El Paso, TX

July 17 - July 27, 2025 • El Paso, TX

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Richard Dreyfuss scheduled for 10th PCFF


July 7

Academy Award-winning actor Richard Dreyfuss is scheduled to appear at the 10th anniversary edition of the El Paso Community Foundation’s Plaza Classic Film Festival.

Dreyfuss, whose iconic career spans movies, TV and the stage, is scheduled to appear for an on-stage interview before a screening of Steven Spielberg’s 1975 blockbuster Jaws at 7 p.m. Saturday, August 12 in El Paso’s historic Plaza Theatre.

He also is set for an on-stage interview before a screening of the inspirational 1995 movie Mr. Holland’s Opus at 1 p.m. Sunday, August 13 in the Plaza Theatre. Dreyfuss was nominated for an Academy Award for his portrayal of music teacher Glenn Holland.

Dreyfuss also is scheduled to appear for an autograph signing from 1 to 2:30 p.m. Saturday, August 12 in the Foundation Room, 333 N. Oregon Street, across from San Jacinto Plaza.

Richard Dreyfuss is considered one of the most talented and resourceful American actors of the last 50 years. Currently involved in three forthcoming movies, he has worked with some of the most influential directors of the day. He has appeared in more than 50 movies. They include The Goodbye Girl (for which he became the youngest actor to win Best Actor Oscar at age 30), Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, American Graffiti, Down and Out in Beverly Hills, Stakeout, Stand by Me and Postcards From the Edge.

His lengthy list of television credits range from appearances as a then-unknown actor on Bewitched, Gunsmoke and Gidget in the 1960s to roles in the recent Fox series Shots Fired and the title role of ABC’s 2016 mini-series Madoff.

In 2006, he created The Dreyfuss Civics Initiative to bring civics curriculum back to public education.

Richard Dreyfuss joins actress Kathleen Turner (who will appear with Peggy Sue Got Married and Romancing the Stone) and animation legends Don Bluth and Gary Goldman (who will appear with The Secret of NIMH) as special guests of this year’s 10th anniversary Plaza Classic Film Festival.

The full festival schedule is available at plazaclassic.com/schedule.

Tickets for the more than 90 Plaza Classic Film Festival movies — including Casablanca, Singin’ in the Rain and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, go on sale Friday, July 7 at the Plaza Theatre box office, Ticketmaster outlets and 800-745-3000.

Festival passes and teen Film Club passes are available at plazaclassic.com/tickets and 915-533-4020.


Kathleen Turner to appear at 10th anniversary Plaza Classic


June 26

Academy Award and Tony Award nominee Kathleen Turner will appear at the 10th anniversary edition of the El Paso Community Foundation’s Plaza Classic Film Festival.

The two-time Golden Globe Award winner will sit down for an on-stage interview before a showing of the Francis Ford Coppola-directed Peggy Sue Got Married (1986) at 7 p.m. Friday, August 4 in the Plaza Theatre.

She’ll return to the Plaza stage the next day to appear with another box-office hit, **Romancing the Stone **(1984), at 3:30 p.m. Saturday, August 5.

Additionally, Miss Turner will appear for an autograph signing from 1 to 2:30 p.m. Saturday, August 5 in the Foundation Room, 333 N. Oregon Street, across from San Jacinto Plaza.

Turner, known for her intense performances and sensuously husky voice, was nominated for an Academy Award for her portrayal of the time-traveling Peggy Sue Bodell in Peggy Sue Got Married. She won a Golden Globe for playing romance novelist Joan Wilder in Romancing the Stone.

She also is known for the movies Body Heat, Crimes of Passion, Prizzi’s Honor and The War of the Roses, and for providing the voice of Jessica Rabbit in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. She received Tony nominations for her performances in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? on Broadway. Her TV credits include Friends and Californication.

Kathleen Turner joins animation legends Don Bluth and Gary Goldman as special guests at this year’s 10th anniversary Plaza Classic Film Festival. Bluth, an El Paso native, and Goldman will appear Aug. 12-13.

Tickets for the more than 90 Plaza Classic Film Festival movies will go on sale July 7. Announced titles include The Graduate, Casablanca, Citizen Kane, Singin’ in the Rain, Psycho, Jaws and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Festival passes and teen Film Club passes are available at plazaclassic.com/tickets and 915-533-4020.


Local Flavor titles, programs announced


June 25

The El Paso Community Foundation’s 10th annual Plaza Classic Film Festival is pleased to announce the selections for this year’s Local Flavor showcase.

Local Flavor, generously sponsored by the Texas Film Commission, is the region’s largest showcase of independently made shorts, features, animated, documentaries, music videos, and experimental films.

The 10th annual Plaza Classic Film Festival is August 3-13, 2017 in and around the Plaza Theatre.

