While Netflix is busy selling tickets to see its own material at the Paris Cinema over on 55th Street—allowing the doors to remain open—nobody on the West Side is attempting to re-float the shuttered art house Lincoln Plaza Cinema whose landlord (“a very generous man. But not when it comes to money,” said his lawyer) essentially serviced its closure.
But from the Lincoln Plaza group emerged three or four energetic seventy and eighty-something year olds who closed a deal on a darling little 72-seat screen around the corner at Macaulay Honors College, on West 67th.
Their mission is once again to show independent, foreign and classic films so, for film buffs who revere the likes of Federico Fellini, Jean-Luc Godard, and Satyajit Ray, this new location is the place to go.
In addition—and already scheduled—are many personal appearances by filmmakers as well as online talk-back sessions (for example, on films such as Atlantic City, Citizen Kane, Lolita, Singing in the Rain, Groundhog Day ad many, many others).
The silver lining is marginally tarnished by the fact that New Plaza is good to go with the College only until May 2023, at which everyone will re-huddle to chart a future course.
It is reported that the ushers and ticket crew are eighty and ninety-something year olds. Maybe it’s the New York water. Or maybe the new marijuana laws.
Proof of vaccination/masks are required inside the College building.
