IFC Center
323 6th Avenue,
New York,
NY
10003
323 6th Avenue,
New York,
NY
10003
34 people
favorited this theater
Showing 151 - 175 of 202 comments
Wonderful dream though I can’t imagine there’s a market for such an installation and it feels like a vanity effort and waste of resources to spend even develpment money on such an idea. I guess General Cinema’s filing is a defacto comment. Whats a “retractrable room?” Is Redford still smoking that stuff?
Seems like the market is terminally wedded to their television experience and will not go to a theater frewquently enough to enable the operation of anything but a feature film exhibition house.
It never happened, General Cinema went bankrupt before the expensive cinemas could be finished. The two that were in construction became a Regal Cinemas (in Portland, OR) and The Bridge: Cinema de Lux in Philadelphia (which is a really nice theatre, its in the Cinema Tressures book). But his ideas were out there: in Portland it was roomered that he wanted to construct a cinema with a retractable room.
The goal was to make each Sundance Cinema a Sundance extention, with lecture halls and all. The IFC Center seems to make the same claim although I don’t think they planned to take it outside the New York market as Cablevision seems to be all about the greater New York area.
Did Redford build the Sundance Cinema vision? If so, what towns?
It’s ironic, look at the features of this cinema, the meetings halls and all, its simular to that of Redford’s Sundance Cinema vision (even though while working with General Cinema he forced them to build new locations instead of converting old ones). I wonder if Clearview’s art cinemas will slowly become IFC Centers, I hope. The Clairige in Montclair is diffinatly in need of some renovations.
As for the people on the sidewalk in the block we surely can’t blame them for their presence. There’s many daytripper magnets in the immediate hood. One of the most powerful pulls is the basketball court directly across the street. Any serious effort to drag the neighborhood to another profile needs to get rid of the basketball court. Nobody from CB2 has played ball in that court, EVER. The court does not serve residents. It serves people who live off Manhattan island and the companies who want to sell them cell phones and sports clothing. A park would be nice in place of the basketball and handball courts.
Then, as more daytripper magnets, there’s the stinky bars on 3rd Street and the smelly bars on Bleecker Street and the foetid falafel stands on McDougal Street. Face facts, it ain’t a tone-y neighborhood and a few more pierced and tattooed and supersize-clothed kids from the boros and far flung Long Island and New Jersey locales aren’t likely to shove either occupants of the sidewalk or the neighborhood any closer to the downbound train.
The area has long been a destination for travelers who think that hanging in the neighborhood confers membership in a privileged club and the idea, however cracked, was run up the proverbial flagpole by the first white people on the island. The neighborhood was popularized by people who took the one hour sail north from their homes and parents located on the southern tip of the island. Why? Youthful loose women and available randy men were reported to be strolling, ready for a date, among the sycamores. The more experience one gets watching things change the more they look the same.
As for the theater, a spy tells me the new operator has restored the former auditorium to it’s pre-twin configuration. I surely hope IFC/Bogdanow redid the seating pitch. My pal has applied for a job as an employee at the new business and if hes hired I think I will apply for the popcorn cooker operator’s job. Stay tuned.
Jack
It’s a shame they didn’t return ther theater to it’s original auditorium. The twinning done by Walter Reade was terrible.The screen was so close to the seats it was terrible to see anything in theater 2 upstairs.
I drove by again yesterday I think it opens June17, but I can’t remember the title they had on the marquee.
the facade is goss but im glad theres something going on there aside from the obnoxious scum tha now hang out on that section of 6th
I passed by here this morning, the marquee is so horrible looking. It’s all plastic and so cheap looking.
Surprised, I am, to learn that the architect of record on the Waverly Theater job is a New York City outfit. Why am I surprised? The perforated galvanized plank stuck on the 6th Avenue elevation looks more like Los Angeles than Manhattan.
The façade, including the orange IFC logo laid on a grayish field, is wildly inappropriate to the context and site. Maybe IFC instructed Bogdanow to go for a look that Long Island based IFC imagined would attract inexperienced, unsophisticated or youthful eyes. The cladding and lighting fixtures stuck on the theatre building give it the look of an equipment shack adjacent to runways at an airport. Maybe IFC doesn’t have ability or inspiration to do anything more appropriate or attractive.
I’m searching for a reason that IFC would make such a faux pas on the look of the building, searching for a mitigating reason for the woeful personality that has so far met our eager eyes.
It is a truism that most people have heavily flawed notions about what happened/happens “down in the Village†and the notions are often responsible for both baffling personal agenda observed in actions of day trippers and corporate marketing plans unfurled in the ‘hood.
Many Long Island residents have ideas about “the Village†formed when they were youthful travelers “into the city†on weekends, on a mission to buy a bong or spend a racy night drinking beer and eating peanuts on Bleecker Street.
Work completed at the Waverly shows it not likely that IFC has any idea about the contextual elements of the neighborhood surrounding their new property at 325 Sixth Avenue.
OK, the building is ugly. We can live with the architectural mistake. However, I’m fearful the archtectural mistake foretells a deep flaw in the programming concept.
