July 15, 2026
Provided image/Bryn Mawr Film Institute
The Seville Theatre at 824 W. Lancaster Ave. has been showing movies since Oct. 1, 1926.
Ever wonder what was playing in Delco movie theaters in 1926? The answer is now a click away.
To ring in its 100th birthday, the Bryn Mawr Film Institute has compiled an archive of every movie screened at its historic Seville Theatre over the past century. The catalog is broken down into lists per year on Letterboxd, the social platform for film nerds. It contains over 12,000 titles.
Former BMFI staffer Jacob Dickens compiled the information from movie listings in Philadelphia region newspapers and campus publications. Bygone films too obscure for a Letterboxd entry — such as 1929's "Zing, Bang, Bong" and "Let George Do It" — are noted at the bottom of every list. Private screenings and rentals are not included, nor are satellite film festival showings, but some of them are also featured in the footnotes.
The project is part of the cinema's centennial celebrations. The Seville Theatre opened at 824 W. Lancaster Ave. on Oct. 1, 1926, originally housing a single screen. Philly architect William H. Lee, of Boner 4ever building fame, designed the beaux arts movie palace. Though it upgraded to two screens in the '70s, the theater fell into increasingly worse shape over the decades. When BMFI took over the property in 2005, it launched a yearslong restoration that resulted in four screens capable of showing 4K, 70 mm and 35 mm film.
The Main Line nonprofit will screen some of the movies from its Letterboxd archive as part of its ongoing BMFI 100 series. "Days of Heaven" and "The Princess Bride" are up next.
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