The Bryn Mawr Film Institute is turning 100. It wants to hear from you before the party starts.

BMFI is asking community members to submit short personal videos about their connection to movies and the Lancaster Avenue theater ahead of its Centennial Soirée on Thursday, Oct. 1. The deadline to submit is Monday, Sept. 7.

The videos will be edited into a commemorative reel that plays for roughly 300 guests at the gala, according to BMFI's website. The institute described the project as a fast-paced, emotional love letter to movies and the community that watches them together. The reel will also live on as part of BMFI's centennial archive.

The soirée marks exactly 100 years since the Seville Theatre first lit up at 824 W. Lancaster Ave. on Oct. 1, 1926. Philadelphia architect William H. Lee, a protégé of Frank Furness, designed the beaux arts cinema, which operated as a single-screen movie palace until the 1970s.

By the early 2000s, the building was dilapidated and at risk of conversion to a fitness franchise. Bryn Mawr College alumna Juliet Goodfriend rallied community support to save it, and the nonprofit BMFI purchased the property in December 2004. The theater opened under BMFI's banner on March 12, 2005, with Academy Award-winning actor Ben Kingsley cutting the ceremonial ribbon. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places later that year.

Today the institute operates four auditoriums equipped with 4K laser digital, 70mm and 35mm projection, drawing nearly 120,000 patrons a year, according to a BMFI press release announcing its centennial Letterboxd archive. More than 6,000 members support the nonprofit, where ticket sales cover only about 40% of operating costs.

Executive director Scott Fisher, BMFI's third leader after Goodfriend and Sam Scott, said in an April Main Line Today profile that his family fell for the theater on their very first night in Bryn Mawr in 2000: "Our very first night here included dinner at Marbles and a movie at what was then the Bryn Mawr Theater. We liked it so much, we did it again the next night."

BMFI's centennial programming also includes BMFI100, a monthly screening series that presents one film from the theater's century of programming with era-specific preshows of trailers, cartoons and newsreels. Film researcher Jacob Dickens spearheaded a project cataloguing more than 12,000 films shown at the address across 100 years, now published as a free Letterboxd archive titled "100 Years of Film in Bryn Mawr."

VIP tickets to the Centennial Soirée are $450, according to BMFI's event page. Sponsorship details are available at the same page.

Community members who want to contribute a video can upload via Dropbox (no account required) or contact BMFI marketing manager Alex Gosciniak at [email protected] for alternate submission methods. The deadline is Monday, Sept. 7.