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    Rediscovering Australia’s Generation of Defiant Female Directors

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    Gillian Armstrong, Jane Campion, Essie Coffey and others had waited years to tell their stories, as a Museum of the Moving Image series shows.In the opening moments of Gillian Armstrong’s debut feature, “My Brilliant Career” (1979), a freckled, tawny-haired young woman stands in the doorway of her house in the Australian outback and declares: “Dear countrymen, a few lines to let you know that this story is going to be all about me.” The woman is Sybylla, played by a fiery, young Judy Davis, and she dreams of a long, fruitful career as a writer — love, marriage, motherhood and all of society’s other expectations be damned.Sybylla’s words might as well have been the rallying cry for a whole generation of Australia’s female filmmakers, who had waited for years to tell their own stories. Their defiant and eclectic body of work is the subject of Pioneering Women in Australian Cinema, a fascinating series that opened last week at the Museum of the Moving Image, in Queens, N.Y.“My Brilliant Career,” which shot Armstrong into global prominence, was the first feature to be directed by an Australian woman in more than 40 years. In 1933, “Two Minutes Silence,” the fourth and final feature by the three McDonagh sisters — Isabel, Phyllis and Paulette — had closed out a brief but booming era of early Australian cinema in which women had been active as producers and directors. (The MoMI series includes the 1929 film “The Cheaters,” the only feature by the McDonagh sisters for which a print still exists.)The intervening decades had drastically shrunk not just opportunities for women interested in film, but the scope of Australian cinema itself. Stiff competition from Hollywood and the ravages of World War II had more or less shuttered the country’s film industry by the 1960s. Government initiatives to subsidize production and establish a national film school eventually spurred a rebirth in the 1970s. The Australian new wave, as this resurgence came to be called, thrust antipodean cinema onto the world stage with stylized, maverick films like Bruce Beresford’s “The Adventures of Barry McKenzie,” Fred Schepisi’s “The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith,” and George Miller’s “Mad Max.”Tracey Moffatt in “BeDevil,” a horror anthology she also directed.Women Make MoviesThe new wave was a male-dominated movement, with many of the films flaunting a grisly, macho vision of Australian culture; Armstrong often stood out as the sole female exception. But “My Brilliant Career” also represented the beginning of another kind of renaissance in Australian cinema — one led by women. Between the late 1970s and the 1990s, a number of women directed landmark films across genres, introducing rousing new feminist narratives to the Australian screen.“My Brilliant Career” is one of many firsts in the aptly named MoMI series, which was curated by the programmer and critic Michelle Carey. These include Essie Coffey’s “My Survival as an Aboriginal” (1978), often hailed as the first documentary to be directed by an Aboriginal Australian woman; the dystopian lesbian heist film “On Guard” (1984), written and directed by Susan Lambert and believed by some to be the first Australian film made with an all-women crew; and Tracey Moffatt’s rollicking three-part horror anthology, “BeDevil” (1993), regarded as the first feature to be directed by an Aboriginal Australian woman. Then there’s “Sweetie” (1989), the oddball black comedy that was the debut feature of Jane Campion, who would go on to make “The Piano” (1993), the first film by a woman to win a Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.This flurry of breakthroughs resulted from two intersecting developments: the creation of state film institutions like the Australian Film Television and Radio School and the Australian Film Commission in the 1970s; and campaigns by women’s and Aboriginal groups to demand policies that would ensure fair access to these public resources. Armstrong was part of the inaugural class of 12 at the school, whose graduates also include Campion and her “Sweetie” cinematographer Sally Bongers, as well as Jocelyn Moorhouse, who produced the 1994 crossover hit “Muriel’s Wedding.” “Proof,” Moorhouse’s disarmingly mordant feature debut as a director, is part of Pioneering Women in Australian Cinema.While state support helped nurture a fledgling mainstream industry, it proved crucial in the development of a feminist documentary and experimental film tradition in Australia, which benefited greatly from the commission’s Women’s Film Fund. “On Guard” is a striking example. Lambert’s hourlong movie follows a group of lesbians who scheme to destroy the data held by a multinational company, U.T.E.R.O., which they suspect is performing illegal reproductive experiments on women. A kind of Aussie sister-film to Lizzie Borden’s 1983 cult classic, “Born in Flames,” “On Guard” subverts patriarchal control in both form and narrative. Told in short, sleek fragments, the film strips the heist thriller of all its usual machinations and violence, instead dwelling on the everyday struggles of its heroines — be it with child care, domestic division of labor or living an openly gay life.Essie Coffey’s “My Survival as an Aboriginal” serves as both a manifesto and an heirloom for her descendants.Ballad FilmsMoffatt’s movies similarly reimagine cultural and film tropes, but through the lenses of gender and race. The short film “Nice Coloured Girls” uses clever juxtapositions of image, voice and text to turn a wily story about three Aboriginal women who seduce and scam white men into a historical meditation on the power plays between early settlers and the women’s ancestors. This theme of colonial haunting is expanded with raucous invention in Moffatt’s “BeDevil,” which draws on Aboriginal folklore to tell a series of modern-day gothic tales. Tracing lines between past and present evils — colonialism, gentrification, cultural appropriation — with an irreverent and experimental approach to editing and sound, “BeDevil” refashions Australian history as a deeply unsettling ghost story. Like many films in the MoMI series, “BeDevil” feels startlingly ahead of its time.As does Coffey’s “My Survival as an Aboriginal,” despite its simple and straightforward documentary structure. Made one year before “My Brilliant Career” — and no less seminal than that film in inspiring an entire tradition of filmmakers — “My Survival” is both a personal manifesto by Coffey and an heirloom for her descendants. Coffey speaks bluntly, straight into the camera, of the violence suffered by her people, the Muruwari, at the hands of white settlers. Then she sets out with the camera, brusque and determined, to ensure that her heritage is preserved and passed down to future generations. She teaches the local children the traditional skills of her people — hunting, gathering, surviving in the bush — and laments that their education has left them without this essential cultural knowledge. At the end, Coffey declares, “I’m going to lead my own life, me and my family, and live off the land. I will not live a white-man way and that’s straight from me, Essie Coffey.”Between Sybylla’s fictional “this story is going to be all about me” in “My Brilliant Career” and Coffey’s raw and real “I’m going to lead my own life,” a whole history of Australian women’s cinema was born.“Pioneering Women in Australian Cinema” runs through Aug. 14 at the Museum of the Moving Image. Go to movingimage.us for more information. More

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      Events for Fans of Horror Films in New York City

