Sensation Cinema With Author Mike Plante

SENSATION CINEMA: AUTHOR TALK AND BOOK SIGNING WITH AUTHOR MIKE PLANTE

In 1954, Louis Sher took over a modest neighborhood movie theater in Ohio. Within a decade, he was running the largest independent cinema chain in America – a chain that eventually included The Loft Cinema.

Police raided his theaters, seized prints, and dragged him into court. Sher fought back, taking one censorship battle all the way to the Supreme Court, producing Justice Potter Stewart’s immortal definition of obscenity: “I know it when I see it.” Sher’s Art Theatre Guild brought foreign films, underground cinema, gay and lesbian films, and other cinematic provocations to audiences across the country, transforming the American moviegoing landscape.

Mike Plante was first fascinated by Louis Sher’s story when working on a documentary about The Loft Cinema to celebrate our 50th anniversary in 2022.  We’re excited to have Mike here to present a slide show of one of the great forgotten showmen, risk-takers, and freedom fighters of the American screen.

Mike Plante, a co-founder of the Loft Film Fest, has made films, worked at movie theaters, run projectors and programmed film festivals since 1993. From 2001 to 2025, he worked at the Sundance Film Festival where he was Senior Programmer for Short Films. Today he books movies for The Beverly Theater in Las Vegas.