karen cooper carte blanche 40 years of documentary premieres at
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karen cooper carte blanche 40 years of documentary premieres at
Karen Cooper Carte Blanche David Corio, 1995 40 Years of Documentary P r e m i e r e s at “If critics reviewed theaters as well as performances, Film Forum would be ablaze with countless stars. This much-loved movie house is described by film buffs as a city treasure, a hipster’s paradise, a model for cinemas worldwide... as sophisticated and idiosyncratic as the films shown within.” – New York’s Unique & Unexpected Places (2009) “Film Forum: Our idea of heaven” – “150 New York Essentials” issue, Time Out NY (2008) “Now ensconced in its new triplex on West Houston Street, the Film Forum is New York’s most prestigious, active and venturesome art-film theater.” - John Rockwell, The New York Times (1992) “We may someday look back with gratitude at Film Forum’s repertory operation as a golden age unto itself.” – Philip Lopate, The New York Times (2000) “The city’s top art-house theater” – Rachel Wharton, Daily News (2008) “Film Forum is a city treasure. No other New York theater has Film Forum’s range — a mix of arcane and popular, avant– Andrew Sarris, garde and retro. And no other New York Observer (1989) theater has the power of Film Forum’s imprimatur. As a venue, Film Forum exerts an influence far beyond Manhattan. Not only does a screening there ensure national attention but the theater’s inventive programming has been imitated by media centers across the nation. I’ve discovered — or rediscovered — more great things at Film Forum than I could ever possibly list.” – J. Hoberman, Departures Magazine (2008) For Bruce Goldstein My brilliant colleague for more than two decades, who has established an extraordinary, peerless repertory program. Without Bruce’s superb taste, dedication, passion and encyclopedic knowledge of film — so much of what Film Forum is today could never have been. “New York’s most nourishing cinema” – Stephen Schiff, Vanity Fair (1988) “Film Forum is an oasis.” – David Denby, The New Yorker (1998) “Film Forum, the town’s invaluable rep house” – Richard Corliss, Time Magazine (1999) ROBIN HOLLAND “A moviegoer’s landmark” A Walk Through Film Forum In the many years I have been taking a seat in its theaters — and, for the last seven years, having THE CITY OF NEW YORK had one on its board of directors — this movie OFFICE OF THE MAYOR NEW YORK, NY 10007 house has branded my brain as the pre-eminent American venue for independent film. Film Forum is February 3, 2010 a national treasure not only because it celebrates the importance of film in our culture but also because it that shows movies, sells popcorn, and causes embarrassments of delight th It is a great pleasure to welcome all those celebrating the 40 anniversary of Film Forum. Since the days of the Nickelodeon, New York City has been both a vital film production center and a magnet for movie fans, boasting more specialized cinemas than any town in America. Today, true to its rich cinematic tradition, New York remains a capital of cinematic innovation. So I couldn’t imagine a better home for Film Forum. Since 1970, this organization has provided a showcase for an array of films from around the world, from documentaries and restorations to new, experimental works. And even as the cinema has expanded over the years, its vital mission—to present a diverse range of movies regardless of their box-office potential— has remained unchanged, and the organization continues to make invaluable contributions to our City’s cultural life. On behalf of movie-lovers from throughout the five boroughs, I am proud to applaud everyone involved with Film Forum on their tremendous accomplishments over the past 40 years—and send my best wishes for even greater success on the horizon. in the dark can also fulfill the charter of a non-profit arts organization. Resolving the creative conundrum of balancing commerce and art has been one of Film Forum’s biggest challenges and accomplishments. For 40 years, Film Forum’s crack programmers have sought out the best in cinematic art without bowing to the compromises of commerciality. Film Forum is a leader for art house theaters around the country and provides a key point of entry for independent distributors to connect audiences with both the future of film and its past glories. One of Film Forum’s greatest assets is its large, loyal audience base, built up and continuously fortified by the distinguished programming selections of Karen Cooper, Bruce Goldstein and Mike Maggiore. For a boutique distributor or an indie filmmaker with no Sincerely, distributor (yet), a slot on a screen on West Houston Street levels the playing field against the juggernaut of the Hollywood-stuffed megaplex. Michael R. Bloomberg Mayor Film Forum has democratized and energized the business of independent film, making it healthier and more sustainable — and it boasts the best popcorn in town. It’s no wonder that on the national landscape, Film Forum projects itself much like its films, as an institution that’s larger than life. In the history of cinema, this New York movie house will always have a footprint much larger than its shoe size. May it march on… – Richard Lorber Chairman of the Board, Film Forum 2 3 ROBIN HOLLAND creates a culture of film. Some wonder how any place Dear Friends: Karen Cooper Interviewed Then what? I wanted to widen Film Forum’s scope. I went to Cannes, to Oberhausen (a noted festival of short films), and Berlin. I brought a more international How did you come to run a movie theater? As a child were you perspective to what we showed. And I worked movie-crazy? hard to market the films so there would be more Not at all. I was drawn to dance, theater, literature, painting... all to a than a half-dozen people sitting on those folding much greater degree than to movies. Probably my most vivid childhood chairs. The fact that the NY Times covered these memory was as a teenager, in standing room, at the Metropolitan shows was critical in attracting a larger audience. Opera (the old one) seeing Nureyev and Fonteyn dance Romeo and Ironically, in the early 1970s, no other publication Juliet. That and attending the rehearsal of the Ed Sullivan show when wrote about our movies. the Beatles performed, seeing Ian Holm in Pinter’s The Homecoming, I also brought a strong political commitment to and experiencing the excitement of Jerome Robbins’s West Side Story. the programming. The civil rights and the anti- Growing up in NYC, I felt I had the opportunity to experience the best of Fall 1972 calendar everything. The Museum of Modern Art, before it underwent its several Vietnam War movements played a critical part in my growing up. Werner Herzog once said that he was concerned with expansions, felt homey and safe. beauty, but maybe justice was closer to what he was shooting for. This notion of justice is key to a lot of my thinking. Ok, so how did you end up as Director of Film Forum? I was working for a now-defunct film magazine — the only job in “the How did you learn to run a movie house? arts” I could get in the recessionary early ’70s, when I met the young Incrementally. It was a very small enterprise for many years: myself man who was running a tiny 50-seat screening room, in a walk-up and a projectionist. I sold the tickets and made the coffee. The budget space on the Upper West Side. I liked the films he was showing. was $19,000/year. Today it’s I liked the feeling that one didn’t have to be among the cognoscenti $4.4 million. to attend. Peter Feinstein told me he planned to done so). He offered me “the business” — downtown essentially a suitcase filled with carbon copies Theater. SoHo was becoming a of his letters to filmmakers — and a rubber destination for artists. I still only stamp (he didn’t have stationery). I knew I ran movies on weekends. Then could write equally cogent letters, and while I had a very limited background in film, it seemed to be a question of applying the same critical point of view to movies as I had learned to do with literature and so much else. 4 George griffin In 1975 I moved Film Forum Geraldine de Haugoubart move on (co-founder, Sandy Miller had already to the Vandam in 1980, with a Ford Foundation loan, I built a twin cinema on Filmmaker Robert Breer’s jaunty multi-sided mural enhanced our Watts Street cinema. Now demolished, it can be glimpsed briefly in Jonathan Demme’s SOMETHING WILD (1986). Watts Street which remained in operation through 1989. On Watts Street I began to run 5 we’re seeking. Speaking for myself, I respond to films that do what all good art does: it makes you feel and it makes you think. It’s made with passion; it has a point of view, craftsmanship, and energy. Years ago someone referred to me as a “generalist” and initially I was offended. Then I realized that my diverse interests is one of the strengths I bring to programming: American policy, the environment, theater, fashion, psychology, women’s rights, painting and sculpture, history, architecture, international affairs, human rights. I am as intrigued by REICHSAUTOBAHN, a documentary on how the Nazis used something as mundane as the construction of a superhighway to create incredibly effective fascistic propaganda — as ASYLUM (actually the first movie I ever played, in the fall of 1972), an inside look at R.D. Laing’s therapeutic community. Why focus on documentaries for your 40th anniversary show at NANCY CAMPBELL MoMA? When I was putting together a list of titles with which to approach the museum’s curatorial staff, I couldn’t help but notice how many were Robert Redford was our guest speaker at the Century Club in December 1980, at an event designed to raise money to build the Watts Street cinema. Architect Stephen Tilly is seen here as Redford and I check out his construction model. documentaries. Clearly that’s where my heart is. I think real life is a lot more complicated, nuanced and exciting than jewelry heists, prostitutesturned-society-ladies, drug deals gone wrong... movies every day of the year. We finally had a marquee. Bruce Goldstein Michael Moore has had a tremendous impact on the public’s notion of what a joined me in late 1986 and developed an incredibly far-reaching repertory documentary can be. But until the early 1990s, documentaries (“the d-word”) program. But when the building was demolished, we had to rebuild. We were considered box office poison. Audiences equated them with the most opened exactly one year later in September 1990, on West Houston didactic how-to movies (how to avoid venereal disease or car accidents) or Street, now with three screens. with celebrity-narrated social issue films. Documentaries that work theatrically tell stories every bit as dramatic as fiction. It is so difficult to garner financial Where do you find these movies? What do you look for in a film? support to make an independent film that, inevitably, the documentary Mike Maggiore and I co-program the premieres. We attend festivals filmmaker is someone with a passion born of personal experience, political throughout the year (Toronto, Cannes, Berlin, Amsterdam, Sundance, zeal, and perhaps the sense that a tremendous amount is riding on revealing among others) and we actively pursue work we read about in a spate some aspect of human behavior or bringing public attention to a planetary of publications. Filmmakers, distributors and sales agents who have peril. A strong documentary engages the emotions as well as the intellect. screened with us return with new movies. It is an ongoing treasure hunt, It fashions characters and tells stories with the shape and pacing of great the best part of the job. But we don’t have preconceived notions of what fiction. Documentaries can make us laugh and cry and think. 6 7 What’s with all the Nazi movies? that have minimal involvement with the efforts that go into promoting the Our MoMA show includes a small sampling (REICHSAUTOBAHN, films they play. There is a misconception that when a film premieres with THE LIBERATION OF AUSCHWITZ, TERRORISTS IN RETIREMENT, us and does particularly well, that we “lucked out.” Not so. THE ARCHITECTURE OF DOOM) of the movies dealing with WWII and the Holocaust that we’ve premiered [Note: Film Forum has also premiered films on the Khmer Rouge, the gulags, Rwanda, the Rape of Nanking, Katyn, the “disappeared” of Chile and Argentina, Hiroshima, the Ukrainian famine, et alia.] The Nazis are a particularly compelling phenomenon (see Susan Sontag’s “Fascinating Fascism”) because the horrors they perpetrated were committed with elaborate calculation Our nonprofit status allows us to raise money from public agencies (the National Endowment for the Arts, the NYS Council on the Arts, NYC’s Department of Cultural Affairs) and private sources (foundations, corporations, individuals). Donations are tax-deductible. As a nonprofit we have the luxury of being able to take risks, of showing films we believe in, but for which we have little expectation of box office success. by an educated, sophisticated people. These films plumb the depths of evil — and in rare instances, the What are the biggest changes you’ve seen in the movie business... extraordinary courage and altruism of other than people coming to documentaries? those who resisted. Such extremes The biggest changes are about technology: In 1986 VHS became of behavior set parameters within readily available. It had an immediate, negative effect on our bottom line which each of us makes innumerable because renting tapes was such a novelty. Our business took a big hit, choices throughout our lives. The most but then it came back. On the other hand, VHS made previewing work significant documentaries on Nazis, simple and cheap. Previously I looked at cumbersome 16mm prints, a like those on any subject, resonate far logistical nightmare. And DVDs are even more convenient. They make beyond their ostensible subject. As it possible to see films from around the world year-round, without ever viewers it is for us to see past the trees, leaving your monitor. past the forest, to the horizon beyond. REICHSAUTOBAHN Film Forum is a nonprofit. How does it differ from commercial movie houses, from other art houses? Being nonprofit is a function of the way we were conceived: as a cultural entity whose priority is the quality of the work we show, not the bottom line. Film Forum staff does a lot more than just select movies that end There is a notion that home viewing threatens the movie business — perhaps in suburbia, but not in a city like New York. Eating at home is more convenient and less expensive than going to a restaurant; that hasn’t put restaurants out of business. Movies remain a social event. The experience of a large screen and an excited audience will always be different from sitting at home. up on our screens. We’re involved in every aspect of the opening, Like most smallish businesses, computers have had an enormous impact. working with the distributor (and often directly with the filmmaker) to They allow small businesses to accomplish things with a speed and create marketing materials. We write press releases and organize press sophistication that were once the exclusive province of big business. We screenings, create ads and lobby displays; we produce detailed calendars send an e-newsletter to nearly 48,000 people weekly. Fund-raising is a and mail out tens of thousands of them. We use Facebook and Twitter trickier issue. But, again, we are able to reach more people and ask even to promote our movies. Commercial cinemas are essentially “venues” those who cannot afford to be major donors for modest contributions. 8 9 Finally, digital projection has been What do you do when you’re not working? a huge boon. We show films in I read and travel. Recently I finished Sonya Chung’s Long For This World. 35mm, digibeta and HDCAM. It’s a first novel, to be published this spring: a subtle and nuanced story of Filmmakers are working with a Korean-American family. I love anything written by Doris Kearns Goodwin: digital cameras that are cheaper her book on the Roosevelts, No Ordinary Time, is brilliant. And I’m devoted and lightweight (and thus have to the DSM-IV (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), greater a 900-page guide to every dysfunctional personality imaginable. particularly ROBIN Holland portability, critical for documentaries). In terms of the numbers of films produced each year, there are easily two or three times the amount of Recently I went to Busan (Southern tip of Korea) for an international film festival (well, I guess that qualifies as work) and I attend festivals in Poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko was joined by Warren Beatty when we premiered his semi-autobiographical feature, THE KINDERGARTEN, in February 1986. Amsterdam and Berlin annually (more work). “product” from when I began in the early ’70s. Many mediocre films open Any secret joys to running a cinema? theatrically because their producers want some kind of visibility with which to An endless supply of umbrellas. sell the DVD. Much of this work does not deserve the attention of critics or the public, and the tsunami of new films opening in NYC each week makes it that much more difficult for the good ones to be heard above the fray. What are some of your fondest memories? There was the night Yevgeny Yevtushenko, the famed Russian poet, came to the theater to introduce his movie, THE KINDERGARTEN. We invited Warren Beatty to introduce him (they knew each other from Beatty’s movie REDS). Together they were quite a juggernaut. There was the cinema. I introduced him, but bungled his half-dozen titles. Plus the accompanying Secret Service agents became nervous about our strange-looking projectionist. My most satisfying recollection is the first week of opening a full-time cinema on Watts Street in 1980. Here was a street that no one could find, and yet we were able to sell tickets to a lot of wonderful movies as esoteric as our location. How about your worst memories? Usually these relate to either equipment failures or celebrities who are badly behaved: Liza Minnelli and Tony Curtis were bad news. 10 Geraldine de Haugoubart night the King of Sweden introduced a program of new Scandinavian Film Forum staff celebrate the opening of Frederick Wiseman’s LA DANSE: THE PARIS OPERA BALLET at the home of board member Ted Rogers in November 2009. (L-R) Keith Butler, Director of Development; Mike Maggiore, Programmer & Publicist; Chad Bolton, General Manager; Brynn White, Repertory Programming Assistant; Jenny Jediny, Repertory Publicist; Karen Cooper, Director; Elizabeth Barlow Rogers; Frederick Wiseman; Ted Rogers; Adam Walker, Premieres Publicist. 11 Karen Cooper Carte Blanche: 40 Years of Documentary Premieres at Film Forum FEBRUARY 3–20, 2010 Karen Cooper became the director of Film Forum in 1972, two years after its founding as an alternative space for independent cinema on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. For the past twenty years, Film Forum has inhabited its own three-screen movie house in the West Village, where it continues to present an array of international films that confront diverse social, political, historical, and cultural realities. To celebrate Film Forum’s fortieth anniversary and the crucial role Cooper has played in keeping it a vital part of New York’s film culture, the Department of Film invited her to select a number of nonfiction films that premiered at Film Forum. While many of the films are drawn from MoMA’s own collection, some are being loaned to us by distributors and filmmakers, to whom we are grateful. Just a glance at the titles she chose gives a sense of the diversity and richness of Film Forum’s offerings through the years. Cooper supplements several of the screenings with complementary short films, a staple of Film Forum’s cutting-edge programming. The following film descriptions are excerpted from materials written by Cooper for Film Forum’s original presentations. – Laurence Kardish, Senior Curator, Department of FIlm, The Museum of Modern Art, New york Program organized by Laurence Kardish My Architect. 2003. USA. Written and directed by Nathaniel Kahn. Louis Kahn, who in 1974 died bankrupt and alone in New York City’s Pennsylvania Station, is considered by many architectural historians to be the most important architect of the second half of the twentieth century. He left behind a brilliant legacy of intensely powerful and spiritual buildings—geometric compositions of brick, concrete, and light. Kahn’s death laid bare a complex personal life of secrets and broken promises; he led not a double, but a triple life. In addition to his wife and daughter, there were two illegitimate children by two women with whom he maintained long-term relationships. In My Architect, one of these children, Kahn’s only son, Nathaniel, sets out on an epic journey to reconcile his father’s life and work. 116 min. Wednesday, February 3, 4:00 12 John and Karen. 2007. Great Britain. Directed by Matthew Walker. 4 min. Asylum. 1972. USA. Directed by Peter Robinson. R. D. Laing, British author and therapist, has shaken the foundations of traditional psychiatric therapy by treating the schizophrenic experience as a sane response to an insane environment. Robinson and his crew lived in Laing’s therapeutic community in London for six weeks during the spring of 1971. Here is the first filmed record of Laing explaining his theories and the institution which was born of them. There were between fifteen and eighteen people in the community during filming, and it is a tribute to Mr. Robinson’s sensitivity and discretion that he was able to capture their lives with a minimum of interference. 95 min. Wednesday, February 3, 7:30 (introduced by Karen Cooper); Friday, February 5, 4:00 Let’s Get Lost. 1988. USA. Directed by Bruce Weber. Let’s Get Lost, also the name of a long outof-print Chet Baker tune, aptly describes the driving force of this man and his music. His James Dean looks and cool sound set Baker apart from the other musicians of his time and gave a generation of jazz fans a Doomed Youth of their very own. Baker’s life plays out like a Kerouac creation, as did his death (he fell out of an Amsterdam hotel window one Friday the thirteenth). Following the elusive and digressive nature of their star, Weber, cinematographer Jeff Preiss, and the rest of the crew went on the road from the West Coast to the East, to continental Europe, during what turned out to be the last year of the musician’s life. 120 min. Thursday, February 4, 4:00 Under the Brooklyn Bridge. 1955. USA. Directed by Rudy Burckhardt. 15 min. Arguing the World. 1997. USA. Produced, written, and directed by Joseph Dorman. With Daniel Bell, Irving Howe, Nathan Glazer, Irving Kristol. Four of the twentieth century’s leading thinkers believe passionately that ideas can change the world…especially their ideas. And they have been disagreeing with a vengeance since the 1930s, when they sat together as young radicals in the City College cafeteria hashing out the future of Marxism. ARGUING THE WORLD Arguing the World explores the passions, the issues, and the eras that shaped their lives. According to Alfred Kazin, “They were all critics with a capital ‘C’ and they were critics, first and foremost, of each other.” Courtesy First Run Features. 107 min. Thursday, February 4, 7:00; Saturday, February 6, 1:00 Serious Business Company Freude Bartlett founded Serious Business Company in 1972 to distribute a vibrant range of independent experimental, animated, and documentary films. With tremendous panache, she championed the work of more than 60 artists, representing more than 250 titles. This is a sampling of some of the works she helped launch, all of which premiered at Film Forum. Additional details on Freude Bartlett/Serious Business Company and these films appears on pages 20-21. Viewmaster. 1976. USA. Directed by George Griffin. 3 min. Take the 5:10 to Dreamland. 1976. USA. Directed by Bruce Conner. 6 min. 13 The Battle of Chile, Part 2: The Coup d’État. 1976. Chile/Cuba. Directed by Patricio Guzmán. Guzmán recorded the events leading up to the coup (the overthrow of Salvador Allende) and the coup itself in his epic, three-part The Battle of Chile. Part 2: The Coup d’État opens with a botched attempted coup thwarted by troops loyal to the government. The film shows a Left divided over strategy, while the Right methodically lays the groundwork for a military seizure of power. Dramatic concluding sequences document the actual revolution, including Allende’s last radio messages and footage of the aerial bombing of the presidential palace. In English, Spanish; English subtitles. 91 min. Sunday, February 7, 1:30 L’opéra-mouffe. 1958. France. Directed by Agnès Varda. 17 min. The Gleaners and I. 2000. France. Directed and narrated by Agnès Varda. Varda is considered the “grandmother of the New Wave,” a filmmaker who got Karen Cooper and Agnès Varda in October her start in 1954 with La Pointe Courte, edited by Alain 2000 at a party for THE GLEANERS AND I Resnais. Best known in the U.S. for her features Vagabond (1985), One Sings, the Other Doesn’t (1976), and Jacquot (1991), Varda’s work melds literary documentary conventions, the politics of feminism and compassion, and a special whimsy that is all her own. The Gleaners and I continues in the essayist tradition of her earlier films—a warm and witty discourse on, among other things, the nature of our consumerist society and the role of creativity in survival. In French; English subtitles. 82 min. Saturday, February 6, 3:15 Abductees. 1995. Great Britain. Directed by Paul Vester. 11min. Crumb. 1994. USA. Directed by Terry Zwigoff. A riveting picture of the artist whom critic Robert Hughes has called “the Breughel of the twentieth century,” the film explores Crumb’s iconoclastic vision, his sexual obsessions, and his use of taboo images as a response to the “family values” learned at the hands of a brutal father and amphetamine-addicted mother. Interviews with Robert’s brothers Charles and Max, who as children also took refuge in art, complete this darkly funny, haunting look at our culture—at the nuclear family, the artist as sexual outlaw, and the capriciousness of fate as played out in a single family. Courtesy Sony Pictures Classics. 119 min. Saturday, February 6, 8:15 14 © Robert Crumb The Architecture of Doom. 1989. Sweden. Produced, written, edited, and directed by Peter Cohen. Narrated by Bruno Ganz. Using Nazi archival materials (much of which, we believe, is presented [in this work] for the first time), the Swedish filmmaker makes an intellectually provocative case for his thesis that National Socialism was an aesthetic movement—that WWII and the genocide of the Jews and others directly resulted from the Nazis’ perverse notion of “beauty through violence.” Courtesy First Run Features. In German; English subtitles. 119 min. Saturday, February 6, 5:30; Monday, February 8, 8:00 Geraldine de Haugoubart Homage to Magritte. 1975. USA. Directed by Anita Thacher. 10 min. 1970. 1972. USA. Directed by Scott Bartlett. 30 min. The Life and Death of Frida Kahlo. 1976. USA. Directed by Karen and David Crommie. 40 min. Program 89 min. Introduced by Karen Cooper, George Griffin. Friday, February 5, 7:00 The Underground Orchestra. 1998. The Netherlands. Directed by Heddy Honigmann. A glorious documentary profiling musicians who play on the sidewalks of Paris and in the Metro. Honigmann illuminates the lives and music of a ragtag group of international bohemians: an Argentine pianist, Romanian father-and-son violinists, a Venezuelan harpist, and singers from Mali and Vietnam. All are united by their experiences with political repression, and by a luminous spirit and boundless courage that led them to flee any number of horrendous situations throughout the world. Finding refuge in Paris, music becomes their economic lifeline, but as this film makes movingly clear, it is also a shining metaphor for their will to survive. Courtesy Icarus Films. In French, Spanish; English subtitles. 108 min. Sunday, February 7, 3:30; Monday, February 8, 4:30 Reichsautobahn. 1985. West Germany. Produced, written, and directed by Hartmut Bitomsky. In the words of Adolf Hitler, “Where Germany ends, the pot-holes can begin.” Hitler’s Third Reich brought to fruition “the biggest German edifice of all time,” a vast, streamlined highway that crisscrossed Germany and that even today remains a model of modern engineering. Reichsautobahn is composed largely of original, Nazi-produced films and artifacts: newsreels and industrials, how-to movies and The premiere of Patricio Guzman’s THE BATTLE OF CHILE attracted long lines even in the middle of a snowstorm in January 1978 at our Vandam Street cinema. 15 photographic studies, paintings, coffee table books, and souvenirs of every type. Bitomsky uses the autobahn to construct a fascinating case history for his larger, more significant concern, the nature of fascist propaganda. In German; English subtitles. 90 min. Sunday, February 7, 6:00; Wednesday, February 10, 4:00 Vincent: The Life and Death of Vincent Van Gogh. 1987. Australia. Written and directed by Paul Cox. Based on the letters of Vincent van Gogh. Read by John Hurt. Music by Antonio Vivaldi, Gioacchino Rossini, Norman Kaye. Vincent explores the artist’s final ten years through the eloquent letters he wrote his brother Theo. Read by John Hurt, van Gogh’s words vividly describe his early religious impulses, his longing to paint, his relentless poverty, and personal anguish. Cox’s images record the landscapes of Holland and France as the artist might have experienced them and, of course, the glorious paintings themselves. Paul Cox is known for his critically acclaimed features Lonely Hearts, Man of Flowers, My First Wife, and Cactus. (print courtesy Roxie Releasing, San Francisco). 105 min. Wednesday, February 10, 7:00; Thursday, February 11, 4:00 Terrorists in Retirement. 1984. France. Directed by Mosco Boucault. Narrated by Simone Signoret, Gérard Desarthe. The “terrorists” are a handful of now-elderly men who recount their experiences as illegal Jewish refugees who fled Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe for the relative safety of Paris in the early 1940s. As “French” Resistance fighters they carried out the most dangerous assignments, assassinating Nazis on the metro or in the streets. Boucault uncovers considerable evidence that local Communist Party members betrayed them—allowing many to be arrested by the French police and turned over to the Nazis in late 1943. Courtesy the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, New York. In French; English subtitles. 84 min. The Liberation of Auschwitz. 1986. West Germany. Directed and produced by Irmgard von zur Mühlen, Begt von zur Mühlen. A film composed principally of Soviet film footage, shot between January 27 and February 28, 1945, when the Russian troops entered the Auschwitz concentration camp. The footage found its way onto the shelves of Soviet archives, where it remained for some forty years, until the resourceful Von zur Mühlens tracked it down through Alexander Voronstov, the only surviving cameraman from the wartime team. Courtesy Goethe-Institut, New York. English-language version. 60 min. Thursday, February 11, 7:00; Friday, February 12, 4:00 The Smell of Burning Ants. 1994. USA. Directed by Jay Rosenblatt. 21 min. The Atomic Café. 1982. USA. Directed by Kevin Rafferty, Jayne Loader, Pierce Rafferty. The Atomic The Atomic Café Café is a compilation film of government, military, and educational materials produced during the late 1940s and 1950s to sell the atomic bomb to the American public. It is an often funny, often absurd, ultimately chilling film that tells us something about the vulnerability, innocence, ignorance, and arrogance of the post-WWII era. 88 min. Friday, February 12, 7:00; Saturday, February 13, 1:00 Concert of Wills: Making the Getty Center. 1997. USA. Directed by Susan Froemke, Bob Eisenhardt, Albert Maysles. With Richard Meier, John Walsh, Harold M. Williams, Stephen Rountree. Los Angeles’s Getty Center, a sprawling, six-building hillside complex fourteen years in the making, was to be the architectural vision of renowned architect Richard Meier. Meier’s runins with San Diego artist Robert Irwin, commissioned to design the central garden (and to “shake things up a bit,” in the words of one Getty VP); with French architect Thierry Despont, brought in to add color and warmth to the building’s interior; and with Getty executives themselves, who fear that “Richard seems almost to have a hostility toward comfort,” make for wonderful, mesmerizing high drama. 100 min. Saturday, February 13, 3:15 THE WAR ROOM 16 The War Room. 1993. USA. Directed by D. A. Pennebaker, Chris Hegedus. The film is an endlessly fascinating look inside the shrewdest, funniest, most sophisticated political machine ever. It was made possible by the filmmakers’ unique degree of access to James Carville and George Stephanopoulos—Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign’s master strategists—and their inner sanctum, “the war room.” The two prove wonderfully dramatic complementary forces: George, a darkly handsome, winsome, and serious thirty-one-year-old former Rhodes Scholar; James, a sly, passionate, expletive-spewing Cajun. 96 min. Saturday, February 13, 5:30 17 La Soufrière. 1977. Germany. Directed by Werner Herzog. The filmmaker visits Guadeloupe on the eve of the threatened eruption of the island’s volcano, La Soufrière. 30 min. Lessons of Darkness. 1992. Germany/France/Spain. Written, directed, and narrated by Werner Herzog. A lyrical meditation on the ecological and human destruction begat by the Gulf War. Herzog brings an artist’s eye and a philosopher’s sensibility to this previously untold tale of modern horror. Extraordinary helicopter cinematography records a science fiction-like scenario as countless Kuwaiti oil fields blaze out of control and millions of tons of oil pour into the sea. 50 min. Saturday, February 13, 7:45; Monday, February 15, 4:00 foreign correspondent based in Paris, Rubbo visits with a host of French opinionmakers—journalists, writers, politicians. and philosophers who represent the vociferous, fragmented voices of the French Left, including the dazzling Bernard-Henri Levy. Courtesy the National Film Board of Canada. In French; English subtitles. 87 min. Sunday, February 14, 3:30 ROBIN HOLLAND Frank Film. 1973. Directed by Frank Mouris, Caroline Mouris. 9 min. Paris Is Burning. 1990. USA. Directed by Jennie Livingston. With Pepper Lebeija, Willi Ninja, Octavia Saint Laurent, Venus Xtravaganza. An intimate exploration of the fiercely competitive, wildly creative, and outlandishly extravagant world of Harlem drag balls. Outweek writes, “Paris Is Burning is that rare find: a documentary that combines drama, sociology, culture, and history into a powerful, passionate, and entertaining package.... A younger generation of gay black men have transformed their oppressive reality into an intricate world of glamour and fantasy.” Winner of the 1990 L.A. Film Critics’ Award for the Best Documentary and co-winner for Best Documentary at the 1991 Sundance Film Festival. 78 min. Sunday, February 14, 1:30 Colette. 1951. France. Directed by Yannick Bellon. 30 min. Solzhenitsyn’s Children Are Making a Lot of Noise in Paris. 1979. Canada. Written and directed by Michael Rubbo. With Louis-Bernard Robitaille. Solzhenitsyn’s Children was filmed almost ten years after the events of May 1968—the largest general strike in French history and the Soviet invasion of Prague. The structure is simple: with the aid of Robitaille, a French-Canadian Karl May. 1974. West Germany. Written and directed by Hans-Jürgen Syberberg. With Helmut Käutner, Käthe Gold, Kristina Söderbaum, Mady Rahl. The film reflects its director’s now-famous obsession with the major figures who have shaped twentiethHans-Jürgen Syberberg century German history and consciousness. Karl May (1842–1912), a one-time convict, was the author of an enormously successful series of adventure stories of American Indians, but never visited any of the places he describes in meticulously accurate detail; he further blurred issues of fact and fiction, believing himself to be “Old Shutterhand,” the hero of his imagined tales. 187 min. Sunday, February 14, 5:30; Monday, February 15, 7:00 MICHEL COMTE Domestic Violence. 2001. USA. Directed by Frederick Wiseman. One of Wiseman’s most devastating and compassionate films, Domestic Violence centers on a Tampa, Florida shelter for battered women and their children, and follows the police as they intervene—or find themselves powerless to intervene—in harrowing family disputes. “Some of the women are sullen and abashed and so quiet that they seem to have relinquished the right to be indignant over what has happened to them,” New Yorker critic David Denby observes. “But others are blazingly articulate, their stories leaping from them in magnificent tirades...Domestic Violence is a chronicle of victimization in which the women’s suffering is increased by their knowledge that they have been partly complicit in it... But a termination point has been reached: the women in the shelter have left. The film is fervently devoted to the near-impossible act of walking out.” 196 min. Wednesday, February 17, 6:45; Saturday, February 20, 7:00 Special thanks to Rajendra Roy, the Celeste Bartos Chief Curator of Film, and Laurence Kardish, Senior Curator, Department of Film, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, for their kind help in making this program possible. Paris is Burning 18 19 Freude Bartlett being young and in love in the Bay Area (including the birth of their son The Serious Business Years Elon); VIEWMASTER by George Griffin, at once a paean to the Animal Freude Bartlett’s Serious Business Company’s catalogue, featuring more an elegant, reinterpretation of that artist’s sensibility by a woman who than 250 independently made documentary, animated, and experimental has no problem relating the sensuality of an egg yolk to the beauty of films, had a full page description of THE LIFE AND DEATH OF FRIDA crashing ocean waves; Bruce Conner’s 5:10 TO DREAMLAND, a surreal KAHLO by David and Karen Crommie whose headline read: Do you know compilation of found footage (by the master of this genre) that features this woman? Within a few years, the rest of the world had caught up with among several unforgettable moments: a waking rabbit, set to the haunting Freude’s appreciation of Kahlo’s art and fascination with her stormy life music of Patrick Gleeson; the Crommies’ THE LIFE AND DEATH OF and marriage to Diego Rivera. (Paul Leduc’s FRIDA and Julie Taymor’s FRIDA KAHLO, a film that had particular resonance for Freude because FRIDA were both feature-length dramatizations of her life.) its subject, like herself, overcame a serious physical disability (for Freude, But do you know Freude Bartlett? She was a pioneer distributor of Locomotion series by Eadweard Muybridge and a humorous tribute to the notion of life on the run; Anita Thacher’s HOMAGE TO MAGRITTE, childhood polio) through her prodigious creative gifts. – Karen Cooper cutting-edge films, especially those made by women and from a feminist perspective. Freude loved movies. She made movies of her own and became a distributor, initially to help market the experimental films of Scott Bartlett, her husband. For more than a dozen years, Serious Business Company championed some of the West Coast greats: James Broughton, Jordan Belson, Gunvor Nelson, Pat O’Neill, Robert Nelson, Bruce Conner, Tom DeWitt, Chick Strand, John Knoop, Kathleen Laughlin, Bruce Baillie, Scott Bartlett, James Whitney, Suzan Pitt, Sally Cruikshank, et alia. Freude had a fiercely inquisitive mind and a far-ranging intellect. Her impulse was always to speak truth to power, and the films she felt most strongly about did just that. She had a deep appreciation for life’s absurdities, joys and disappointments and an uncommon degree of courage and fortitude to build a business from movies that had previously been on no one’s radar. She combined wildly impractical, uncompromising idealism with a shrewd sense of marketing and a work ethic and energy level of TERRI P. TEPPER astounding strength. Plus there was an endless supply of charm and a smoker’s deep, throaty laugh. Our program is a tribute to her person and to her accomplishments. It features 1970 by Scott Bartlett, a poetic evocation of the heady joys of 20 Freude Bartlett, 1942 – 2008 21 Acknowledgements and Thanks To my esteemed mentors and predecessors: Amos and Marcia Vogel, founders of Cinema 16, the influential film society that pioneered independent film exhibition from 19471963... To Dan and Toby Talbot, founders of Goldstein, who in 1987 created Film Forum’s repertory program and whose imaginative, tireless, and endlessly creative gifts have informed so much of what we do. To Mike Maggiore, my co-programmer and the head publicist for all of our premieres, since 1994. He has introduced me to aspects of world cinema previously unknown to me and has brought his the legendary New Yorker Theater, and its Geraldine de Haugoubart Thank you to all my colleagues, past and present, especially Bruce successors — Cinema Studio, the Metro, Lincoln Plaza — and the distribution company, New Yorker Films — and their indefatigable right-hand man, Jose Lopez, who could and Marcia and Amos Vogel with Werner Herzog at a party for the premiere of his film, MY BEST FIEND, in November 1999. smart, kind persona to all decisions great and small. did answer any question having to do with film exhibition in the blink of an eye. To our earliest supporters in the press: Roger Greenspun, the New York To the architect who designed and oversaw construction of two Film Times film critic who, with Vincent Canby, established that newspaper’s Forum theaters, on Watts Street in 1980 (with architectural partner Alan commitment to covering our openings. Buchsbaum) and on West Houston Street 10 years later: Stephen Tilly. His thoughtful, playful, graceful designs have made the theater a pleasure To our first financial supporters: Ford Foundation officers Richard Knapp, in which to work. Nancy Boggs and Richard Sheldon who gave Film Forum its major grants in the early 1970s... and to the Ford Foundation for its 2000 grant, To Roger Getzoff and his son, Steve Getzoff, our technical wizards for establishing an endowment fund to help stabilize our financial outlook for the past 30 years, on hand day and night, to deal with any and all issues the years to come ... Barbara Haspiel, from the NYS Council on the Arts, regarding the projection booth. Their ability to keep equipment working who oversaw our earliest public funding and taught me the finer points seven days a week, 365 days of the year, is just this side of magical. of writing a budget... Clara Miller, Executive Director of the Nonprofit Facilities Fund, who provided significant loans toward the construction To our not-quite in-house photographer, Robin Holland, who has so elegantly of our current cinema... The Ostrovsky Family Fund and the Cordelia photographed so many of the filmmakers whose work we’ve played. We Corporation, both of which have provided generous support for our have been fortunate to have her images grace our walls. operations over many years and, most recently, for the purchase and construction of new administrative offices. A complete list of current To our designers: Linda and Kathleen Gates of the Gates Sisters Studio, who have designed all of our advertising, calendars, and graphics since 1990 with skill, smarts, good humor and great speed! 22 GEORGE GRIFFIN funders begins on page 26. To my recently deceased friend Freude Bartlett, who, through her pioneering distribution company, Serious Business, championed experimental, animated and documentary films in the 1970s and ’80. Freude was a brilliant businesswoman Roger Getzoff installs our first 35mm projectors in 1980. whose talent extended to writing, editing, marketing and strategizing all aspects of her business and mine. Her advice 23 and love were invaluable to me and to Film Forum for nearly four decades. A 1 longer appreciation of Freude Bartlett begins on page 20. 2 3 To my family: husband/lover/friend/animator/fixer-of-projectors-in-a-crunch George Griffin. No one else has shared so many mornings of either joyous or disgruntled readings of New York Times movie reviews. Our lives have been filled with walks, talks, travels and much else that would never 4 have been conceivable without him... My daughter, artist Nora Griffin, who was forced to sit through Emile de Antonio’s POINT OF ORDER 5 before I’d let anyone partake in Thanksgiving dinner one year, and who keeps me on my toes by bringing a fresh and lively critical intelligence to everything in her purview. – Karen Cooper 6 New York City, January 2010 7 Mike Maggiore and John Turturro in November 2005, at a party celebrating Turturro’s ROMANCE & CIGARETTES 8 Daniel and Patricia Ellsberg, subjects of THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN IN AMERICA: DANIEL ELLSBERG AND THE PENTAGON PAPERS, at a party for the film’s opening in September 2009 9 Carter Burwell (composer of the music for our trailer) and Steven Shainberg, at a November 2006 party for Shainberg’s feature, FUR. 10 Documentary legend D.A. Pennebaker in October 2000 11 Kelly Reichardt at a party for her film WENDY AND LUCY in November 2008 Geraldine de Haugoubart 12 André Leon Talley (left), Vogue Editor-at-Large, joins Matt Tyrnauer for a Q&A at the premiere of Tyrnauer’s documentary hit, VALENTINO: THE LAST EMPEROR, in March 2009. 24 8 PHOTOS: CHERYL GOTTSCHALL (1-6); , Geraldine de Haugoubart (7-11); Theodore Alexandre (12) opposite page: Images 1-6 are from a benefit gala held at the Puck Building, April 19, 1990, to raise money to build our Houston Street cinema. 1 Garson Kanin and Marian Seldes 2 Christopher Walken 3 George Griffin (left), Karen Cooper, Warrington Hudlin 4 Dana and Christopher Reeve 5 David Johansen leads a conga line. 6 Susan and Howard Kaminsky 7 9 12 10 11 25 Many Thanks to Our 2009 Donors $2,500 - $9,999 Richard & Ronay Menschel Ad Hoc Foundation, Inc. Mertz Gilmore Foundation Yvette J. Alberdingk-Thijm Patrick & Jerilyn Montgomery/ Montgomery-Taber Family Fund Stuart S. Applebaum Michael Barker Hugo Barreca/The Double R Foundation $100,000 & above Donald S. & Jo Ellen Finkel Bernstein Charina Endowment Fund Susan V. Berresford J. Kerry Clayton & Paige Royer Virginia Brody Cinetic Media The Kaplen Foundation M. Graham Coleman Consolidated Edison Company of NY, Inc. National Endowment for the Arts David Corkery Davis Wright Tremaine LLP $50,000 - $99,999 Jeanne Donovan Fisher Mary K. Doris The Carnegie Corporation of NY John Dutton New York State Council on the Arts Richard W. & Carolene S. Eaddy Bruce L. Eder Paul A. Ferrara $15,000 - $49,999 Andrew Fierberg & Guiliana Bruno Kimberley F. & Brian Carlson, In Memory of George Fasel Pannonia Foundation Rohauer Collection Foundation Howard Gilman Foundation Nancy Dine John G. Roche Edward & Marjorie Goldberger Foundation Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation Theodore C. Rogers New York City Department of Cultural Affairs Harry S. Thomson Foundation Ostrovsky Family Fund Norman & Rosita Winston Foundation Adaline Frelinghuysen David Grubin Productions The Robert Halper Foundation Russel Hamilton Norman Hanson & Guy Dauerty Hayes Family Fund Susan G. Jacoby/The Gottesman Fund Elizabeth Kahler David Koepp $10,000 - $14,999 Susan W. Lacy Nancy Chang & Daniel Rossner Alan & Lauren Klein Frances Lear Foundation The Chervenak-Nunnallé Foundation Ellen Levy Foundation Lemberg Foundation Lavinia M. Currier & Joel McCleary The Leyli Foundation Grand Marnier Foundation Mary W. Harriman Foundation New York Times Company Foundation HBO Michael & Donna Sternberg Wayne S. Kabak & Marsha Berkowitz Susan Talbot The J.M. Kaplan Fund Shelly Wanger The Charles & Lucille King Family Foundation Anonymous (1) 26 Francis Levy & Hallie Cohen New York City Department for the Aging New York State Office of