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      For fans of scary movies, three horror series around New York just may keep you up all night.Forget the Bahamas, horror fans. This summer, New York is your paradise.That’s because three of the city’s highbrow cinema presenters are offering ambitious and adventurous horror movie series with scares enough for everyone, from squeamish newbies to hardened connoisseurs.The biggie is “Horror: Messaging the Monstrous,” which runs for a whopping 10 weeks at the Museum of Modern Art. With more than 110 features and short films, the series digs deep into sociopolitical horror cinema, with sections devoted to gender, race, sexuality and additional concerns.The other programs are equally enterprising. Film at Lincoln Center and Cinecittà, the esteemed Italian film studio, are partnering on “Beware of Dario Argento,” a 20-film retrospective of Argento, the horror movie master best known for “Suspiria.” The director himself will be at select screenings.And the Museum of the Moving Image is hosting “Films of the Dead: Romero & Co.,” an 11-film series dedicated to zombie movies by, and inspired by, the maverick horror filmmaker George A. Romero, who died in 2017. It’s a companion to “Living With ‘The Walking Dead’” (June 25-Jan. 1, 2023), an exhibition about the origins and impact of the AMC series. A second film program, “White Zombies: Nightmares of Empire,” follows in August.Caryn Coleman, a guest curator on the MoMA series, said it should be no surprise that all three organizations are turning to horror to “process the world.”“We’re certainly in a collective moment of turmoil, so it seems right on target for New York to be hosting horror programming as both a tool of discussion and celebration,” she wrote in an email.To make your decision-making less scary, here’s one horror lover’s guide to what to watch.From left, Debra De Liso, Michelle Michaels and Andree Honore in “The Slumber Party Massacre.”New World Pictures‘Horror: Messaging the Monstrous’ (June 23-Sept. 5)Museum of Modern Art, moma.orgThe Guilty Pleasure: ‘The Slumber Party Massacre’ (1982)What happens when a female director (Amy Holden Jones) and a feminist writer (Rita Mae Brown) team up to make a movie about a deranged murderer with a power drill who kills high schoolers on the night of a sleepover? You get this crazed classic from the golden age of slashers, a film that continues to inspire new generations of female horror moviemakers.The Must-See: ‘The Last House on the Left’ (1972)Wes Craven wrote and directed this rape-revenge film about two young women who are brutalized by psychopaths. This one’s a don’t-miss movie only for folks with a strong constitution and a morbid curiosity about a game-changing but troubling exploitation film. Consider this: Howard Thompson, reviewing for The Times, called it “sickening tripe,” and said he walked out before the film ended.The Find: ‘Jack Be Nimble’ (1993)A terrific rediscovery in the series is this horror-fantasy film from New Zealand. Directed by Garth Maxwell, it stars Alexis Arquette and Sarah Smuts-Kennedy as twins who reunite as adults after being separated and raised in broken homes. In his Times review, Stephen Holden called it a “superior” genre film with “hallucinatory power and psychological refinement.”The Throwback: ‘Def by Temptation’ (1990)The writer-director James Bond III stars as a young man who visits New York to see a friend (Kadeem Hardison), but instead falls under the spell of a succubus (Cynthia Bond). A supernatural investigator (Bill Nunn), a medium (Melba Moore) and a preacher (Samuel L. Jackson) all try to keep the evil at bay. For a low-budget horror comedy, the film takes a surprisingly frank look at Black Gen Xers and presents questions of friendship, sex and faith.Jennifer Connelly in “Phenomena.”DAC Film, via AGFA‘Beware of Dario Argento’ (June 17-29)Film at Lincoln Center, filmlinc.orgThe Must-See: ‘Phenomena’ (1985)Argento’s trippy psycho-thriller stars Jennifer Connelly as a young student at a Swiss girls school who discovers she has supernatural powers to control insects. Donald Pleasence is the scientist who helps her use that power to find a killer. The big screen is the best way to experience the film’s spectacular flesh-dissolving bug attack.The Begetter: ‘The Bird With the Crystal Plumage’ (1970)Argento’s directing debut, for which he also wrote the screenplay, is a stylish prototype of Italian giallo. Set in Rome, it’s a thriller about an American writer who gets entangled in a murder mystery after he witnesses a woman stabbed by an intruder inside a gallery. The gore is mild compared to Argento’s later films. But giallo’s visual signatures — plunging razors, menacing lighting, a killer in chic leather — are abundant.The New Kid on the Block: ‘Dark Glasses’ (2022)One of the films I’m excited to see is Argento’s latest, his first movie since the poorly received “Argento’s Dracula 3D.” Ilenia Pastorelli stars as a prostitute who struggles to adjust to a new life after being blinded during her escape from a killer. True to Argento form, the movie looks as sleek as it is deranged.Duane Jones in “Night of the Living Dead.”Janus Films‘Films of the Dead’ (June 25-July 30)Museum of the Moving Image, movingimage.usThe Must-See: ‘Night of the Living Dead’ (1968)When Romero’s black-and-white groundbreaker comes to the big screen, just go. Romero championed the oppressed, and for his first feature film he cast Duane Jones, a Black actor, as the man who protects a group of strangers trapped in a rural Pennsylvania farmhouse under siege by the flesh-chewing undead. Movies that view horror through a social justice lens, especially when it comes to American racism, bow to this one.The Batty Comedy: ‘One Cut of the Dead’ (2017)Shinichiro Ueda’s film is an absurdly gory horror-comedy about a film crew shooting a zombie movie that’s interrupted by actual hungry zombies. Instead of cutting and running, the director forces his cast and crew to keep rolling. What happens next is a meta-marvel of slapstick, butchery and, surprisingly, heart.The Guilty Pleasure: ‘Day of the Dead’ (1985)I have a soft spot for this talky doomsday story, written and directed by Romero. Set in a dystopian future America — one of Romero’s favorite places to visit — it’s about a group of literally underground scientists and soldiers (with fragile egos) who battle the zombies left above ground after an apocalypse. Tom Savini’s gruesome special effects gave me the heebie jeebies back in the day, and still do. More

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      James Wong Howe: A Gutsy Cinematographer Finally Gets His Due

