at the Plaza Theatre Box Office and Ticketmaster.
It stars the late Diane Keaton as playwright Erica Berry and the irascible Jack Nicholson as music mogul/womanizer Harry Sanborn, middle-aged strangers who are thrown together one fateful weekend in the Hamptons. Written and directed by Nancy Meyers, the 2003 release was a huge hit at the box office and earned Keaton, who died last year, an Academy Award nomination.
A Dinner to Love and Something’s Gotta Give continue a newer Plaza Classic tradition that started in 2022 with Sleepless in Seattle and continued with When Harry Met Sally in 2023, Moonstruck in 2024 and Notting Hill in 2025.
Tickets for the 19th annual Plaza Classic Film Festival are on sale at the Plaza Theatre Box Office (no service charges) and Ticketmaster (service charges added). The Plaza Theatre has a clear bag/cashless policy, which will be enforced. Click here for details.
Festival and Movies Only passes are available at plazaclassic.com.
The festival schedule is available at plazaclassic.com/schedule.
Check out the Plaza Classic Podcast here.
The legendary Ann-Margret — a dynamic force in film, television, music and live performance for more than six decades — will appear at this year’s **El Paso Community Foundation Plaza Classic Film Festival. **
She will receive the festival’s Plaza Classic Award for Lifetime Achievement and take part in interviews before two of her best-known movie performances — her breakout role in the 1963 musical Bye Bye Birdie at 7 pm Friday, July 17 and her Oscar-nominated turn as the title character’s mother in 1975’s Tommy at 3:30 pm Saturday, July 18. Both are in the Plaza Theatre.
Tickets for Bye Bye Birdie are $20. Tickets for Tommy are $10. They are on sale at the Plaza Theatre Box Office and Ticketmaster.
Ann-Margret remains one of Hollywood’s most celebrated and versatile stars. Born Ann-Margret Olsson in Valsjöbyn, Sweden, she emigrated to the United States as a child and quickly demonstrated extraordinary talent as a singer and performer. Her breakthrough came in the early 1960s with a recording contract and a series of film roles that showcased her electrifying screen presence. She rose to prominence with standout performances in films such as Bye Bye Birdie and Viva Las Vegas, the latter opposite Elvis Presley, cementing her status as a pop culture phenomenon.
Throughout the 1970s, Ann-Margret earned critical acclaim for her dramatic performances, including Academy Award–nominated roles in Carnal Knowledge and Tommy. Her work in Grumpy Old Men and its sequel in the ‘90s introduced her to new generations of audiences, highlighting her enduring charm and comedic timing.
A multi-award-winning performer, Ann-Margret has received five Golden Globe Awards, Emmy Awards, and numerous other honors recognizing her contributions to film, television, and music. In addition to her acting achievements, she has maintained a successful recording career spanning genres from pop to gospel, earning Grammy nominations and critical praise.
Her legacy has been formally recognized with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and induction into multiple entertainment halls of fame. Beyond her professional accomplishments, Ann-Margret is admired for her resilience, longevity, and dedication to her craft.
Tickets for the 19th annual Plaza Classic Film Festival are on sale at the Plaza Theatre Box Office (no service charges) and Ticketmaster (service charges added). The Plaza Theatre and Philanthropy Theatre have a clear bag policy. Click herefor details.
Festival and Movies Only passes are available at plazaclassic.com.
The festival’s schedule of 100 movies is available at plazaclassic.com/schedule.
Check out the Plaza Classic Podcast.
Silent film fans are in for a double treat at this year’s El Paso Community Foundation Plaza Classic Film Festival. Theater organist extraordinaire Walt Strony returns to accompany two silent classics on the Plaza Theatre’s original, restored Wyler Mighty Wurlitzer Pipe Organ during the festival, which runs July 16-26 in and around the Plaza Theatre in downtown El Paso.
Strony, who has been a fixture at the Plaza Classic since 2013, will accompany Clara Bow’s 1927 comedy It at 4 pm Sunday, July 19 in the Plaza Theatre. Tickets are $6, on sale Monday, June 22 at the Plaza Theatre Box Office and Ticketmaster.
He’ll return the following week to accompany Buster Keaton’s 100-year-old Civil War classic, The General, at 12:30 pm Thursday, July 23, part of the festival’s free, annual Plaza Days program. Strony made his Plaza Classic debut in 2010 when he accompanied the 1926 Keaton film.
He returned to the Plaza Classic in 2013 to accompany The Thief of Bagdad and has returned every year since to work his magic with some of the best silent films ever made, including Harold Lloyd’s Safety Last!, Kid Brother and Speedy, Keaton’s The Cameraman and Steamboat Bill Jr., and other classics including Cecil B. DeMille’s The King of Kings and Lon Chaney’s The Phantom of the Opera. He’s also accompanied several silent shorts by Charlie Chaplin, Charley Chase and Laurel and Hardy in various Plaza Days programs.
