Anthology Film Archives
32 2nd Avenue,
New York,
NY
10003
32 2nd Avenue,
New York,
NY
10003
15 people
favorited this theater
Showing 14 comments
Please update, total capacity 280 downstairs 72 upstairs 208 both have 35MM film projectors
Exterior photographs from July 2010.
Interesting Name.
Was there for the 8th annual Bicycle Film Festival and much to my surprise, they have new seats!!! The old ones hurt my butt and back and were too creaky. Went there yesterday and they look are bucket seats – they look like the kind for those seated racing car arcade games but they are comfy and provide great back support. Found out they were all donated!
It’s great inside. It feels old, but it isn’t too bad. I go every year this weekend to see the Bicycle Film Festival my friend started. 5 years later, it’s expanded around the world to 16 cities. It started here. It’s always packed and they have lots of other films year round.
A photograph I took of the Anthology Film Archives in May 2006:
http://flickr.com/photos/kencta/216993575/
The 2nd st entrance to AFA appears in Spiderman 2 as the extirior to Doc.Oc’s labrotory.
Given the times, thankfully the AFA owns their building, ensuring they’ll continue to be around…
I am not into non-narrative film making so I don’t go here all that often, though I was there Fourth of July weekend to take another look at Herzog’s haunting “Lessons of Darkness” documentary.
I have seen many films here. For a brief time Fabio Canosa, a film programmer who also worked at the Public and Symphony Space among other venues, was affiliated with AFA and I remember going there more often when he was associated with Anthology. I know he wanted Anthology to install a marquee and to get the MTA to leave the subway entrance at Houston & Second Avenue open after 9 p.m.
What is funny is how the neighborhood around AFA is rapidly gentrifying. There is luxury housing literally going up across the street. CBGB, the legendary punk bar, one block east is now surrounded by luxury apartments and trendy restaurants. Amazing how NYC changes.
Funny thing I have never seen a film here.
The Anthology entrance is located on 2nd Street, at the corner of Second Avenue. At Second Avenue and 10th Street is the famed 2nd Avenue Deli, an esteemed kosher eatery.
Thank you for this important addition to the site, Gerald. I don’t recall from some old research I no longer have at hand if it was before or after the Anthology Film Archives moved out, but I do know that Film Forum also once resided in the former AFA space @ 80 Wooster Street.
This link takes you to the first location of the Anthology, which was at the Public Theatre. The Public later became a film venue not associated with Anthology. There are a number of comments there pertaining to the Anthology’s early years.
As I was posting this listing, I tried to remember some of the films I’d seen over the years at this Anthology location. They were not a lot, because I live in Rhode Island. One I do remember very well is the Italian film La valigia dei sogni (“The Suitcase of Dreams”) shown in June of 1998. And it’s truly an appropriate one to remember. Directed by Luigi Comencini in 1953, it is about an aging ex-star of the Italian silent cinema. He shows silent films from his collection to young people and others and eventually is given help to start a film museum. Many silent clips appear in the movie, a real “film buff’s film.” The print they showed came from the Cinémathèque Française, had French subtitles, and, to my knowledge, the picture never or rarely received other screenings in the U.S.
A good number of years ago, I was actually contacted by Jonas Mekas and P. Adams Sitney to loan them a rare Italian film I owned for one of their showings…which I gladly did.
For all the work they do with alternative programming and in championing the work of “experimental” film artists, this institution deserves a reel of applause and an archive of patronage.