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      A retrospective at the Museum of the Moving Image looks at a career filled with sublime images made at a time of strong anti-Asian sentiment in Hollywood.The Chinese American cinematographer James Wong Howe was an industrious, peripatetic youngster. In modern parlance, he was a hustler, but so was everyone in the early, exploratory years of cinema, when the fledgling film industry churned out dozens of titles every week. During the 1910s, the silent film directors who won acclaim — like D.W. Griffith and Cecil B. DeMille — seemed to rise through shrewd business acumen, false confidence and good luck.Wong Howe had all of those things, but he was gutsier — he had to be. It was clear in the boundless, reckless innovation of his work; his reputation as a supreme perfectionist; and his success and respected status in an industry that saw virtually no place for artists of Asian descent. James Wong Howe was defiance personified.His decades-long career, which spanned the silent era, Hollywood’s golden age and the New Hollywood renaissance of the 1960s and ’70s, was emblematic of a creative spirit that persisted despite changing fashions, industry upheavals and discriminatory practices. He revolutionized the way films communicated visually, developing new techniques that could convey feelings without the need for words or even performers — like the expressionistic use of wide-angle and fish-eye lenses in John Frankenheimer’s body-swapping science-fiction drama, “Seconds” (1966); or one of the earliest aerial shots in the final moments of Joshua Logan’s Technicolor romantic comedy “Picnic” (1955).Rock Hudson in “Seconds,” which Wong Howe shot in part using wide-angle and fish-eye lenses.Paramount Pictures/Photofest via MoMIThese and other examples of Wong Howe’s photographic prowess can be seen in a continuing series dedicated to his work that runs through June 26 at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens.James Wong Howe was born Wong Tung Jim in Kwantung, China, in 1899. In the early 1900s, he was whisked away to Pasco, Wash., by his entrepreneurial father. There, he experienced racism, learned to box and began tinkering with cameras before his father’s death, in 1914, set off a period of drifting. Not unlike Charlie Chaplin’s classic character the Tramp, Wong Howe was a game outsider stumbling from misadventure to misadventure. He went to Oregon, San Francisco, and then Los Angeles, where the 18-year-old Jimmie Howe eventually finagled a job on the janitorial staff of Lasky Studios.DeMille took a liking to Jimmie; he was amused by the young man’s floral shirts, the contrast between his small stature and the outsize cigars he smoked on set. Wong Howe was not passive; he seemed to take the matter of his skin color as a challenge. In his free time, he began familiarizing himself with the studio’s equipment and practiced taking pictures with a still camera. Soon, he was promoted to assistant cameraman.No one at the time was what we might today consider a bona fide camera expert. People learned on the job, improvised and experimented with the new technologies, so the crew members who distinguished themselves were the ones who found creative solutions to the problems that arose on set. This was Wong Howe’s forte and the source of his first big break. The actress Mary Miles Minter, impressed by Wong Howe’s still portraits of her, insisted he shoot her next film. He had devised a solution that could keep her blue eyes from turning white on camera, a problem caused by the blue-sensitive orthochromatic film used at the time. From then on, his reputation as a formidable cameraman was assured.Wong Howe, left, on the set of “The Glory Guys” (1965). His career ran from silents to the New Hollywood renaissance.United Artists/Photofest, via MoMIWong Howe wasn’t the only Asian artist hanging out on the studio back lots. There was the Japanese-born actor Sessue Hayakawa. Hollywood’s onscreen enforcement of anti-miscegenation laws restricted him to playing forbidden-lover roles or sadistic Svengali types, but his popularity among white women viewers made him a bankable presence. Then there was the Chinese American actress Anna May Wong, a go-to supporting performer as the film industry began to mount bigger, more spectacular productions in “exotic” settings. Wong Howe, in fact, would shoot her in one of her first major roles, as the Indigenous princess Tiger Lily in Herbert Brenon’s “Peter Pan.”But renewed anti-Asian sentiment and the Production Code of the 1930s, which put a chokehold on the depiction of interracial relationships, further diminished the industry’s willingness to work with performers of Asian descent. Wong Howe initially floundered during this period, but his work — particularly his penchant for dramatic, high-contrast lighting, which earned him the nickname “Low-key Howe” — spoke for itself. His split-screen shot allows Ronald Colman’s Major Rassendyll to speak directly to his doppelgänger in John Cromwell’s “The Prisoner of Zenda,” (1937), and the fight scenes he filmed in Busby Berkeley’s “They Made Me a Criminal” (1939) are so visceral you can almost feel the boxing gloves jabbing.Though he was adored by the press — what a novelty that an Asian man could be so talented and so full of personality — and respected by his collaborators, Wong Howe was often scorned by the white crew members under his command. He dealt with laws and prejudices that relegated him to second-class citizenship all of his life. During World War II, he wore a button that read “I am Chinese” to ward off harassment should anyone think he was Japanese. Though he had been living in the United States for nearly four decades, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 prohibited him from gaining citizenship; without it, he was forced to turn down exciting creative opportunities, like joining John Ford’s wartime documentary crew.Wong Howe’s split-screen shot allowed Ronald Colman’s Major Rassendyll to speak directly to his doppelganger in “The Prisoner of Zenda” (1937).Warner Bros.Most devastating perhaps was his marriage to the novelist Sanora Babb; the couple tied the knot in Paris in 1937, but California’s anti-miscegenation laws and the studios’ morality clause prevented them from going public until decades later. For his suspected association with Hollywood Communists, he was put on the “graylist” by Senator Joseph McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee; Wong Howe kept out of politics for the most part, but it didn’t help that China had become a Communist state.Still, he carried on during the precarious ’40s, working with Fritz Lang on the provocative war thriller “Hangmen Also Die!,” and capturing Ida Lupino in all her shades of ambition and vulnerability in Vincent Sherman’s pitch-black melodrama “The Hard Way.”Wong Howe’s images are sublime, his expressive interplay of light and shadow summoning moral conflicts out of thin air. He re-envisioned New York with a bleak, otherworldly flair with “Sweet Smell of Success,” Alexander Mackendrick’s 1957 drama about a vicious newspaperman, a work that many consider to be Wong Howe’s chef d’oeuvre. He coated interior-set walls in oil to give them a surreal shimmer, and used long-focus lenses to make buildings look clustered together, emphasizing a sense of claustrophobic delirium.Walter Brennan in “Hangmen Also Die!” (1943), which Wong Howe shot for the director Fritz Lang.Cohen Media GroupThere are few individuals whose work so comparably ushered in cinema’s transition from mere dime-ticket spectacle to art form. Still, Wong Howe was hungry. Since the 1920s, he had wanted to direct, and though he was given the opportunity in the form of commissioned documentaries and “B” movies, his real ambitions were too often denied. There was a project about rickshaw pullers in China, as well as a script he wrote with Babb about San Francisco’s Chinatown, but both ideas were ultimately dropped for lack of financing. If you can catch only one screening at the Museum of the Moving Image, make it Wong Howe’s sole directorial feature, “Go, Man, Go!” (1954), which stars a fresh-faced Sidney Poitier and Ruby Dee in a drama about the Harlem Globetrotters. It is a bare-bones production, but the grit and spirit of something even greater was just beneath the surface, like Wong Howe himself.Wong Howe didn’t deny his Chinese roots. For a time, he ran a popular Chinese eatery that was frequented by Marlene Dietrich, Mickey Rooney and Tyrone Power. And in his final years, he took to wearing traditional Chinese clothes. In Todd Rainsberger’s 1981 study of the cinematographer, it becomes clear that Wong Howe, who died in 1976, longed to create a more expansive portrait of Americanness, one that felt true to him, if not his employers. He was one of the great American cinematographers and a two-time Oscar winner, but he wanted more because he knew he deserved it. Such was his defiance.“How It’s Done: The Cinema of James Wong Howe” runs through June 26 at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens. For more information, go to movingimage.us. More

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      New York’s Movie Theaters, From Art-House to Dine-In

