The projection booth at the Patio Theater on West Irving Park Rd., near Austin Blvd., is something to see: Fifteen remarkably steep steps up, curving to the right, and there you are — a cinephile's dusty, nostalgia-caked heaven. Two 35-millimeter projectors, plus one of the new digital projection machines.

Also, a toilet, with a door that closes — although Julian Antos notes, sagely, that "typically toilets in projection booths do not work." How's this one? "This one's ... okay," he says, with a grin.

Earlier this year Antos and his Northwest Chicago Film Society colleagues and co-founders Rebecca Hall and Kyle Westphal were bounced out of their tenancy at the now-shuttered Portage Theater. They're making do in the meantime with screenings here and there, at locations including the Music Box Theatre, one of the venues fully equipped to project what Hall calls "beautiful, actual, non-digital film."

But mainly this intrepid team, whose curatorial tastes have proven both rangy and well-considered in the scope of old Hollywood and newer realms, has set up shop at the Patio. Wednesday night, the NCFS presented a terrific archival print of the 1959 Samuel Fuller picture "The Crimson Kimono," to a crowd of 160. The screen's slightly bigger than the Portage's; the sound quality, very good for mono; the admission, a fiver.

This was the film society's fifth Patio event. And, says Antos, they'd love to make it official. Patio owner Demetri Kouvalis, whose father ran the theater from 1987 to 2001, restored the theater with his dad and his sister, and reopened the Patio in 2011.

Right now, Kouvalis says, he's waiting on word from the City of Chicago regarding small business improvement funds to help with a new air conditioning system (cost: $45,000). The mayor's office, he says, "realizes the importance of the theater to the neighborhood business traffic. I hope I hear something good next week, so we can move forward."

The heartening news, for the nonprofit NCFS, is that most of their steady patrons from the Bank of America and Portage Theater incarnations have been happy to join them at the Patio. At Wednesday's screening, Antos showed off the booth with pride, noting the detailing of the refurbished Patio lobby. The auditorium itself is a halfway-there affair, with old theater seats and the like, but it's part of the ambience. Prior to the the "Crimson Kimono" screening, Westphal offered his usual wealth of research and insight on the film's place in the Fuller canon.

And Hall spoke of the society's devotion to beautiful, actual, non-digital moviegoing experiences. Toward that end, in the booth, Antos points out where their newly purchased 16mm projector will make itself at home. A "generous patron," says Hall, provided the $500 to buy it.

The NCFS and the single-screen, 1000-seat 1927-built Patio make for logical and pleasing bedfellows. Here's hoping the city does the right thing and assists in the crucial air conditioning project — no small comfort matter in the summer, in the city.

Coming up next from the NCFS at the Patio, 8 p.m. Wed. June 26: the rarely screened pre-Production Code melodrama "Heat Lightning," in a Library of Congress 35mm print. New Yorker staff writer Margaret Talbot introduces the film, costarring her father, Lyle Talbot.

For more information go to northwestchicagofilmsociety.org; for more on the Patio Theater schedule, go to patiotheater.net.

mjphillips@tribune.com

Twitter @phillipstribune