I’d like to submit a plea: I believe that IFC business at 325 Sixth Avenue will be better if the company programs the theater as if it is located in a way-upscale neighborhood on Long Island, the locale of IFC’s home office and likely the area where IFC management lives. Feature films, feature films, feature films. After those first choices, from time to time: revivals of classics and a well received documentary from time to time.
Just because the subject block on Sixth Avenue is chok-a-blok with storefront tattoo parlors and sex aid shops doesn’t mean that the people who come to town looking for the goods and services sold in the storefronts are customers for the IFC movie house.
Customers for the movie house are local residents (about 100K people) none of whom pay less than $30K a year residential rent, many of whom live in apartments with prices somewhat north of $1.5mn. The Walter Reade organization succeeded on the site because the company comprises denizens of our city, and the company programmed the theatre appropriately. Cineplex Odeon, a Canadian outfit, failed because programming was wildly inappropriate for the neighborhood. Who knows why, maybe the theater was booked from Toronto.
Its too much to ask IFC to program with feature films, though I surely hope IFC/Bogdanow will install a rendition of comfortable chairs as are used at present-day AMC or Loews theatres, rather that rock hard seats set closer than minimum pitch as at Angelika and Film Forum and Sunshine. Why must every “art house†experience include the two iconic features …. torturous seats and overpriced stale muffins?
A few remarks to qualify the paragraphs following: I live directly next door to 325 Sixth Avenue. I attend at least 4 movies every week. Sidney Lumet is in my rolodex:
If asked for my opinion, I would champion a 12 or 25 or more screen movie house for the site at 325 Sixth Avenue long before I’d opt for a theatre cast in the “art house†genre, particularly one operated by a company known as Independent Film Channel
In today’s movie marketplace, “Independent†in the name IFC is best seen as a marketing term designed to broadcast the pitchful idea that the company exhibits movies made by outsiders, iconoclasts and rebels.
The term is just another brand of hogwash. Buy it at your own risk. There is no more studio system so every film is made by outsiders. In fact, IFC says they’re in the film financing business.
If IFC wishes to trumpet the fact that they exhibit “independent†movies, they should also, full disclosure please, post samples of relevant sections of their financing agreements offered to movie makers. The sections that stipulate what is IFC’s control over the product released for exhibition. Independent? Yesirree, a filmmaker can independently decide not to take the financing if he doesn’t want to complete the film as the lender wants it done. Fat chance.
“Channel†in IFC the name says television.
Television is an inadequate (OK, terrible) exhibition platform for film. Both dramatic action and production values in “Film†are conceived and executed for exhibition with a projector and screen, in the optimum size available in a largish auditorium.
Video is conceived, designed and executed in a thoroughly different format and platform. Different size, different shape, different realization process. Electric, not emulsion rendition.
Video dramatic action is conceived, blocked and framed for a small screen. It is absolutely possible to conceive and realize top quality moving image narratives conceived and framed for a 30†screen. It is best to view them in the format and size in which they were produced, a television screen.
Film? Watch it in a theater. Video? Watch it on television.
IFC, the name, is an oxymoron loaded with troubling portent.
Moreover, IFC management has given the building at 325 Sixth Avenue a deconstructed look that suggests the business conducted inside will appeal to eyeballs and thought processes more concerned with a seat in a hip-sounding demographic slice than a seat in a theatre that screens a textured cross section of feature films.
Indeed, the Cornelia Street elevation â€" the rear of the building – of the property is the most attractive and expressive, far more so than the Sixth Avenue side. Portent of a café with outdoor seating is far more exciting and powerful than any element of the business plan and property personality that has so far been revealed to us eager fans of moving pictures. IFC will make a great stroke if the company serves food and shows movies in a cafe setting in the incipient garden at the Cornelia Street elevation.
IFC has spent a lot of money on the job and we truly appreciate that the company has put their money where their mouth is. We hope the company will not make us pay for mistakes made, though we know â€" it’s been well demonstrated – there’s a market for overpriced stale muffins. Please do not price the popcorn to rapaciously lighten our our wallet.
Please: exhibit a broad cross section of movies. Please: minimize the offering of experimental work sold at full price tickets.
This 200 plus movies a year guy really, REALLY wants a great movie house at 325 Sixth Avenue, literally, next door to my home. I don’t have high hopes. I surely hope IFC management proves wrong my dire predictions.
Jack
Fantastic article, Andreas. It answers every question I had about the Waverly/IFC Center and has me even more excited for its opening! Thank you!!! (For the record, if the image on the IFC Center web site – http://www.ifccenter.com – is accurate, the opening attractions will be ‘Me and You and Everyone We Know’, ‘The Ballad of Jack and Rose’, and an Errol Morris retrospective… can’t wait… :–)
Updated information about programming plans and a discussion of construction are available in my article in the June 2005 issue of Film Journal International: View link
They are set to open son. I am curious to see what they book here. Will it be stuff that doesn’t play elsewhere or will it be stuff duplicated in other theatres?