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      New York is the nation’s moviegoing capital, especially for cinephiles who treasure archival prints, experimental cinema and concession stands that go far beyond the standard offerings. Below is a guide to the city’s art houses.Alamo DrafthouseFinancial District, 28 Liberty Street, Suite SC301, Manhattan. Downtown Brooklyn, 445 Albee Square West, Brooklyn. drafthouse.com.This dine-in chain, based in Austin, Texas, has a hip aesthetic and is noted for its brews, queso and screenings of cult classics, in addition to regular showings of new releases. A revived version of Kim’s Video has set up shop within the Manhattan location. A Staten Island theater is scheduled to open this summer.Angelika Film CenterAngelika Film Center, 18 West Houston Street, Manhattan. Cinema 123 by Angelika, 1001 Third Avenue, Manhattan. Village East by Angelika, 181-189 Second Avenue, Manhattan. angelikafilmcenter.com.The original Angelika Film Center is the downtown six-screen theater where you can catch art-house releases, like “Petite Maman” or “Anaïs in Love,” while the subway rattles underneath. The brand name has also been appended to the Village East, whose main auditorium is a gorgeous old Yiddish stage theater. In addition to showing new releases, it hosts “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and periodic revival screenings, and like its uptown sibling, the Cinema 123, it is equipped to show 70-millimeter film.Anthology Film Archives32 Second Avenue, Manhattan; anthologyfilmarchives.org.New York’s polestar of avant-garde film (and the preservation of it) for more than 50 years, Anthology was started by some of experimental cinema’s most important promoters (Jonas Mekas, P. Adams Sitney) and practitioners (Stan Brakhage, Peter Kubelka). In addition to retrospectives, the theater hosts a rotating series, Essential Cinema, that is free with membership; programming includes seminal narrative works by Alexander Dovzhenko and F.W. Murnau and medium-expanding nonnarrative films from Ken Jacobs and Michael Snow.Brooklyn Academy of Music30 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn; bam.org.At any given time in the main BAM building in Fort Greene, three out of four screens show new releases, while one holds retrospectives, such as ones on films shot in New York City in the 1990s or others that place David Lynch’s work alongside movies he influenced. Occasional screenings take place at the BAM Harvey Theater a few blocks away.Film at Lincoln CenterElinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, 144 West 65th Street, and Walter Reade Theater, 165 West 65th Street, Manhattan; filmlinc.org.Lincoln Center’s film arm, the hosting organization of the New York Film Festival, runs a year-round theater with one of the largest screens in town: the Walter Reade. There you can catch adventurous revivals, such as programs on the Hungarian director Marta Meszaros or the Japanese actress-director Kinuyo Tanaka, and contemporary series, like the annual Rendez-Vous With French Cinema. Across the street is the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, which houses two screens and a food-and-wine bar, Indie.Film Forum: Come for the popcorn; stay for the cinematic edification.Photo by Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty ImagesFilm Forum209 West Houston Street, Manhattan; filmforum.org.A New York institution for more than 50 years — it has been at its present location since 1990 and added a fourth screen in 2018 — Film Forum hosts some of the most extensive retrospectives in town, often showing dozens of films from a director or from stars like Toshiro Mifune and Sidney Poitier. Regular attendance constitutes a cinematic education in itself, and the popcorn, to which moviegoers apply sea salt themselves, is a delicacy.French Institute/Alliance FrançaiseFlorence Gould Hall, 55 East 59th Street, Manhattan; fiaf.org.This classy venue with excellent sightlines hosts screenings on Tuesdays. The programming consists of new and vintage films from France, with English subtitles, bien sûr. Series typically have a theme — it might be Wes Anderson selecting favorites by Ophüls and Truffaut or a program of recent French comedies.IFC Center323 Sixth Avenue, Manhattan; ifccenter.com.This Greenwich Village five-screen theater boasts four first-rate auditoriums (and one cubbyhole) and typically shows many more than five movies in a given week, usually with a short beforehand. Shows can start as early as 10 or 11 a.m. and, on the weekends, as late as midnight. The concession stand sells T-shirts that substitute directors’ names for those of heavy metal bands.Japan Society333 East 47th Street, Manhattan; japansociety.org.This theater’s annual Japan Cuts series is probably the largest single showcase of recent Japanese cinema on the New York cinephile’s calendar. For the rest of the year, new movies share screen space with classics, often shown on 35 millimeter.Light Industry361 Stagg Street, Brooklyn; lightindustry.org.This microcinema, which specializes in experimental film and typically holds screenings on Tuesday nights, hosted its final program at its longtime Greenpoint location in April. It will reopen by June on Stagg Street. Past screenings have varied widely; they’ve included early work by William Castle, a four-hour Mexican serial from 1919, Hollis Frampton and Owen Land films on 16-millimeter and a marathon of “Police Squad!” episodes.Maysles Cinema343 Lenox Avenue, Manhattan; maysles.org.This small (about 60 seats) Harlem venue specializes in documentaries — it was founded by the director Albert Maysles, of “Grey Gardens” fame. The programming often places an emphasis on social issues and local artistry.Metrograph7 Ludlow Street, Manhattan; metrograph.com.An ever-changing (and expensive!) selection of international candies, a nook of a bookstore and a high-class restaurant, the Commissary, are among the features of this Lower East Side two-screen venue, which opened in 2016. (Many don’t notice, but it sits across the street from the neglected Loew’s Canal Theater.) The retrospectives, such as a recurring series of the programmers’ favorites, organized alphabetically, have a correspondingly artisanal feel.Museum of Modern Art11 West 53rd Street, Manhattan; moma.org.MoMA has been showing movies since the 1930s, when Iris Barry, the museum’s first film curator, helped advance the idea that films should be collected as art. Today the institution’s two main theaters screen films from its own collection and archives around the world (the annual series To Save and Project highlights recent preservation work). Admission to most screenings is free with membership.Museum of the Moving Image36-01 35th Avenue, Queens; movingimage.us.The high ceilings and blue wall padding give a faintly futuristic feel to the 267-seat Redstone Theater, the main auditorium in this museum in Astoria. That works well when a favorite like “2001: A Space Odyssey” is playing on 70 millimeter. More specialized fare sometimes is shown in the Bartos Screening Room down the hall.Nitehawk CinemaProspect Park, 188 Prospect Park West, Brooklyn. Williamsburg, 136 Metropolitan Avenue, Brooklyn. nitehawkcinema.com.These stylish dine-in theaters have several screens that show new releases and perennial favorites (“Carrie,” “Face/Off”) from brunch time to midnight-snack time. Both venues have bars.The Paris Theater, once a destination for French film, is now leased by Netflix.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesParis Theater4 West 58th Street, Manhattan; paristheaternyc.com.Once a go-to destination for French cinema and films with a literary pedigree, the Paris briefly closed in 2019, but then was leased by Netflix, which uses it for theatrical runs of its streaming titles (like Jane Campion’s “The Power of the Dog”) and older movies intended to complement them. It’s one of the few remaining New York theaters with a balcony.Quad Cinema34 West 13th Street, Manhattan; quadcinema.com.When this Greenwich Village theater opened in 1972, having four screens was unusual. (“A new way to go to the movies,” boasted a New York Times ad on the first day.) It reopened in 2017 after a renovation that gave it bigger, comfier seats for viewing new art-house releases, like “A Hero” or “We’re All Going to the World’s Fair.” Plus, there’s an adjoining bar.Roxy Cinema New York2 Sixth Avenue, Manhattan; roxycinematribeca.com.Located in the basement of the Roxy Hotel, this plush red screening room offers a mix of revivals (often on 35-millimeter film) and second-run programming — recent releases that have been in theaters awhile.Spectacle124 South Third Street, Brooklyn; spectacletheater.com.A grungy Williamsburg microcinema started in 2010, Spectacle has a calendar as eclectic as it is inscrutable. There’s horror and martial-arts fare that tends toward the obscure, along with a lot of international titles that never turn up in other New York venues.United Palace4140 Broadway, Manhattan; unitedpalace.org.One of the original Loew’s Wonder Theaters — movie palaces built in the late 1920s, with one in each borough except Staten Island (Jersey City got it instead) — this architectural marvel in Washington Heights is an attraction in itself. It’s now run by an organization that promotes interfaith artistic events, but the theater also hosts concerts and, generally once a month, movie screenings. Lin-Manuel Miranda, a neighborhood resident, chipped in for a new screen and projector. More