Parks and Recreation Caryl B. Ratner Ira M. Resnick Foundation Frank H. Rich & Alex Witchel Max Rifkind-Barron/ The Robert Gore Rifkind Foundation Jane Scovell/Rhoda & Louis Scovell Charitable Foundation Fund Susan Stein Shiva Foundation Daniel & Toby Talbot Jonathan M. Tisch John & Katherine Turturro Gus Van Sant/The Wendy Foundation Sudhir Venkatesh Village Voice Vox3 Films Marissa C. Wesely & Fred Hamerman William Morris Agency Michelle Williams Margo S. Wintersteen/Sand Dollar Foundation Fred Wistow WSK Management, LLC $1,000 - $2,499 Frank J. Anelante Michael Badalucco & Brenda Heyob Donald & Marlena Baraf Eric Bogosian & Jo Bonney Leslie S. Bornstein Paula Botstein & Robert Usadi Mark J. Catalano Mitchell W. Lichtenstein Andrew H. Chapman Liman Foundation Alyce F. Cleese Little Bear, Inc. Eric & Stacy Cochran Richard Lorber & Dovie F. Wingard Joel Coen & Frances McDormand Lorber Media Janet L. Cohen Manhattan Borough President’s Office, Scott M. Stringer León & Michaela Constantiner Nisha Gupta McGreevy Allen Coulter & Kim Knowlton Sandy McLeod & Sam Dryden Cowles Charitable Trust Abhishek Mehta Joseph E. Cosgriff continued on next page 27 Many Thanks to Our 2009 Donors continued from previous page Building Our Cinema Edward & Elena C. Lord Charitable Gift Fund Lutz & Carr Julianne Moore Brooke Devine Beth Rudin DeWoody Lynn H. Ratner Lisabeth During Barbara Rick Isabelle Dushesne David Rivel Susan Farkas Rosemary A. Rotondi Gary J. Firuta Alan & Eileen Sarroff Ella Foshay Arnie Sawyer Steve Friedman & Maggie Buehler Steve Schrader & Lucy Kostelanetz David & Gisela Gamper David Schwartz Foundation Deborah Koons Garcia Neal Shapiro & Juju Chang Richard A. Garvey Leonora M. Shelsey Peter Gethers Cindy Sherman Laurel Gonsalves Kristen C. Siebecker Pamela Grace Paul Singer Alba Greco Jonathan J. Sirota Warren & Andrea Grover John Sloss Jake Gyllenhaal Stephen Soba & Jonathan Arnold/ Grace R. & Alan D. Marcus Foundation Hal Hartley Wendy Keys & Donald A. Pels Jeffrey Levy-Hinte/ Antidote International Films, Inc. Stephen L. Spiegel Peter Straub Sundance Channel Helene Howard P. R. Sundaresan Scott Isler & Laura Piccone Sukey Tamarkin The JKW Foundation Adam Tedman Jocelyn Joson & Steve Hamilton Joel S. Truman Maira Kalman Margo & Anthony Viscusi Howard Kaminsky Ronald & Diane Weinfeld Vincent I. Katz & Vivien Bittencourt Katz Gary Winnick Jonathan S. Lee Nina Winthrop/Lion and Hare Fund John Leff Nancy Workman David O. Leiwant J. Anthony Wright Allan J. Lenzner Judith Wu Stuart E. Leyton Anonymous (10) The Herman Liebmann Foundation Hely Lima & Herbert Zohn Gifts received through Leo Model Foundation December 31, 2009 28 Stephen Tilly Architects Sheila Nevins Liz. & Gus Oliver Charles waller The Dorothy and Mark Nelkin Charitable Fund Jean de Segonzac Robin Holland Yves & Constance de Balmann PETER AARon/ESTO Photographics Daniel M. Neidich and Brooke Garber Foundation PETER AARon/ESTO Photographics Charles E. Culpeper Fund George Griffin John Morning Karen Crennan Drawing by Charles Waller was commissioned by us to illustrate the destruction of our Watts Street cinema for real estate development. 29 Film Forum Board of Directors 1970 – 2010 Jane Alexander Andrew Fierberg Ned Lord David Salle Alice Arlen Adaline Frelinghuysen Jim Mann Peter Saraf Jacqueline L. Bazan Richard Garvey Joy Marcus Marian Schwindeman Liz Berger Seth Gelblum Marian McEvoy Jane Scovell Kathryn McGraw Berry Clark Gesner Nisha Gupta McGreevy Frank Shepard Nancy Boggs Donna Gigliotti Abhishek Mehta Alexandra Shiva Donald Bogle Peter Greer Peter Minichiello Robert Sargent Shriver Vivian Bower David Grubin Patrick Montgomery Raphael D. Silver Belinda Breese Michael Hausman Brenda Moore John Sloss Stanley Buchthal Maureen A. Hayes John Morning Wendy Stein Nan Bush Solange Herter Mira Nair Michael Sternberg David Byrne Henry Hocherman Sheila Nevins Susan Talbot Mary Schmidt Campbell Celeste Holm Susan Newhouse Andrea Taylor John Carlin John M. Irwin Liz Oliver Juliet Taylor Debra Chase Eugene Jarecki Vivian Ostrovsky Kendall Thomas Gray Coleman Wayne Kabak Jeanne Erwin Parks Stephen Tilly Karen Cooper Lawrence Kamerman Robert Parrish John Turturro Lavinia Currier Howard Kaminsky Betsy Davidson Pickering Barbara Van Dyke Leslee Dart Susan Kaminsky Jonathan Reichman Shelley Wanger David M. Davis Ron Kastner Adam Rich Bruce Weber Nancy Dine Tony Kiser Carole Rifkind George C. White Arlene Donovan Alan Klein John Roche Helen Whitney Griffin Dunne Jan Krukowski Michael Roemer Ealan Wingate Richard Eaddy Susan Lacy Theodore C. Rogers Irwin Young Jill Fairchild Rodger Larson Robert Rosen Susan Farkas Lindsay Law Richard Roth Chairpersons are in bold. Brenda Feigen Stan Lawder Paige Royer Current board members in red. Peter Feinstein Richard Lorber, Current Chair Michael Rudell 30 31 “Year after year, the Film Forum brilliantly goes about its job of programming new documentaries, new animation, premieres of American, European, and Asian features, as well as the most interesting revivals in the city.” – David Denby, New York Magazine (1989) “NYC’s finest cinema” PETER AARon/ESTO Photographics – Entertainment Weekly (2005) “Even in its new, comparatively classy home on Watts Street, the Film “The Film Forum that Miss Cooper directs has expanded the city’s cultural riches, earned the plaudits of critics, surrounded the work of independent filmmakers with an air of excitement and introduced the artistry of non-prominent filmmakers to American audiences.” – Lawrence Van Gelder, The New York Times (1982) Forum continues to be one of Manhattan’s most consistently rewarding showcases. Comfortable seats and good projection need not announce a sellout to Philistine film tastes.” – Vincent Canby, The New York TimeS (1982) “You have made New York’s Film Forum a model for other cinemas and cinematheques worldwide... You have created one of the most respected venues in the world.” “The city’s hippest and most essential art house” 209 West Houston Street, New York, NY 10014 ■ TEL: (212) 627-2035 Box Office: (212) 727-8110 E-mail: [email protected] www.filmforum.org © The Moving Image, Inc. / Film Forum 2010 32 DESIGN: Gates Sisters Studio, Inc. – Max Abelson, The New York Observer (2007) – American Film Institute citation to Karen Cooper, awarding her an honorary doctorate (1995) “It is the only theater of its kind in the city, pursuing a double policy of independent first-runs and revivals. In the past decade I have seen more movies that have left a permanent impression on me at Film Forum than anywhere else.” - Luc Sante, Interview (1989) “That appetite for adventurous programming and a willingness to live with the consequences have helped make the Film Forum perhaps the country’s most daring and ambitious presenter of independent, foreign and repertory films, with an influence that reaches far beyond New York City.” − William Grimes, The New York Times (1992)