One of America’s premiere concert and theater organists, Strony studied with silent film accompanists and was a protégé of longtime Chicago Stadium organist Al Melgard. He has performed with films and symphony orchestras all over the world and is frequently featured at conventions of the American Guild of Organists and the American Theatre Organ Society, which inducted him into its hall of fame in 2011.
Walt also will play before several films during this year’s film festival. Ken Fedorick, John Fields, Rick Garven, Joshua Gunstream and Laurie Koval also will perform on the Wyler Mighty Wurlitzer before many of the films in the Plaza Theatre.
Tickets for the 19th annual Plaza Classic Film Festival go on sale Monday, June 22 at the Plaza Theatre Box Office and Ticketmaster.
Festival and Movies Only passes are available here. The festival schedule of 100 movies is available here. Check out the Plaza Classic Podcast here.
Academy Award, Golden Globe and Emmy Award-nominated writer, director, and producer Gregory Nava will appear at the 19th annual El Paso Community Foundation Plaza Classic Film Festival, which runs July 16-26 in and around the historic Plaza Theatre in downtown El Paso.
The trailblazing Latino filmmaker will sit down for Q&As before Selena, his biopic about the “Queen of Tejano Music,” at 7 pm Friday, July 24, and El Norte, about the perilous immigration journey of Guatemalan siblings, at 3 pm Saturday, July 25. Both will be in the Plaza Theatre. He will receive the Plaza Classic Award for Career Achievement.
Tickets are $10 for each event, and go on sale June 22 at the Plaza Theatre Box Office and Ticketmaster.
Nava, whose work has captured the American Latino experience, is considered one of the most influential and important Mexican American filmmakers today. Three of his films — El Norte, Selena and My Family/Mi Familia — have been selected by the Library of Congress’s National Registry for cultural and historical significance.
El Norte (1983) was nominated for an Oscar for best screenplay. Nava followed it with the World War II film, A Time of Destiny (1988). The epic My Family/Mi Familia, released in 1995, followed generations of a Mexican American family and marked the film debut of Jennifer Lopez, who received a Golden Globe nomination for playing the title role in Selena (1997).
The Plaza Classic will have a free showing of My Family/Mi Familia at 1 pm Sunday, July 26 at the Mexican American Cultural Center (Nava will not appear at that screening).
Nava’s other films include Why Do Fools Fall in Love (1998), about pop singer Frankie Lymon, and Bordertown (2006), about the femicides in Ciudad Juárez. He also co-wrote the Oscar-winning Frida Kahlo biopic Frida (2002). His television projects include American Family, the first dramatic Latino family series in the U.S., which Emmy and Golden Globe nominations.
The 19th annual Plaza Classic Film Festival will feature 100 movies, specials guests and more over 11 days. Among this year’s titles are Jurassic Park, All the President’s Men, Something’s Gotta Give, What’s Love Got to Do With It, The Sixth Sense, The Princess Bride, Bye Bye Birdie, Titanic, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Taxi Driver, Nashville, Purple Rain, Scream, Disney’s Fantasia, a 100th anniversary screening of Clara Bow’s silent classic It, accompanied by Walt Strony on the theater’s original Wyler Mighty Wurlitzer Pipe Organ, and our annual Local Flavor Showcase and Awards.
Tickets go on sale June 22 at the Plaza Theatre Box Office and Ticketmaster. Festival passes are available at plazaclassic.com/tickets.
For more information, go to plazaclassic.com or call 915-533-4020.
The El Paso Community Foundation’s Plaza Classic Film Festival is accepting submissions for its ninth annual Local Flavor showcase and awards. More than $3,500 in cash prizes will be awarded.
First prize is $1,500, with a second prize of $1,000, $750 third prize, $250 audience favorite award, and a $100 student award for a college or high school student entry.
There is no cost to submit a film. It’s FREE. Entry deadline is 11:59 p.m. Monday, June 22, 2026.
It’s generously sponsored by the El Paso Film and Creative Industries Commission and the Texas Film Commission.
Local Flavor is accepting short and feature-length films. Works-in-progress will not be accepted. Projects must have been completed on or after January 1, 2025 and must be made locally, set locally, or have a connection of some kind to the El Paso-Juárez-Las Cruces area, which should be noted in the entry form’s synopsis window.
A panel of judges will select submissions for the Local Flavor showcase and awards in the Plaza Theatre on Sunday, July 26, the last day of the film festival. Awards will be announced at the end of the program.
Local Flavor will be curated by Emmy Award-winning Producer Javier Gonzalez of El Paso (Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie, In the Summers); Jaime Mendez, Ed.D, the UTEP Assistant Dean for Student Support and a longtime PCFF program advisory committee member; and Sophia Santos, a 2024 UCLA film school graduate from El Paso.
Go to the Local Flavor page to submit. Call 915-533-4020 or email local@plazaclassic.com for more information.
The Plaza Classic Film Festival returns for its 19th year July 16-26, 2026. Festival passes are on sale here.