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      How Stephen Sondheim’s Work Did (and Didn’t) Translate to the Screen

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      A new series of adaptations, documentaries and more examines the different ways the composer-lyricist left his mark on movies.Stephen Sondheim, the unparalleled composer-lyricist who died in November, may have changed musical theater forever, but as a new program at the Museum of the Moving Image argues, he left his mark on film as well. Whether it’s Elaine Stritch’s screen-shattering performance of “The Ladies Who Lunch” in D.A. Pennebaker’s documentary “Original Cast Album: ‘Company’” or Madonna’s slinking around and cooing “Sooner or Later” in “Dick Tracy,” Sondheim’s work has given film audiences memorable moments.The museum program, See It Big: Sondheim, assembled by the guest programmer Michael Koresky, the film curator Eric Hynes and the assistant curator, Edo Choi, offers a survey of adaptations of Sondheim’s work and other examples of his contributions to film, including a murder-mystery screenplay and the score to a French new wave film. I spoke with Koresky about Sondheim’s gifts to cinema and why it’s so hard to adapt his work. Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.Sondheim let people adapt his work freely, which your program shows.He said in many interviews that he is OK with someone massaging and changing and doing things for their own sake, and I think that just shows his generosity and his experimentation ability to allow others to be experimental. You can see that all the way through to 2021. With the Spielberg version of “West Side Story,” you could tell that he was sort of delighted to find that it had this new life.I think it’s up to us, as Sondheim lovers, to [say] when something isn’t working. But because of that, it takes something really different and experimental and strange to be a truly successful adaptation, which is why I think that “Original Cast Album: ‘Company’” is probably the best “adaptation” of a Sondheim musical.What about that film is able to articulate the skill and artistry of Sondheim in ways that some other attempts do not?Remembering Stephen SondheimThe revered and influential composer-lyricist died Nov. 26, 2021. He was 91. Obituary: A titan of the American musical, Sondheim was the driving force behind some of Broadway’s most beloved shows. Final Interview: Days before he died, he sat down with The Times for his final major interview. His Legacy: As a mentor, a letter writer and an audience regular, Sondheim nurtured generations of theater makers. ‘West Side Story’: Does the musical, which features some of the artist’s best-known lyrics, deserve a new hearing? ‘Company’: The revival of his 1970 musical features a gender swap.I think with Sondheim, witnessing the artistic process is part of the whole experience, creation is baked into the actual production. When you’re really attuned to the lyrics and the melodies, you’re thinking about how this possibly could have come about. So you’re constantly aware of the richness of the text and the complexity. For a documentary to just be about that literally: You’re seeing people do things over and over again, you’re getting a glimpse into an aspect of musical production that you probably never would have the chance to see. Pulling the strings and looking becomes part of the text. His musicals are so much about their own construction, so I can’t think of a better film based on Sondheim.Was there a particular piece that you wanted to start this series as a kind of guiding ethos for what you wanted the program to say about his legacy?For me, it was the 1966 television program “Evening Primrose,” which didn’t end up in the program, only because it was impossible to find. I grew to love “Take Me to the World,” which is a song I discovered in a piano book. That show typifies everything that I love about Sondheim: the melodies, the strange subject matter, the weird sources of adaptation, the really idiosyncratic, disturbing, bizarre and beautiful. I wanted that to be the discovery for people.We started with the 2021 “West Side Story” because we want to give people the chance to see it on the big screen, since so many people missed seeing it last December.What is it that makes it so difficult to adapt Sondheim to the screen? There aren’t, with very few exceptions, great screen interpretations of his work that aren’t filmed theater productions.He gives you something that you think you understand. Even with “Into the Woods” (the 2014 film), it’s like, “Oh, it’s a deconstruction of fairy tales.” But that’s really not enough to go on. There’s something really profound going on there about sadness and loneliness that is probably really hard to square with the genre trappings. They’re tricky because he’s always doing two things at once. And when you make a film, filmmakers often focus on the spectacle, not realizing that the spectacle has to be elided. That’s really hard to do in film.I was thinking today about which Sondheim works I wish there were movies of. I never want “Sunday in the Park With George” to be a movie, just by virtue of what it is, how it’s produced, what it’s about. What it’s doing feels so New York stage, it would be so strange.Could you talk about Sondheim and Madonna’s cinematic work in “Dick Tracy”?For me, as a little gay boy with his Madonna “I’m Breathless” cassette tape in 1990, it was the essential thing. Period. “Dick Tracy,” the gruff lantern-jawed masculine comic book detective, just does not interest me. But I remember those songs. It’s one of those things that’s a queering agent. “Dick Tracy” really feels like a hybrid of a lot of different sensibilities. I like the way that Sondheim and Madonna’s contributions help to negate the uber-masculinity of the text.And we have to talk about “The Last of Sheila” (1973), which he co-wrote with Anthony Perkins.That’s a tricky one. It’s interesting that they chose an intricate, whodunit murder mystery plot, because how else would you intelligently funnel this Sondheim complexity and idea of overlapping narratives, characters, themes into a genre film? I think that’s what makes it delightful. With Sondheim you see the gears working without it taking you out of the film. It’s a movie about game playing, in which you’re constantly being asked to size up the people involved. It’s very mechanical in a fun way.And in a nasty way that I love, too.One of the game cards in the film reads, “You are a homosexual.” And the way they talk about it is surprisingly casual and sort of progressive. There’s the idea that this is an accusation. But when it’s revealed, there’s a real casualness about it. It’s surprising for “closeted” — at the time — gay men to write.See It Big: Sondheim runs through May 1 at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens. For more information, go to movingimage.us. More

