Hello, and welcome!

My Name is Jeff Schaefer, and I am an avid movie lover based outside of Philadelphia.

I can’t say exactly when or how I got involved with film. The movies were not a huge part of my youth; I remember going to a few Disney movies with my aunt or the odd summer blockbuster when rainy afternoons closed the beaches. Other than that, my Saturday matinees consisted of whatever was being commercialed to death on network television.

But somehow or another, I decided to pursue film and I would go on to graduate with a degree in Film, Culture, and the Creative Arts from Alvernia University. My studies included a wide range of topics from art house classics to the modern award darlings and everything in between.

After graduation, I found work at the theatre and my involvement with film really took off from here. I had access like never before to all the new releases, and I would schedule my viewing around my shifts, or spend my days off enjoying a genre-spanning triple feature. Soon, I branched out to the local art house theatres that would run some of the foreign films that my corporate-run multiplex just couldn’t spare a screen for.

Unfortunately, with the Covid-19 pandemic shuttering cinemas for such an extended time, I have since had to find a new career path, but my love for movies only grew while the screens were dark. With all the extra time on my hands, I was able to fill in many of my Hollywood blind spots that influenced today’s auteurs, as well as follow the careers of some world cinema masters such as Bergman, Tarkovsky, and Kurosawa, among the countless others.

I started The Marquee Topic as I wanted to carve out a space where I could log my long-form thoughts on the films I watched, and with any luck inspire a new way of thinking about the stories we see on screen. So have a look around, watch along with me, and check back often to see what I’ve been watching!