In the 1980s, the old model of repertory theatres was dying. Tattered theatres screening classic films became valuable real estate, eagerly acquired by developers. Manhattan’s Thalia, Elgin, Regency and Bleecker Street Cinema all closed. As the VHS market exploded, repertory cinemas no longer had a monopoly on the exhibition of old films. Movie buffs rejoiced at being able to own films for the first time and rent them whenever they pleased. With most repertory houses showing beat-up, scratched prints, the small screen, ironically, often offered a better-quality viewing experience than a theatre.

Established as a home for vintage movies just as New York City’s famous revival houses were closing, Film Forum, under a nonprofit designation, ushered in a new era of repertory cinema. Programmed in conjunction with independent and art-cinema premieres, and working off a strong membership base, the cinema became a national tastemaker. Subsequently, The Walter Reade Theater, run by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and opened in December 1991, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s BAM Rose Cinemas, launched in 1998, joined in the exhibition of older films in New York. These two theatres, created within performing-arts complexes, signal the latest incarnation of repertory cinema, as film has transcended its commercial image and become increasingly recognized as a medium of artistic and historical significance.

In 1988, Bruce Goldstein was brought over to the rejuvenated Film Forum (first opened in 1970 as a tiny venue for independent films) from the soon-to-be closed Thalia. Given free rein over the programming of Film Forum’s second screen at its new location on Houston Street, Goldstein crafted a repertory calendar noted for bringing pre-Code and film noir titles back from their neglected status. To draw crowds, he resorted to some of the same tricks the studios employed during the 1950s to lure audiences away from their television sets. VHS used pan-and-scan in order to accommodate television’s aspect ratio, so Goldstein, consciously “trying to present experiences you couldn’t have at home with VHS,” did a series on Cinemascope. He also revived classic gimmicks. For a William Castle festival, he wired the seats with Percepto buzzers for The Tingler, rigged up a flying ghost for The House on Haunted Hill, and screened the choose-your-own-ending Mr. Sardonicus.

Tapping the nearby New York University audience and drawing a loyal membership, perennially popular programming schemes like double features continue to sell out. Goldstein modestly notes that “people have the perception that you can’t get into Film Forum, but that’s only because they go to the movies that you can’t get into. People remember the sellouts. They’re not there when the theatres aren’t full.”

Not all films boast a widescreen aspect ratio or flying skeletons, so venues work to make moviegoing an experience “worth crossing town for,” a strategy Richard Peña dubs “movies plus.” Building a post-film recap and discussion into the program is the most common way to add value to a program. Directors and stars frequently come in for Q&As, and Walter Reade and BAM host receptions and drinks after films. Film Forum also does in-person events with the likes of directors Sidney Lumet and Jules Dassin and actors Farley Granger and Eddie Bracken.

Engaging with its young, hip Brooklyn audience, BAM works with free weeklies The Onion and L Magazine to host parties for audience members after the show. Like Walter Reade, the theatre resides in an arts complex, allowing for the venues to integrate their programming during festivals or an occasion like the second annual “Takeover.” During the all-night event, the BAM cinema programmed movie marathons until 4 a.m., while other venues showcased bands, DJs, arcade games and video art. Series like “Up All Night in 1985,” “The Reel World: Brooklyn” and “Bring Back the Draught” (which squeezed in the oldest film in the series, W.C. Fields’ 1933 short “The Fatal Glass of Beer”) catered to the young audience, showing films they might have remembered from earlier years.

Attracting a slightly older-skewing demographic up at Walter Reade, Film Society of Lincoln Center program director Richard Peña also finds audience interest in revisiting films. An Andrzej Wajda retrospective, for instance, drew many older viewers familiar with his 1950s and 1960s-era work from its first time around.

For all of these theatres, programming of old and new works occurs side by side, encouraging development of new audiences. Young people enticed by, say, a skate park set up next door during last year’s BAM Afropunk festival might find themselves unexpectedly intrigued by an older film, including silents. Programmer Florence Almozini marvels that “when we played [the silent] Scarlet Letter, we had a really young audience, a lot of students, and you could tell they were really amazed by the beauty of the film. Then you just hope that these people come back.” BAM’s silent program has also brought in Irish music collective 3epkano, an experimental rock group that accompanies silent films, to great success.