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      in Television

      Herbert Schlosser, a Force Behind ‘S.N.L.’ and ‘Laugh-In,’ Dies at 95

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      As a top NBC executive, he wrote a memo envisioning the show that became “Saturday Night Live.” He also helped recruit Johnny Carson and oversaw a raft of hit shows.Herbert Schlosser, a longtime NBC executive who put an indelible stamp on the network by negotiating Johnny Carson’s first deal to host “The Tonight Show,” putting “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” on the air and overseeing the development of “Saturday Night Live,” died on Friday at his home in Manhattan. He was 95.His death was confirmed by his wife, Judith Schlosser.Mr. Schlosser was president of NBC in 1974 when he faced a late-night predicament: Carson no longer wanted the network to carry repeats of “Tonight” on weekends. But pleasing Carson, the network’s most important star, led to an inevitable question: What would NBC televise at 11:30 on Saturday nights?Mr. Schlosser wrote a memo in early 1975 that laid out the fundamentals of an original program that would be televised from NBC’s headquarters at Rockefeller Center; would be carried live, or at least taped on the same day, to maintain its topicality; would be “young and bright,” with a “distinctive look, a distinctive set and a distinctive sound”; would “seek to develop new television personalities”; and would have a different host each week.“Saturday Night is an ideal time to launch a show like this,” Mr. Schlosser wrote. “Those who now take the Saturday/Sunday ‘Tonight Show’ repeats should welcome this, and I would imagine we would get much greater clearance with a new show.”A sketch from the first episode of “Saturday Night Live,” seen on Oct. 11, 1975; from left, George Coe, John Belushi, Chevy Chase and Gilda Radner. The formula for the show had been spelled out in a memo by Mr. Schlosser earlier that year.Herb Ball/NBCU Photo Bank, via Getty Images“Saturday Night Live,” originally called just “Saturday Night” — which followed much of Mr. Schlosser’s formula, and which was produced, then as now, by Lorne Michaels — made its debut on Oct. 11, 1975, after Game 1 of the World Series, between the Red Sox and Cincinnati Reds. Mr. Schlosser had attended the game in Boston with Bowie Kuhn, the strait-laced baseball commissioner, and invited him to his hotel room to watch.“He didn’t laugh. And I thought, ‘Well, that’s Bowie,’” Mr. Schlosser recalled in “Live From New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of ‘Saturday Night Live’ as Told by Its Stars, Writers, and Guests” (2002), by James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales. “And then after a while, he started to chuckle. And then he’d actually laugh. And I figured, ‘Well, if he likes it, it’s going to have a wider audience than most people think.’”Mr. Michaels, in a phone interview, said that Mr. Schlosser had been a staunch backer of the show.“We wouldn’t have been on the air without him,” he said. “‘Live’ was his idea, not mine. He just believed in the show. He protected it.”Mr. Schlosser, a lawyer, had been an executive in NBC’s business affairs department, where he negotiated programming contracts to carry, among other events, the 1964 Summer Olympics from Tokyo and talent deals like ones with the comedian Bob Hope, whose specials were a mainstay of NBC’s prime-time schedule.“There were always kickers to his deals,” Mr. Schlosser told the Television Academy in an interview in 2007. With each new one, NBC had to buy a piece of land from Hope, one of the largest private landowners in California.“We bought it, got capital gains and never lost money on it,” Mr. Schlosser said.In 1966, Mr. Schlosser was named NBC’s vice president for programs on the West Coast, based in Burbank, Calif. Over six years, he was involved in developing numerous shows, among them some with Black stars, like the popular comedian Flip Wilson’s variety series and “Julia,” a sitcom starring Diahann Carroll as a single nurse with a son. He also hired the first woman and the first Black person to be vice presidents in the department.Flip Wilson, left, and Richard Pryor in 1973 on “The Flip Wilson Show,” which Mr. Schlosser had helped develop.Paul W. Bailey/NBCU Photo Bank, via Getty ImagesMr. Schlosser particularly championed “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In,” a fast-paced satirical series that made its debut in early 1968. It was considered outrageous then for the political and risqué humor of its skits, performed by a cast of future stars including Goldie Hawn and Lily Tomlin.George Schlatter, the executive producer of “Laugh-In,” recalled that Mr. Schlosser had protected him from those within NBC who found the show’s content offensive.“Every Tuesday morning there was a parade into his office — censors, lawyers, bookkeepers,” Mr. Schlatter said by phone. “They’d say, ‘Herb, talk to him.’ Then he’d say to me, ‘I promised them I’d talk to you.’ And he’d say, ‘Just keep doing what you’re doing.’”Herbert Samuel Schlosser was born on April 21, 1926, in Atlantic City, N.J. His father, Abraham, owned a furniture store; his mother, Anna (Olesker) Schlosser, was a homemaker.After serving stateside in the Navy, he studied public and international affairs at Princeton University, graduating in 1949. Two years later, he graduated from Yale Law School.He started as a lawyer with a Wall Street firm, but the insurance work there bored him, and he moved to Phillips Nizer Benjamin Krim & Ballon (now called Phillips Nizer LLP), a Manhattan firm with many film and television clients. That experience led to his hiring around 1957 as general counsel of California National Productions, a film, merchandising and syndication subsidiary of NBC. He later became its chief operating officer before moving to NBC’s business affairs department in 1960.Johnny Carson in his first appearance as host of “The Tonight Show,” on Oct. 1, 1962. Mr. Schlosser had led the negotiations that brought him to NBC from ABC.NBCU Photo Bank, via Getty ImagesAs a lawyer with the department, he led the talks to bring Carson to NBC to replace Jack Paar as the host of “Tonight” in 1962. At the time, Carson was with ABC as M.C. of the game show “Who Do You Trust?,” and ABC required him to fulfill the last six months of his contract.Mr. Schlosser said he had agreed to pay Mr. Carson $2,500 a week (about $21,000 today). But when ABC held up his departure, one of Mr. Carson’s agents made a further demand.“He said, ‘Now that you can’t get him, we want more money,’” Mr. Schlosser recalled in the Television Academy interview. “I said, ‘We’re sticking with our price.’”Mr. Schlosser rose steadily at NBC. He was named executive vice president of the television network in 1972; promoted to president a year later; and named president of the National Broadcasting Company, the network’s corporate parent, in 1974 and chief executive in 1977.“He supported quality programs and had an idea that news was probably the most important thing the networks did,” Bud Rukeyser, a former executive vice president of corporate communications for NBC, said in a phone interview. “He gave news the benefit of the doubt. If news wanted a half-hour to do something, the answer was always yes.”But Mr. Schlosser was ousted in 1978 and replaced by Fred Silverman, who had engineered ABC’s rise to first place in prime-time ratings as its chief of programming.Mr. Schlosser’s standing had been hurt by NBC’s inability to produce a new prime-time hit series the previous season and climb out of third place.Shortly before Mr. Schlosser left NBC, the network presented “Holocaust,” a four-part mini-series that he had greenlighted. It won eight Emmy Awards. His main contribution to the project, he said, was persuading the executive producer, Herbert Brodkin, to change the title of the series, which had been called “The Family Weiss,” after some of its main characters.Mr. Schlosser and his wife, Judith, in 2011 at an event held by the Museum of the Moving Image at the Manhattan restaurant Cipriani. Mr. Schlosser was the museum’s first chairman. Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesMr. Schlosser didn’t have to go far for his next job: He was named an executive vice president of RCA, NBC’s parent company. His assignment was to develop software for RCA’s SelectaVision videodisc project. Three years later, he was named to run all of RCA’s entertainment activities, which also included RCA Records (but not NBC).He left in 1985 to become a senior adviser at Wertheim & Company, a Wall Street investment bank, as well as chairman of the planned Museum of the Moving Image, which opened in Queens in 1988. He remained there as either chairman or co-chairman until 2013.In addition to his wife, Judith (Gassner) Schlosser, Mr. Schlosser is survived by his son, Eric, the author of “Fast Food Nation”; a daughter, Lynn Jacobson, a former television executive; five grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.Mr. Schlosser once recalled his certainty that “Saturday Night Live” could be a part of NBC for a long time, just as “Tonight” and “Today” were. Another model of late-night success at NBC under his watch was “The Midnight Special,” a series featuring pop and rock performers, that was broadcast on Fridays after “The Tonight Show” from 1973 until 1981.“NBC had this tradition of succeeding with shows like that,” he told the Television Academy. “To me, it was a no-brainer.” More

