by Carlos Garza

The Millennium Youth Entertainment Complex has seen more than its fair share of political squabbles, management issues, and bad publicity since well before its inauguration in June of last year. Conceived by East Side teenagers and community leaders in response to the drive-by shooting death of 16-year-old Tamika Ross in 1992, the Millennium Complex aims to provide a safe, drug and gang-free environment for local youth by offering affordable recreational activities (namely bowling lanes, a skating rink, video arcades, a children's soft play area, a food court, and a small movie theater). Many are still puzzled that the uproar over Tamika Ross should have culminated in something more along the lines of Chucky Cheese than the YMCA. And even though the complex charges no admission and prices for attractions are very low, the issue remains of what role an essentially paying-facility can play in one of Austin's poorest neighborhoods.

Yet once one accepts the Millennium as an entertainment complex and not as a rec center or other type of community organization, it becomes clear that the new management team, headed by Vanessa Silas, is effectively addressing these issues and trying as best it can to offer the widest variety of services both to the immediate East Side community and beyond.

Silas stresses that the complex cannot be expected to organize its own sports and arts/crafts groups, but it can facilitate access to them by providing group specials for schools, churches, and day care centers, as well as hosting two community events per month for various non-profits. Upcoming events include a school supply giveaway, the "Zip It" national abstinence campaign sponsored by KNVA-TV and 104.3-FM, and a teen "No Color Line Saturday Night" social evening and dance combination featuring several schools. The Complex also hopes to attract instructional bowling leagues to train teenagers and encourage them to consider bowling scholarships as a way of financing their college education.

Yet Silas intends to make it clear that a youth center can be for everybody and outreach seems to be foremost on her mind. The Millennium has already held, among others, information sessions on Medicare for seniors, weddings, gospel concerts, and even public hearings. But what seems to hold a particularly strong potential for drawing crowds from all over Austin, and perhaps for making a lasting cultural impact on the East Side as well, is the innovative programming the complex is pursing for its film theater.

Fortunately, the 164 seating capacity disqualifies it for first-run movies, making it the perfect intimate and affordable venue for curated screenings and small film festivals.

This summer, Sal Bati from the Austin Film Society worked closely with the Millennium to present AFS's annual Summer Free-For-All (Tuesdays from July 11th to Aug 15th), a series without a unifying theme or filmmaker which tracks down movies that have fallen out of distribution or plucks them from touring retrospectives. Focusing on films AFS has never before screened, the series usually spotlights the forgotten works of major auteurs. This year features Lilith, Robert Rossen's (All the King's Men, The Hustler) neglected masterpiece on madness and institutionalization; Akira Kurosawa's gangster film Drunken Angel, illustrating his influences from the West and marking his first collaboration with Toshiro Mifune; The Earrings of Madame de..., Max Ophuls' baroque exercise on the impossibility of love and a perfect example of his swirling, relentless camera work; Josephvon Sternberg's Anatahan, his last film (out of distribution for 13 years) and the only one in which he exercised total creative control; Jean Pierre Melville's Le Doulos, a reworking of noir American themes by perhaps the most accomplished noir director; and John Huston's Wise Blood, a commentary on religion and faith based on a story by Flannery O'Connor.

If the July 11th screening of Lilith is any indication -- additional chairs had to be brought into the theater -- the "Free for-All" marks only the beginning of the Millennium's successful collaboration with AFS and other local film organizations.