The Walter Reade Theater celebrating 25 years

Most of the screenings of the FSLC that I've watched since 2005 have been here. It's the best place to watch a movie in New York, even if the seats could do with a revamping. I've seen a lot of great filmmakers and film people on stage, lately Isabelle Huppert with Mia Hansen-Love and Paul Verhoeven. We'll miss Glenn Raucher, Director of Theater Operations, who as I reported last month has moved on to the Hudson Valley Writers Center. That day with Isabelle was his last on the job. 3

New York, NY (November 18, 2016) – The Film Society of Lincoln Center announces a celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Walter Reade Theater, which remains one of the city’s premier cinema venues, this December.

Though the Film Society of Lincoln Center was founded in 1969, it would take 22 more years before the organization had its own theater for showing movies all year round. In December 1991, the Walter Reade Theater finally opened in a former school building on the Lincoln Center campus already occupied by the Juilliard School and the School of American Ballet, among other organizations. The first screenings included Pedro Almodóvar's High Heels; Orson Welles’s 1952 Othello; A Brief History of Time, Errol Morris’s portrait of Stephen Hawking; and the 1949 musical On the Town, directed by Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly. The diversity of these initial selections anticipated the programming philosophy that persists today: films new and old, foreign and Hollywood, provocative and purely enjoyable.

FSLC is thrilled to celebrate this 25th anniversary with a special evening of events on Thursday, December 8 that includes two free 35mm screenings of essential films that speak to the mission of the theater and of the Film Society of Lincoln Center: On the Town, the first film ever screened publicly in the venue, and John Cassavetes’s Shadows, both originally presented as part of the Walter Reade’s inaugural series “Great Beginnings: First Films by Great Directors.” Prior to the double feature, there will be a prosecco toast for all attendees and an extended introduction by the two people leading the organization in 1991, who were instrumental in the theater’s opening: former Executive Director Joanne Koch and Program Director Richard Peña.

Additionally, in the spirit of the celebration, the opening days of FSLC’s two December repertory series—Life Is a Dream: The Films of Raúl Ruiz on December 2, and Going Steadi: 40 Years of Steadicam on December 16—will revert back to the Walter Reade Theater’s original 1991 ticket pricing: $5 for members, and $7 for students/seniors/public. More surprises will be added in the coming weeks.

Free tickets for the December 8 screenings will be distributed at the Walter Reade Theater box office on a first-come, first-served basis starting 30 minutes prior to showtime. Discounted tickets for the Ruiz and Steadicam opening day screenings, featuring the 1991 pricing, will be available online and at the Film Society box offices.