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      in Movies

      Which Movie Theaters Are Reopening in New York City? Here’s a Guide.

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeFall in Love: With TenorsConsider: Miniature GroceriesSpend 24 Hours: With Andra DayGet: A Wildlife CameraAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWhich Movie Theaters Are Reopening in New York City? Here’s a Guide.The state says they can resume operations Friday. Some cinemas are saying not so fast; others are eager to welcome audiences. Here’s the latest.The IFC Center in Greenwich Village will welcome back moviegoers starting Friday.Credit…Calla Kessler for The New York TimesMarch 5, 2021Updated 5:49 p.m. ETAlthough movie theaters in most of New York State were allowed to reopen in October, those in its filmgoing capital, New York City, remained closed because of the pandemic. But early last week, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo gave cinemas in the five boroughs the go-ahead, setting an opening date of March 5.Not all theaters are choosing to reopen just yet. Those that do must follow certain guidelines: They are limited to 25 percent of capacity, and an audience cannot exceed 50 people. Moviegoers must wear masks when not eating and must have assigned seats.Certain chains have opened around the country under comparable strictures. AMC plans to open all its theaters this weekend in the city, the country’s second-largest movie market; Regal is holding off until the top market, Los Angeles, reopens. But the guidelines pose special difficulties for New York’s independent theaters and art houses. Below is a roundup of which plan to return on Friday or in the near future and which will stay shut for now.Opening FridayANGELIKA FILM CENTER In the last two decades, Angelika Film Centers have sprung up around the country, but the original Houston Street location, managed by the chain Reading International, will reopen Friday. So will Reading’s two other theaters in the city, the Cinema 1, 2, 3 and the Village East, which have been folded into the Angelika brand and now sell tickets on the same website.“We strongly feel that reopening our cinemas, albeit at a reduced capacity, starts bringing back folks into our cinemas,” Scott Rosemann, the eastern division manager at Reading, said, even if operating now may not generate profits for a while.When you make a purchase online or at a kiosk, the seats surrounding yours will be automatically blocked off to maintain social distance. The theater and its cafe will remain cashless for now to reduce touch points. All screenings will have “preshow greetings” to remind moviegoers of protocols.This weekend, the Angelika will show the likely Oscar contenders “Minari” and “Nomadland,” while Village East will show “Tenet” on 70-millimeter film.IFC CENTER The Greenwich Village theater opens Friday with a robust lineup that includes first-run titles (“My Salinger Year,” “La Llorona,” “The Vigil”); opportunities to catch Netflix features like “Da 5 Bloods” and “Mank” theatrically; and two monthlong series, one called What’d We Miss, featuring acclaimed titles from last year (“Collective,” “Kajillionaire”), and another commemorating the 20th year of IFC Films.“I think everybody was caught a little by surprise by the timing of the announcement” by the governor, said John Vanco, the senior vice president and general manager of the center. The expectation, he said, had been that theaters would open in late spring or summer, and much of the lineup came together over the last week.Some of the rules are similar to other theaters’. But IFC will keep its concession stand closed. In addition, some showtimes will have cheaper tickets to encourage moviegoers to attend at nonpeak times.In perhaps its most distinctive pandemic adjustment, the theater has opted to start features precisely at the listed showtime; if you want to watch the trailers and a short film, arrive early. “We just want people to have kind of control,” Vanco said. “You can see on our website how long a movie is. We run a short film before every feature, and we run trailers like other theaters do, and we would love you to see that stuff. But if you just want to get in and get out,” that’s now possible.NITEHAWK CINEMA These Brooklyn dine-in theaters — in Prospect Park and Williamsburg — are reopening as cinemas on Friday, but they had already reopened as restaurants. “That’s kind of why, even with the short notice, we’ve been able to ramp up to open for the theaters, because it really doesn’t take that many more people to start serving in the theaters,” said Matthew Viragh, Nitehawk’s founder and executive director. Another advantage: The vaccine is available to restaurant workers.Every other row has been blocked off, Viragh said, “and then within the active rows, if you select a seat and purchase those tickets, two seats on either side of you will be blocked off.” At the larger Nitehawk Cinema Prospect Park, only five of seven screens will be operational, to make sanitizing the space easier, and both locations will be closed on Mondays for additional deep cleaning. Patrons will be subject to temperature checks, something Viragh said the theaters had been doing for indoor dining. Anyone who has a temperature or is feeling unwell can get a credit.QUAD CINEMA This Greenwich Village theater is reopening Friday with “My Zoe,” “Night of the Kings,” “Supernova” and “The World to Come.” Revival programming, which the Quad had typically put on one of its four screens, will come later, said Charles S. Cohen, the real estate developer who owns the cinema.The precautions will follow government recommendations and will be “pretty much along the lines of what every other theater is doing,” he added. Concessions will be available.Cohen also owns the national chain Landmark, which began opening theaters in August. (The Landmark at 57 West in Manhattan closed for good during the pandemic, a shuttering Cohen attributed to a combination of causes.) The capacity issues in the short term do not faze him. “There are films that need to reach an audience, and we are doing what we can to present those films to the filmgoing community that we think very much enjoys film in a theater,” he said.Still, another of his ventures, the distributor Cohen Media Group, has a backlog of 10 films. The holdup? Waiting for theaters in Los Angeles to return.Opening LaterALAMO DRAFTHOUSE The Downtown Brooklyn location of the dine-in chain has no date for reopening yet, but it will happen in the “very near future,” said Tim League, a founder and executive chairman of the company, based in Austin, Tex. (Separately, the company announced this week that it had filed for Chapter 11 and was undergoing a major financial restructuring, but an Alamo spokesman said that would affect neither the reopening date nor the continued development of new theaters in Lower Manhattan and Staten Island.)