Providing new experiences to audiences also means committing to bringing in rare films and discoveries. “Being a nonprofit is a privilege,” Peña notes. “We have to earn that privilege by showing the best and most interesting and most challenging work.”

“Sometimes there are things that might not do as well, but it’s really important to do them because of our mission and what we’re trying to accomplish,” explains BAM’s marketing manager Troy Dandro. “You don’t expect it to tank, but you have realistic expectations of what the audience could be. Sometimes we’re pleasantly surprised. We’ve gone into something thinking, ‘We’re trying to do this because it’s really important,’ and people responded.”



“When I first started,” Film Forum’s Goldstein observes, “cult, rare films sold; rarity for rarity’s sake. People flocked.” Now, classics generally play better than rare films, a view shared by all three venues.

With the widespread availability of DVDs, even of relatively unknown titles, people have the impression that all films can be obtained on DVD, observes Peña, calling that a false assumption. “You would think that people would come out for the never-seen things and stay home for the things that are well-known, but in fact the well-known films bring people out.”

Goldstein finds that Turner Classic Movies and DVDs “in an odd way actually help. They heighten the interest of people in classics, and send them to the theatre to check them out in a print, with an audience, to get the most out of a movie.”

Dandro also feels that DVDs enhance the audience, “especially for our repertory cinema.” Audiences who have watched a classic at home may be more likely to turn out to experience the film on the big screen, and in general DVDs raise awareness of classic films that might not exist otherwise.

Repertory’s emphasis on discoveries and assemblage of unusual series can also pique audience interest. A series on 1930s and 1940s Finnish melodrama at BAM drew crowds curious to see this rare body of work, directed by Teuvo Tulio. Keeping in mind their Brooklyn viewer base, BAM organized a star retrospective of Barbara Stanwyck, while nixing one of Bette Davis, an equally famous Hollywood star. Almozini explains, “Normally, I don’t think big Hollywood stars are the best for us, but Stanwyck’s a little off the mainstream, a little quirky. She’s from Brookyln. She felt right for us.”

Goldstein has turned to cultural events for inspiration, and is currently programming a Depression series to coincide with the recession. The idea is actually a repeat—his first one ran during the 1980s recession.

Taking a thematic element from a film and running with it, Walter Reade occasionally offers irreverent groupings, like a recent “Problem Child” series, as a counterpoint to programs oriented by country or director.

Peña takes particular pride in his series on Iranian cinema, which he ran in 1992 after noting the incredible quality of films coming from that country. Besides bringing together Iranians of all types of political and religious affiliations in the same theatre, the showcase was “an important step in Iranian cinema getting a certain kind of public awareness in the 1990s.” Assembling programs such as these do not make him a programmer of a repertory theatre, Peña emphasizes, they make him a curator. “There’s an art called cinema, and we’re helping to write the history of that medium.”

These theatres’ choices—which films they seek out, showcase as major finds, or feature in retrospectives—make them arbiters of culture. Still, publicizing and screening a film does not guarantee that an audience will respond—or even show up, making it the ultimate decision-maker.

Series that have been embraced by audiences, like the pre-Code and film noir favored by Goldstein, and the Iranian cinema showcased by Peña, now show up on college syllabi across the country. Repertory programming also encourages additional discovery on DVD. Dandro noticed that during BAM’s Antonioni series, one of their most popular to date, three of the top ten Netflix titles for Brooklyn were Antonioni films, a sign of their impact on the Brooklyn community.

Besides their efforts to introduce old films to audiences, these theatres also contribute to their physical preservation and circulation. The availability of new prints for old titles, and the readiness with which studios and distributors agree to strike new prints, can be traced back to the efforts of Film Forum programmer Bruce Goldstein. In the early days of his tenure, he often had to borrow prints from individual collectors or beg studios for access to their non-canonized works. While classics like Yankee Doodle Dandy and Casablanca were never hard to find (their popularity cemented through regular play on television), Goldstein wanted to show pre-code Warner Bros. films and film noir, which were not regularly circulated at the time.



