In the Year of the Pig

In the Year of the Pig is a documentary film of 1968 on the Vietnam War, directed and produced by Emile de Antonio. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Documentary Feature at the 42nd Academy Awards in 1970. In October 1969 the Philadelphia Department of Licenses and Inspections closed Underground Cinema 16, the theater of Ray Hoersch, later known as R.C. Horsch, in the week it planned to preview the film, and it was shown instead at the Bandbox Theater in Germantown.¹²³⁴

The Nomination

The award for Documentary Feature went to Arthur Rubinstein: The Love of Life, produced by Bernard Chevry. The other nominees were Before the Mountain Was Moved, produced by Robert K. Sharpe; The Olympics in Mexico, by the organizing committee of the XIX Olympiad; and The Wolf Men, produced by Irwin Rosten.²

Cinema 16

Hoersch, then 26, opened Cinema 16 at 2021 Sansom Street in October 1969. On October 29 the department's deputy commissioner, Leo Goldstein, ordered it closed for lack of the requisite licenses and posted the building, and "police were instructed to keep it empty." Hoersch called the matter a "simple confusion" and said that the only question was whether the theater could open that week for a preview of the film.³ The alternative weekly The Distant Drummer, in an article on the administration of Mayor James H. J. Tate, reported that the theater had been closed for want of a statement of occupancy and five minor code violations, corrected within a day, and quoted Goldstein: "I first heard about the theatre (Cinema 16) when I read in the BULLETIN that they were going to play that Vietnam film (In the Year of the Pig)." In the same period the department closed the "Space" annex of the Theatre of the Living Arts and the Manning Street Theater. The film opened at the Bandbox while Cinema 16 was shut.⁴ In 1975 the Bandbox, run by Art Carduner, screened Hoersch's Black Mass after its cancellation at the Arcadia.⁵