Alan Strack’s family moved around a lot during his childhood, so he looked forward to spending his family vacations in upstate New York, where his grandparents owned a handful of movie theaters. It was there that he found a sense of home, sometimes even going there to see movies multiple times a day.
When his grandparents passed away shortly before he graduated college in 2000, he inherited their old film prints, more than 3,000 of them, in fact. Looking to combine his graphic design background with his love for cinema, he started crafting framed light-boxes and turning them into art pieces with the edited film reels from his collection. “I always liked photography and always was a designer, so this was a great hybrid for me,” he says.
So, he left Nike in 2017 after serving 13 years as art director, to launch Light-Reel- a tribute to the movies that defined his youth. Depicting edited versions of famous scenes from various films, the art pieces “try to keep everything in sequence,” Strack says. “It’s in order for the most part, but the experience is more about how it looks when it’s laid out in the frame.”
Alongside upcoming director-specific collections on directors Wes Anderson and Stanley Kubrick—he cites 2001: A Space Odyssey as his favorite film. Set for the fall, Strack has found a consistent gig outfitting the new Nitehawk Prospect Park theater in Brooklyn with the old films showing there. Meanwhile, light-boxes of classic films set in New York, including Eyes Wide Shut, The French Connection, and a piece over the bar on Three Days of the Condor (which was filmed in the area) are found throughout.
This creative outlet is more than just a profession to him—he has a personal connection to each and every one of his works. “I’m a nostalgic person, and because I moved around so much, these films are like little markers in my timeline,” he says. “I lean on those more than other people.”