By treating rented prints with care, he established credibility with studios. He also developed economic incentives for studios and distributors to strike new prints. Whereas most repertory cinemas showed a different double feature every day, Goldstein programmed his films for one to two-week stretches, enabling a quicker recoup of costs for the distributor. As a bonus, distributors, especially ones that had struck a new print, discovered that a booking with Film Forum prompted bookings across the country. The vaults fell open. Goldstein estimates he has introduced an additional 700 prints into circulation over his 20 years at the theatre.

Programmers who fought for new prints now anticipate the encroachment of another format, digital. When the director’s cut of Blade Runner was showcased at the New York Film Festival, for example, Peña had no other choice but digital. Recently, faced with a scratched print, his team struggled with the decision to show the film, flaws and all, or go with the digital version. Because Walter Reade has such a finely attuned technical system, the print’s defects were even more prominent. The staff chose to show the scratched print, trusting their audience would prefer film to digital. However, Peña would not hesitate to show a rare film if it were only available in digital, explaining, “Between the purity of the medium and access for the public, I fall on the side of access for the public.”

As more films, especially documentaries, originate digitally, programmers recognize the benefits of the format and are accommodating its role in the future of cinema. Goldstein notes how digital prints—“if it ever comes to digital for classics”—could help with subtitling. In order to show rare foreign films, Film Forum occasionally undergoes the arduous process of translating and placing the subtitles themselves, utilizing a company that projects the titles on the screen (soft-titling). Digital advances could potentially change the flow of classic prints. For example, many programmers look to England and other English-speaking countries as reservoirs for foreign films with English subtitles. While English is the lingua franca of films, the possibility of projecting lesser-known pictures in local languages would make vintage films more accessible to global viewers.

Because Generation Y never experienced the original, mid-century boon in repertory cinemas, will this form of theatrical programming eventually die out? Peña thinks so, finding that young people, including his own children, as well as the film majors he teaches at Columbia University, have no interest in old or foreign films.

“The most reliable art-house audience is an older audience. People who are 50+ make up the core of that audience. These were people who, when they were in college or before that, got used to watching foreign films and developed a great taste for them and they continue to support them.” While he acknowledges the social appeal of the moviegoing experience, and sees younger filmgoers turn out for Asian films or “crossover” directors like Pedro Almodóvar, he doesn’t view the theatrical model as one that will grow, or one that shows signs of embrace by the younger generation.

Goldstein sees things differently. “Movies will survive. They survived the Depression, because unemployed people would go to the movies. It was cheap, and it’s still relatively cheap compared to other things you can do in New York.”

Film Forum draws a mix of ages—crowds of seniors during the afternoon, and a younger-skewing crowd during the evening. Goldstein finds young people not only go to the movies more often, they’re “interested in seeing films they’ve never seen before, classics, in a theatre. Even if they can get the film on DVD, I think they’re really into going to see a movie in a theatre. It’s a good date thing to go to, an old movie, don’t you think?”

The newest of the theatres, just now celebrating its tenth anniversary, BAM also draws the youngest crowd. Dandro estimates that over half the audience is under the age of 44. BAM recently completed a three-year partnership with the Sundance Institute, which Almozini calls “a great fit for us, because a lot of the filmmakers who submit films to Sundance are these young Brooklyn filmmakers.” Brooklyn itself has seen dramatic growth, especially among young people, since the BAM cinema’s inception, making it well-poised to capture a younger audience.

New York City is a place where, as Pena remarks, “you can conceivably find audiences for everything,” and by catering to the moviegoing interests of multiple generations, repertory cinema there is thriving. It has transitioned from a standalone model to one offering screenings of classics alongside new specialty films within busy cultural complexes, with an after-party or Q&A as a frequent added attraction. Seeing old movies has become a layered, interactive experience. Repertory cinema is far from dead; it has moved from near-extinction to the heart of the arts center.