We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Marina Sakimoto a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Marina, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?
Since rummaging through my aunt’s vinyl records and uncle’s VHS collection as a kid, I’ve always had a soft spot for physical media. Last year, I started attending more film repertoire screenings and fell in love with the physical format presentations. As Angelenos, we’re so incredibly lucky to have access to these kinds of screenings and the theaters that host them, so I wanted to be a part of that magic in some small way. It reminded me of being a teenage girl starting her first band and wanting to be a part of a DIY community hosting my own shows. That element of community is what drives me to put on screenings the way we want to.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
My educational background is in Music Business, but I became familiar with the film repertoire scene by attending a screening of The Thing at the Vista Theatre in 2016 hosted by Secret Movie Club. When my grandfather passed away in 2018, I saw that Secret Movie Club was hosting a screening of Seven Samurai. It made me emotional because according to my grandfather’s journal, he had planned to watch Seven Samurai, but never got the chance to. I wrote a comment about how meaningful it was to see this screening happening at that time, and to my surprise, Craig from Secret Movie Club invited me to speak about my grandfather at the screening and dedicated a seat for him with his portrait. It was an incredible honor not just for myself and my grandfather, but my family in Japan as well. That experience made me want to be a part of a community that could make moments like that happen through a shared love for an art form. As an artist and a business graduate, I am continuously ping-ponging between the two sides of my brain, but I believe it keeps my perspective in check and moving forward.
How’d you meet your business partner?
I was performing with my band for a Kaiju after party that Secret Movie Club was hosting, and Edwin was working in the venue. I don’t think we really became friends until we started working together at the Secret Movie Club venue about a year or so later.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
Taking things too seriously too early! I hit a point of burnout recently where I had to question whether or not I really wanted to keep moving forward with Physical Media Society. However, I realized that it was okay to slow things down and have fun with where we we’re at right now. This has been accompanied with the fact that I’ve been trying to steer from doing everything myself to learning how to delegate to our wonderful friends and volunteers.
Contact Info:
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