Previous Local Flavor showcases have included works by At the Drive-In and The Mars Volta guitarist Omar Rodriguez Lopez, El Paso filmmaker Zach Passero, cinematographer Ellie Ann Fenton, and NMSU Creative Media Institute faculty members Ilana Lapid and Ross Marks.

This year’s series will showcase three features in the Philanthropy Theatre, three programs of shorts in the Foundation Room, projects made by the students in our third annual Plaza Classic Film Camp and a matinee that will include winners from the Downtown Management District’s Reel Authentico contest.

The fun begins with the 13th annual The Good, The Bad, The Indie at 8 p.m. Friday, August 4 in the Foundation Room, 333 N. Oregon.

Go to plazaclassic.com/localflavor for the full list of programs.


Animators Don Bluth & Gary Goldman heading to PCFF


June 19

Animation icons Don Bluth, an El Paso native, and Gary Goldman will appear at the El Paso Community Foundation’s 10th annual Plaza Classic Film Festival, which will be August 3-13 in downtown El Paso.

Bluth & Goldman will appear for an on-stage interview before a screening of their 1982 animated hit The Secret of NIMH at 1:30 p.m. Saturday, August 12 in the Plaza Theatre. They also will sit down for a Q&A during PCFF’s free, annual Filmmaker’s Brunch at 11 a.m. Sunday, August 13 in the Foundation Room, 333 N. Oregon.

A retrospective of their movies — including Banjo the Woodpile Cat, An American Tail, The Land Before Time, Anastasia, All Dogs Go to Heaven, and Titan A.E. — will be shown during the Plaza Classic Film Festival. The 1980 movie Xanadu, which includes a two-minute animated sequence by Bluth & Goldman, also will be shown.

The Plaza Classic Film Festival’s seventh annual collaboration with the El Paso Museum of Art includes the exhibition An American Animator, Don Bluth. It features nearly 50 of Bluth’s drawings, sketches, animation cels and other examples of his hand-drawn animation style. They are on loan from the Savannah College of Art and Design, to which they donated their animation archives from several films. It will be up July 1 through September 7 in the Peter and Margaret DeWetter Gallery.

Bluth & Goldman’s last six movies, including Thumbelina and Anastasia, will be shown for free in the museum’s auditorium.

As a boy, Bluth wanted to work for Walt Disney Productions after seeing the 1944 reissue of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in El Paso. His family later moved to Utah, then California. Bluth worked with Watsonville, CA native Goldman on several Disney movies. They left in 1979 to start their own independent animation company with fellow animator John Pomeroy. They currently are working on a movie version of their popular ‘80s arcade game Dragon’s Lair.


Banners are up! 'Psycho' coming to PCFF 2017


June 8

Our banners just went up around downtown El Paso!

It’s hard to believe, but the El Paso Community Foundation’s 10th annual Plaza Classic Film Festival is just two months away.

We’re celebrating the new banners by announcing 10 more of the movies we’ll be showing at this year’s 10th anniversary edition of the Plaza Classic, which will be Aug. 3-13 in and around the Plaza Theatre. We’re bringing back several “greatest hits” of past Plaza Classics, and plenty of classics we’ve never shown before.

They include:

Psycho (1960), the Hitchcock classic that made a country think twice about showering alone was a bit hit at PCFF 2010.

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), a legal drama about race in the South that features a signature performance by Gregory Peck, was an audience favorite at PCFF 2012.

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), a revelation on the big screen at our first festival, then called The Movies Return to the Plaza Theatre, in 2008.

An American in Paris (1951), we showed the six-time Academy Award-winning song-and-dance musical starring Gene Kelly in 2012.

El Mariachi (1992), Texas writer-director Robert Rodriguez’s low-budget breakthrough makes its PCFF debut.

Sabrina (1954), featuring Audrey Hepburn as an absolute charmer opposite William Holden and Humphrey Bogart, charmed a big PCFF 2012 audience, too.

From Russia With Love (1963), the second James Bond movie about the debonair spy’s attempts to help a Russian defector, makes its Plaza Classic debut.

Shane (1953), the George Stevens drama about a former gunslinger drawn into a conflict between a farmer and a cattle baron, was shown at PCFF 2009.

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), a classic ’50s sci-fi black-and-white about an alien visitor who tries to deliver a warning to earthlings, was part of our first festival in 2008.

The Muppet Movie (1979), kids of all ages will get a kick out of this enduring musical comedy starring Kermit, Miss Piggy and the gang, which made its PCFF debut in 2011.

These are in addition to the 20 movies we’ve already announced, including the PCFF debut of Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Casablanca, Singin’ in the Rain, The Graduate, Jaws, Citizen Kane, The Maltese Falcon, Romancing the Stone, Monty Python’s Life of Brian and Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery.