Film Forum is a nonprofit movie theater at 209 West Houston Street in

Greenwich Village Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

. It began in 1970 as an alternative screening space for independent films, with 50 folding chairs, one projector and a $19,000 annual budget. Karen Cooper became director in 1972. Its current

cinema (on Houston Street, west of Sixth Avenue) was built in 1990. Film Forum is a 4-screen cinema open 365 days a year, with 280,000 annual admissions, nearly 500 seats, 60 employees, 4500 members and an operating budget of $5 million. Film Forum is the only autonomous nonprofit cinema in New York City and one of the few in the

United States of America The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territo ...

. In 1994, Film Forum was honored with a Village Award by the

Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation Village Preservation (formerly the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, or GVSHP) is a non-profit organization which advocates for the preservation of architecture and culture in several neighborhoods of Lower Manhattan, New York. ...

, even though it is technically in Soho. In 2018, Film Forum had a major renovation, adding new seats (and in turn, more leg room) and a fourth theater.

Programming

Film Forum presents two distinct film programs. Premieres of American independents and foreign art films, programmed by Karen Cooper and Mike Maggiore, and repertory programming, which includes foreign and American classics, genre works, festivals, and directors' retrospectives, programmed by

Bruce Goldstein Bruce Goldstein (born July 5, 1952) is a New York City based film programmer, distributor, documentarian, writer, producer, and publicist. He is best known for his work as the repertory programmer for Film Forum in New York. The magazine '' Time O ...

. In January 2013 Goldstein started a series called Film Forum Jr. which shows a classic films appropriate for children and their parents.

Reputation

Filmmakers such as Agnès Varda,

D. A. Pennebaker Donn Alan Pennebaker (; July 15, 1925 – August 1, 2019) was an American documentary filmmaker and one of the pioneers of direct cinema. Performing arts and politics were his primary subjects. In 2013, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sci ...

Christopher Nolan Christopher Edward Nolan (born 30 July 1970) is a British-American filmmaker. Known for his lucrative Hollywood blockbusters with complex storytelling, Nolan is considered a leading filmmaker of the 21st century. His films have grossed $5&nb ...

, Kelly Reichardt,

Ramin Bahrani Ramin Bahrani ( fa, رامین بحرانی; born March 20, 1975) is an American director and screenwriter. Film critic Roger Ebert ranked Bahrani's ''Chop Shop'' (2007) as the sixth-best film of the 2000s, calling him "the new director of the ...

and many others have praised the theater and its programming. Director and actor André Gregory said in 2022, “If New York lost the Statue of Liberty, it would not be a real loss, but if Film Forum disappeared, it would be absolutely heartbreaking.”

References

External links

*{{Official website, http://www.filmforum.org 1970 establishments in New York City Cinemas and movie theaters in Manhattan Repertory cinemas Greenwich Village

Programming

Reputation

See also

References

External links