New York City Repertory Cinema

[FrauBlucher]

Film Forum Calendar for August/September

[beamish14]

Oh, wow. Those new prints of Winter Kills and The Plot Against Harry are very exciting. Guess we know that Film Movement will release Farewell My Concubine on Blu.

[Grand Wazoo]

Hello Dankness is one of my faves of the year. It's wild to see it getting an actual theatrical release.

[Tom Amolad]

What's going on with MoMA? They used to have a lot more screenings than they do now. Is one of the theaters closed or something? Is it temporary? (Sorry -- I've been out of the loop for the last 5-10 years...)

A lot less at BAM too than there used to be, and a bit less at Lincoln Center, it seems. But MoMA's the one that really surprises me.

[hearthesilence]

Maybe it was a lull? I haven't been back in a month, but they just started a program highlighting 35mm and 16mm prints in their collection. Tonight they're showing 35mm prints for Female Trouble and Certified Copy (both of which are Criterion titles).

[Tom Amolad]

Could be. But it used to be always two films at a time, so six or eight films a day. Now it looks like only a couple of films each day. Are both theaters open?

[hearthesilence]

I see now - there's no "1:30" program. I almost never go to do those since it's a weekday afternoon series. That's usually in Theater 2, and that's definitely open as the screenings I mentioned will be there.

[Black Hat]

That is odd, hopefully, it's just for the summer.

[Drucker]

The Paris Theater was apparently closed, but is re-opening in September with a "loud and big" series featuring films in 70MM and/or Dolby Atmos mixes. This includes Playtime in 70MM on September 1.

[FrauBlucher]

Film Forum's Oct/Nov Calendar... highlights-Hitchcock's 1950's, Rocha's Black God, White Devil 4k restoration (Janus), 4k Restoration of Peeping Tom

[hearthesilence]

Frederick Wiseman is giving a talk at MoMI tomorrow (Thu., Oct 26) and the evening will include a screening of his excellent hour-long film from last year, A Couple, a rare staged feature by Wiseman albeit one where the monologues are entirely derived from real life letters from Sophie Tolstoy. (Ticket prices are only $15 for general public admission.)

[Buttery Jeb]

Film Forum December/January Slate

[FrauBlucher]

Coup De Torchon 4k restoration. First week of December. Nice.

[Drucker]

Pretty weak calendar but that's okay I'm still in new dad mode and can only see a movie every other month or so. I expect greatness when my child is 12 months though.

[yoloswegmaster]

Lincoln Center is holding a Kijū Yoshida retrospective from Dec. 1 to the 8th, with the films being shown on 35mm or 16mm.

They will also be exclusively screening Todd Haynes latest film on 35mm later this week.

[hearthesilence]

They will also be exclusively screening Todd Haynes latest film on 35mm later this week.

I saw this last night at MoMA - I think it was a DCP but it looked GREAT, so much it's very tempting to catch the 35mm print. Haynes worked with Christopher Blauvelt this time and I left wondering if he shot all the day scenes with only natural light and reflectors - you can really see all the qualities he's brought to Kelly Reichardt's films (also goddamn autocorrect made me type her name three times because it kept changing it to "Richard").

Best surprise about last night was having Julianne Moore and Charles Melton joining Todd Haynes and Samy Burch at the last minute. Moore is great in the film, and when she got serious explained how she analyzed the script to come up with her performance, it's obvious how instinctively and intellectually brilliant she is.

[beamish14]

Lincoln Center is holding a Kijū Yoshida retrospective from Dec. 1 to the 8th, with the films being shown on 35mm or 16mm.

I’ll be seriously pissed if this doesn’t come to the West Coast

[hearthesilence]

MoMI is holding a Todd Haynes retrospective and he'll be appearing at a couple of screenings on December 1. I think there's a really, really good chance that the new "remastered" version of Superstar is playing at this screening. You'll noticed Dottie is listed as 30 minutes while the total program is 73 minutes - the run time for Superstar is 43 minutes and the listed credit "Preserved by UCLA Film & Television Archive with funding provided by the Sundance Institute" would also apply to Superstar as well as Dottie. (And on top of that, his other early films have already been programmed and listed as their own screening.)

[hearthesilence]

A couple of years ago, there was an article on how arthouse/repertory theaters were still struggling from the pandemic, but I get the impression that not only has everything recovered, business is booming better than ever. I remember how bad it was in 2021 - I was the beneficiary of people not wanting to go the NYFF for at least half the screenings, and I was kind of stunned when the program celebrating Danny Glover's work as a producer was maybe 2/3 full for his opening night appearance. (Even the reception afterwards was pretty modest in size, but to be fair, even I didn't stick around to eat or drink anything because I wanted to stay masked.)

