Nyff 2016

[Chris Knipp]

More about Quad Cinema.

I have mentioned Glenn Raucher has come back to work in the city after a year at Hudson Valley Writers' Center, as Vice President and General Manager of the restored Quad Cinema at 34 W. 13th Street. I went by there last night. It is now an almost scarily impressive restored, modernized and revamped place. So many flashing screens and electronic letters and vanishing images. There are some big old classic European movie posters too. But the traditional seediness of the old art houses is studiously avoided. You can still find that rigorously preserved at the nearby Cinema Village at 22 E. 12th Street, with its steep stairways, cramped quarters, and cold, dank basement auditorium - so atmospheric! So many memories - like my first experience of Carlos Sorin's little movies about Patagonia, 12 years ago.

The Quad is all new and gleamingly electronic, almost banishing the memories of its past, when I also experienced some cinematic discoveries, and it had many small film festivals too, such as Greek and Irish ones, I believe. It has both new films and a lively repertory program, the latter managed by Christopher Wells. It's also flexible enough to now be starting a 20-film retrospective to honor the late Harry Dean Stanton. The series is called "Also Starring Harry Dean Stanton" and runs 22 Sept.-1 Oct. 2017.

The Quad has a rival further downtown in the Metrograph on Ludlow Street in the East Village, which has been running a barrage of series lately - it has a marquee able to list six different movies showing in one da. The Metrograph was started with John Waters and Jim Jarmusch and Greta Gerwig on hand for the opening. It has an intro in GQ by Wes Anderson with the tie designer Alexander Olch, the Metrograph's founder.

This of course doesn't alter the fact that all the rep cinemas that dotted around NYC and the old seedy theaters turned to art houses like the Thalia have vanished - and the same is increasingly true even in the cinematic haven of Paris. Cineplexes have wiped them all out and also an economy that makes operating marginally virtually impossible.

[Glenn's time at Hudson Valley was logical. Writing is a first love, and he directed the literary arts program of the YMCA of New York f or 8 years before joining the Film Society of Lincoln Center. He likes music too, and has had his own band for years.]