I walked by the other day and the security told me they are set to open in June.
I have the greatest memories of the Waverly and I was totally bummed/sad/upset/pissed when it closed. Seeing movies there and at the Strand uptown was what made me become a film student (oh so many years ago). That and no cable, just excellent local stations showing nothing but movies, movies, movies, but as usual I digress.
I’m actually quite excited and anxiously await its grand opening. Being a West Villager I don’t mind trekking East, but it will be a pleasure to once again have a neighborhood “indie” theater I can call my own. In fact, I don’t care what’s playing. I’ve already decided I will not be going to work that day and I won’t be sick. Maybe they’ll even have a cool promotional give away. Could they out do Sunshine Cinema?
In conclusion I will only add that I hope they pop their own popcorn instead of buying huge garbage bags filled with the pre-poppped crap. But who am I kidding? I’ve been sneaking food into theaters all my life! See you at the movies!
A recent glimpse of the exterior of the soon-to-open (sometime within the next 2-3 weeks, I’ve heard through the grapevine) IFC Center: View link
I lived in the West Village from ‘82 to '87 and the Waverly and the Greenwich were my clubhouses. Sad to see both close, but I’m sure I’ll be making the trek to the new IFC often. Hard to believe other than the Film Forum, which isn’t technically in Greenwich Village (it is on the south or downtown side of Houston Street and the Quad there isn’t movie theatre in the West Village.
When I lived in the West Village in the 1980s there was a parking lot on the east side of Sixth Avenue. I am doing this by memory but the block was either between Sixth and Seventh Streets or Fifth and Sixth Streets and Loew’s I believe wanted to put up a multi-plex on the site. Community opposition killed the plan. It became retail stores on the ground floor (Urban Outfitters, Radio Shack et al) and apartments above.
I saw ‘Blue Velvet’ at The Waverly back in 1986 when it was still a single screen theater. A few years later I moved within spitting distance of it; the marquee totally visible from my front window. It was twinned somewhere around 1989 or shortly thereafter. I remember seeing ‘Sex Lies & Videotape’ in the second upstairs theater which was formerly the balcony. It was such a great theater and I was dissapointed that it had to be twinned. Some other films I remember seeing there in the main theater were ‘My Own Private Idaho’, ‘Misery’, and ‘Silence of the Lambs’. I just walked by the other day and saw the IFC marquee. Good to see that it is going to continue as a film venue, because when the demoliton was going on I had no idea what they were turning it into. I hope IFC uses this opportunity at the Waverly for some much needed film revival in NYC in addition to the independent stuff they’ll be showing.
Update on the IFC Center/Waverly:
– The new marquee is up and is very Waverly-esque in design (without the Waverly neon signage, but a cool homage nonetheless.
– The exterior scaffolding is gone and the new outside design is remarkable; it’s cool, sleek, and includes plenty of black and steel, creating (for me, at least) plenty of excitement and anticipation of how the interior is shaping up.
It is a crime what happened to the Waverly. The Waverly was the first place I caught a movie in NYC when I moved here in ‘82. It was “Diner.” In the eighties I remember this theatre having a real “personality” and was the place to see independent films long before the Angelika opened and became the premier place to see indie films downtown. I assume this film was run by Cineplex Odeon and it completely lost its personality in the 1990s, running mainstream fare.
Spoke with a construction worker at the site of the former (or present and always, depending on your perspective) Waverly this past Friday, who informed me he expects the IFC Center within the space to be opening for business sometime in May or June, July at the latest. (I wasn’t able to snag a tour – believe me, I tried – but, from what I saw, the project seems to be in its near-final phases.)
the continental airlines arena was formerly called and shall always be referred to this former jerseyite as brendan byrne arena.
Corporate re-branding is a hit-or-miss proposition. Here in New York, most people I know of would refer to the Hilton Theatre (formerly the Ford Center for the Performing Arts) on 42nd Street as “that theatre in Times Square where ‘42nd Street’ played”, as opposed to its big-brand moniker; same for Continental Airlines Arena in New Jersey – it’s far more commonly known as “the Meadowlands” or “that arena over at the Meadowlands”, than whatever name the building has formally been reappointed with. I think the same holds true for other similar buildings, arenas, theatres, and performance art spaces around the country – people in general know of them for their function or geographical location far more than by a corporatized name. For me, as with CConnolly, the Waverly will always BE the Waverly; I’ll never consider it anything but.
“Why cant they call it the IFC Waverly”
It’s probably $$$ and recognition. The current (and reprehensible) trend of naming theaters (and other arenas) after corporate sponsers is what is behind this. The Waverly is owned by Cablevision which also owns the Independent Film Channel (IFC). I assume they want to draw recognition to IFC by renaming this theater as well.
Thankfully, some institutions resist the name change no matter what. Know anyone who calls The Wintergarden, The Cadillac Wintergarden? I think, to New Yorkers, the Waverly will always BE the Waverly.
Today’s Times article, on page B3, also has several photographs of the theater’s interior and exterior.