Now 2-3 years later, I'm encountering a LOT of sell out shows, especially if they're in 35mm - I'm missing out on Made in the USA at Metrograph's bigger theater later this week for that reason, and I was stunned to find out yesterday that this Sunday's 35mm screening of the 442-minute Hitler: A Film from Germany at the Walter Reade was already sold out too. I realize it's rarely screened (especially outside of NYC) and it's otherwise only available on an expensive DVD, but that was the same exact situation I faced when I went to see Sátántangó in 2011 at the same venue, long before it was restored and brought back to home video, and you could still buy tickets up to the last minute. I think I've been in the standby line far more this year alone than I've ever been in past years.

[pistolwink]

Anecdotally, I do find that screenings on 35mm (which are rarer in my part of the world) tend to be well-attended, while I've been to a number of recent evening DCP screenings of new arthouse films where my partner and I are the only ones there (or nearly). I think a lot depends on whether you can sell a screening as an "event" and 35mm fits in there, these days.

I much prefer 35mm to DCP but it's still a little strange to see people get worked up over seeing a 35mm print when for roughly 110 years prior to 2012 you could see dozens of them a day—some containing the lamest films imaginable— in almost any city in the world.

[Drucker]

Sure, and New York City has been playing lots of lame films in 35mm lately. But if you're 18-25 right now, you didn't get to see 35mm films. And for most of your teenage life, the movie theaters were dominated by lame stuff. So I can't say I'm surprised that even schlocky 35mm films draws a good crowd in NYC.

My anecdote as I've said before, is that lots of under-25 year olds seem to be in the crowds these days, and the programming reflects the contemporary art-house canon and ironic/revived 80s/90s/early 2000s hits.

[Mario G.]

Now 2-3 years later, I'm encountering a LOT of sell out shows

Little off topic for this specific thread, but this also expands to AMC theaters, especially their premium formats. The *day* Dune 2 tickets were released the the Lincoln Square IMAX was booked up (the decent seats anyway) for 2 straight weeks. Even the late weeknight shows (reminder this is a 3-hour movie) were quite full for the first week's showings. Same thing with a lot of Dolby theaters around the city for any tentpoles. If you don't buy a ticket for a popular movie as soon as they go up for sale, they're out of the premiums theaters in a week, and you're stuck seeing it in the regular theaters with their poor framing and dim projector bulbs. I was even having difficulty seeing Anatomy of a Fall last week in one of Lincoln Square's bigger auditoriums!

I don't recall it ever being so cut throat. Even at the height of Marvel's powers you could usually catch one of their non-team up movies in Dolby on a Sunday if you didn't mind an early showing. AMC A-List has been helpful, but those three slots sure do fill up fast. Seems like there are a lot more people who want to go to the movies (arthouse, rep and first run), but the theaters can't keep up with demand!

[hearthesilence]

Edward Lachman has been doing quite a few Q&A's lately (around last Christmas, he did one for his own personal 35mm print of Carol, which may be an annual thing now, and he did one for a screening of Wim Wenders's Lightning Over Water at Lincoln Center last weekend), and tonight he did one at the Paris Theater for Pablo Larraín's El Conde for which he's up for an Oscar. (He mentioned all the nominees this year have never won an Oscar, which he thought was nice because it meant it would be the first for any of them.) Larraín's satire didn't exactly work for me, but the Lachman's work was great and was apparently the first to use the ALEXA Mini LF Monochrome camera since it had just been developed. (He was even told he would have to do tests for it as they hadn't been able to do so - he literally received it about a week before production was scheduled to begin, and to his pleasant surprise, it was a faster camera than their color models, meaning he could shoot with less light.) Didn't stop there either - he used 70-year-old lenses that were the first U.S. manufactured lenses for black & white cinema cameras, courtesy of Bausch + Lomb.

He mentioned he just shot another feature for Larraín in Budapest called Maria (about Maria Callas with a script by Steven Knight). Unfortunately afterwards, he mentioned that could be his last feature film, which would be a damn shame. He didn't say this, but it was kind of implied that physically it was time to retire - he earlier mentioned a surgical procedure that clearly failed to repair his fractured hip.

[hearthesilence]

I completely missed this in all my years of living here, but I should've realized the NYPL has its own film programs, including this one at its Lincoln Center location (which I probably overlooked since Lincoln Center famously has its own film organization):

The Silent Clowns film series is New York’s longest-running regularly scheduled silent film showcase, featuring silent films paired with live piano accompaniment and discussion. The Silent Clowns’ programming reaches the serious film buff by including rarely-screened titles and rare prints, yet it also introduces kids and new audiences to the classics of the silent screen. Screenings feature piano by MoMA’s Ben Model, with an introduction and Q&A by film historians Model and Steve Massa...

Programs are free and open to all, but registration is requested...

Next week, it's Constance Talmadge, The Duchess of Buffalo (1926).

[FrauBlucher]

Film Forum April thru June calendar

De Sica's Shoeshine new 4k restoration from Janus and Powell and Pressburger's The Small Back Room new 4k restoration from Rialto