“We have started the opening process,” League said of the Brooklyn location. “It’s just a little more complicated for us because we have a big kitchen facility. We have a lot of hiring to do, and we’ve implemented some safety protocols.”Alamo has opened several of its locations across the country at some point since theater closures last March, and it has posted guidelines for moviegoers online. There hasn’t been much change in the number of patrons ordering food, League said, but there have been some changes in the service. The theaters have a reduced menu intended to maintain social distancing for the kitchen staff. Food can be ordered online in advance; pint glasses now have paper lids and silverware is sealed. Of staff training, League said, “We’re treating it like a new venue opening every time we do this.”ANTHOLOGY FILM ARCHIVES The city’s premier experimental-film venue, located in the East Village, has no firm date for reopening yet. “We’re going to sort of take it slow and take a wait-and-see approach,” Jed Rapfogel, the theater’s programmer, said, noting that the organization is keeping an eye on factors like the spread of new Covid-19 variants and the availability of vaccines. “I think the first thing that will most likely happen will be one screening a week or a couple screenings a week.”When theaters shut down last March, Anthology had just sent its program notes for the following three months to the printer. Rapfogel still hopes to play some of what was on that “ghost calendar,” including a near complete retrospective of the filmmaker Michael Snow — a “long overdue and major event,” Rapfogel said. But some series, he said, “you don’t want to present until you can have 100 percent capacity.” The theater’s online screening program, which has had many free offerings, remains active.BAM “A reopening date is yet to be determined,” Lindsay Brayton, a spokeswoman for this Brooklyn institution’s film division, said by email. “We’re looking forward to opening with the highest level of safety in place.”FILM AT LINCOLN CENTER “We expect a spring opening will be possible — I can’t tell you if that means April, May or June,” said Dennis Lim, the director of programming for Film at Lincoln Center and the New York Film Festival. The lack of a firm date is a function of several factors. The organization has three screens in two buildings; it is also part of the larger Lincoln Center campus, which remains mostly closed. In addition to making sure that staff can return to work safely, Lim said, “we’re getting feedback from our members about their comfort levels at this stage.”The lineup for the organization’s virtual cinema is mapped out for the next several months; some films could play on both the digital platform and theatrically after the reopening. Down the road, moviegoers may have a chance to top off last fall’s largely virtual New York Film Festival with selections that didn’t make sense to show online: “The Works and Days,” which runs eight hours, and a restoration of the Polish classic “The Hourglass Sanatorium.”FILM FORUM This is the only nonprofit theater in the city that gave a specific date for reopening: April 2. The programming at the Greenwich Village cinema will include “The Truffle Hunters” and the new Pedro Almodóvar short “The Human Voice,” showing with his 1988 film, “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.” There will also be a revival of Federico Fellini’s “La Strada.”Karen Cooper, Film Forum’s director, said upgraded HVAC filters had been installed, and the ticketing system had been reprogrammed so that moviegoers can reserve seats online. The concession stand will be closed, and masks must be worn at all times. Expect industrial-strength rubber bands to prevent you from sitting where you shouldn’t.Cooper acknowledged the drawbacks of the state’s 25 percent capacity restriction. “It’s totally not economical,” she said with a laugh. “It’s a bigger money-loser to be open than to be closed. But the bottom line is, we’re a nonprofit. We exist for a purpose. We really believe that our job is to show these movies.”The expansive retrospectives for which Film Forum is famous will have to take a back seat for now, though. “You really can’t show a 40-film festival over a three-week period to houses that are 25 percent capacity,” Cooper said. Also, many archives around the world remain closed.But at least one series disrupted by the pandemic has a chance at a reprise, she said: 35-millimeter prints from The Women Behind Hitchcock, a series that had been set to end last March 19, are still sitting on the floor of the projection booth.MAYSLES CINEMA This Harlem venue has no reopening plans yet “due to continued concern for the health of our community” and the overhead cost of operating a single screen at limited capacity, said Annie Horner, a programmer and spokeswoman for the theater. Maysles Cinema normally seats about 60, which makes the 25 percent cap a difficult proposition.METROGRAPH This Lower East Side two-screen cinema did not comment beyond a statement: “While we can’t wait to see everyone, we must evaluate all the details — safety and logistical — for our team and audiences. We’ll be in touch soon with more updates.” The theater remains closed for now, and it plans to continue streaming titles on its virtual platform after reopening.MUSEUM OF MODERN ART The museum itself reopened in August, but its movie theaters are still closed for now. “The methods we had developed for a potential reopening last summer or fall, when I think all of us were hoping cinemas could reopen, they don’t really apply I think the same way anymore,” said Rajendra Roy, the chief film curator. He cited both advances with vaccines and questions surrounding new variants.While the museum has now had the experience of being open during the pandemic, Roy said, translating what happens in galleries to the theatrical experience isn’t straightforward. “It’s not a direct overlay in terms of procedures and time spent in one area,” he said. The staff has mapped the cinemas and even with the capacity restrictions can fit in a “decent” number of moviegoers. Still, he wants to avoid a situation in which there are “crickets in the room because there’s not a comfort level yet in coming back.” He’s envisioning reopening with something that will be a “delight” to watch on a big screen.In the meantime, MoMA started a virtual cinema in December, and Roy feels “it’s been curatorially representative of what we would hold ourselves to.” (Currently streaming: Two rediscoveries from 1930s France that MoMA had included last year in To Save and Project, a film preservation series.)If the theaters had reopened in 2020, Roy said, “I don’t know that we would have even built the virtual cinema.” Now, “it’s going to be a permanent feature of our offerings.”MUSEUM OF THE MOVING IMAGE “Our goal has been to open our entire facility — our theaters and our galleries — in tandem, and to do so this spring,” said Carl Goodman, the Queens museum’s executive director. But moviegoers who are looking for something to watch this weekend can attend the Queens Drive-In in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, which reopens for a new season tonight, and which the museum runs with Rooftop Films and the New York Hall of Science. Programming is planned through June, at least.When the museum returns, so will its exhibit “Envisioning 2001: Stanley Kubrick’s Space Odyssey,” which has been extended through September. The disrupted programming that accompanied the exhibit — screenings of “2001: A Space Odyssey” and related films — will also continue.“I’m very, very confident in our airflow adjustments,” Goodman said, adding, “We need staff and visitors to be safe and feel safe.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More