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I enter Barry Kryshka's shop AV Solutions on the corner of 33^rd and Minnehaha Ave, and less than 20 minutes in to the interview the phone interrupts us. While Kryshka talks on the phone I try to keep the conversation going with Angela Hasnedl, a partner of his with Take-Up Productions.

We quickly get off-topic as Hasnedl starts talking about some movies she loves - The Shop Around the Corner with James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan is brought up. Like a criminal being interrogated in countless cop movies (I half expect Dick Tracy to walk in and say "you know, it's legal for me to take you down to the station and sweat it out of you under the lights") I spew forth with my shameful confession that I've never seen it (a cinephile's worst nightmare - oh no, something I haven't seen!), but in the hopes of sounding somewhat intelligent on the subject I do recall that it's of course that film that was remade in to the Tom Hanks / Meg Ryan romantic comedy You've Got Mail. We both share a moment to loathe remakes. She tells me I should see it; the original is really good. It's a film she always wanted to screen as part of Take-Up Productions.

Take-Up (the mechanism that keeps film tension in a projector, though the group's name has two connotations) is an integral part of the local film community. About three years ago, Kryshka and other members of the Oak St. Cinema staff realized the Minnesota Film Arts board was looking to shut down the theater. In the interest of putting on seven-days-a-week film programming, a core group of Oak St. staff was put together to form Take-Up. The idea was to begin with a roving program, working with several theaters (the second meaning behind the group's name) and then eventually move in to their own space.

The group produced this year's Sound Unseen Film Festival and the Minneapolis Bicycle Film Festival; they also assisted in the production of Cinema Del Sol and the Summer Sci-Fi series at the Bell Museum. They produce several series year round of classic 35mm films in local movie theaters: the Parkway, the Heights and the Riverview.

Kryshka believes that a major metropolitan area needs a strong film community. It's impossible to disagree with him. His mission is to nurture that community and see it grow. Kryshka and Hasnedl share a quiet, low-key manner of speech. They both have backgrounds as movie theater projectionists. Their demeanor is not uncommon for people who spend a lot of time in dark rooms splicing film, setting up reels and consuming movies. It's their passion for cinema that belies their laid-back manner.

"I just like to see a really strong film community," Hasnedl says. "It's nice to go to a theater and see the same faces."

As we continue to talk about movies we love, the nature of obtaining film prints (apparently much easier these days with the internet) and working with projectors, it dawns on me that Kryshka's been on the phone for a while. "Wanna know what's up?" he asks. With a chuckle we both respond with a resounding "yeah."

"Mildred Pierce is missing," he says calmly, but with a hint of apprehension. At the time of the interview, Mildred Pierce, directed by Michael Curtiz, was the next film to be screened in the current Take-Up series at the Parkway, Ready For Our Close-Up: 
50 Years of L.A. Noir. It was supposed to have already arrived at the Parkway, but somehow along the way it got lost. I can tell that Kryshka wants to work on the problem (especially since he has two days for the print to surface before the screening), but while on hold he's nice enough to talk about the current series.

Ready For Our Close-Up (a reference to a line from the first film of the series) ends January 5 with a screening of the underappreciated gem from 2005 Kiss Kiss Bang Bang starring Robert Downey Jr. (in a wonderful kooky performance) and Val Kilmer. It began December 8 with the classic, very dark Hollywood satire - though I consider it part horror film - Sunset Blvd. from 1950. The following week the series traveled back in time five years for Mildred Pierce. On December 22 and 29 the series really hits its stride with two of my all-time favorite films Chinatown (1974) and L.A. Confidential (1997). The series is a great showcase for fans and novices of noir films, showing audiences some of the best the genre has to offer.

Minutes later Kryshka is taken off hold and he gets back to working on the whereabouts of the film print. Assuming the interview has come to end, I thank Kryshka and Hasnedl for taking the time to chat with me. But the interview doesn't end there. No, Kryshka says he has something to show me: his screening room. He moved his store AV Solutions to its current location in South Minneapolis this past summer because it had been successful enough to warrant expanding. He reveals that his plan has always been to put on Take-Up film series at his own theater screening room space.

He opens the door to the screening room, and suddenly I feel like Dorothy entering Oz. I see a 10 ½ by 14 foot white screen on the wall in front of me flanked by two large speakers propped up on pedestals. He's got a classic movie theater popcorn maker, movie posters (I especially like the life-size cutout of Samuel L. Jackson complete with a chain from Black Snake Moan) and an LCD projector complete with Blu-Ray high-definition DVD player. He shows off this amazing system by throwing on last year's wonderful science-fiction film Sunshine, directed by Danny Boyle. I'm now in movie geek heaven. The clarity of the picture and the sound is something to behold.

It's difficult for me to avert my eyes from the film, but I do as Kryshka tells me his plans for the screening room. He needs to finish the floor, build staggered seating, paint and fix the walls so they absorb sound. His biggest task will be to get two 35 mm projectors, designed in 1940, in to the space. That will require a walled projection booth, which will be a big project, he says. The inspiration for the screening room came when he attended a repertory screening in New York of Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory.

"I thought I could do almost as good," he said. That theater had a pillar standing in the middle of the room, something Kryshka's room has as well.

Cut to four days later after the interview. Kryshka wrote me an email after the Mildred Pierce screening:

"The print arrived by 4 p.m. The projectionist was out with the flu and the replacement projectionist couldn't ride his bike in the weather so he caught a cab to the theater. Despite temps of 8 below, attendance was even better than Sunset Blvd. on our opening night, with well more than 100 people braving the weather and the black ice. We revealed our next series line-up to the crowd, to strong interest."

The next series - beginning February at the Heights - will be a collection of classic film noir from the archive vaults at Universal Pictures, survivors of the fire that tore through the Universal lot last summer, destroying the circulating prints of films like Flash Gordon and Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid.

The Schedule:

2/16 7:30 This Gun For Hire (1942)

2/23 7:30 Criss Cross (1949), 9:15 The Killers (1946)

3/02 7:30 The Big Clock (1948)

3/09 7:30 The Glass Key (1942), 9:15 The Blue Dahlia (1946)

3/16 7:30 Phantom Lady (1944)

Tickets will be $8, discount tickets are 5/$20. Double features on 2/23 and 3/9 are 2-for-1; a single ticket buys admission to both films.