Latin film in NYC is more than movies. We have unique independent theaters such as Film Forum, IFC Center, and Maysles Documentary Center.
We have film organizations such as Film at Lincoln Center which basically produces film festivals all year long, MoMA Film, Cinema Tropical, and others.
The New York Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, DOC NYC, and Cinema Tropical Film Festival are among America’s leading film festivals.
We have great film museums. The Museum of Modern Art holds one of the world’s leading film collections. The Museum of the Moving Image is on an old studio lot.
Latin Culture in Film
The Little Mermaid 2023 Looks Like Me
Opens citywide
Friday, May 26, 2023
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Harlem International Film Festival 2023 Brings the Spotlight Uptown
Television and film world premieres, a red carpet gala, and lots of filmmakers.
AMC MAGIC JOHNSON
Harlem
Thursday-Sunday, May 18-21, 2023
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Continue Reading Harlem International Film Festival 2023 Brings the Spotlight Uptown
The New York African Film Festival 2023 Free Forms into Film Africa
30 African and Diaspora films from more than 15 countries with subtle cultural and storytelling complexity that has largely evaporated in Hollywood.
FILM AT LINCOLN CENTER
May 10-16, 2023
MAYSLES CENTER, Harlem
May 20-21, 2023
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Continue Reading The New York African Film Festival 2023 Free Forms into Film Africa
Colombian Film Festival NY 2023 Brings the Best of Colombian Cinema to New York City
Opening night film “Viva Edy!” tells the story of Colombia’s most important jazz pianist, Edy Martinez, who also influenced Latin music in 1950s New York.
QUAD CINEMA
Greenwich Village, Manhattan
Thursday-Sunday, May 4-7, 2023
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African Diaspora International Film Festival 2023 is a World Full of Music & Soul
This is an outstanding curation of excellent films that show the power and resilience of African Diaspora culture around the world. There are American, Brazilian, British, Cuban, French, Guadeloupean, Malian and Peruvian music films.
COLOMBIA UNIVERSITY TEACHERS COLLEGE
Morningside Heights, Manhattan
Friday-Sunday, April 28-30, 2023
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Continue Reading African Diaspora International Film Festival 2023 is a World Full of Music & Soul
Dry Ground Burning Moves Real Brazilian Women on the Edge to the Front and Center
Part gangster film, part cowboy western, and part science fiction, a woman fresh out of prison becomes a champion of the oppressed in dystopian Brazil.
BAM
Fort Greene, Brooklyn
April 21 – May 3, 2023
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Continue Reading Dry Ground Burning Moves Real Brazilian Women on the Edge to the Front and Center
NYC Film Organizations
These film organizations screen new movies, retrospectives, special collections, and the film festival circuit.
Anthology Film Archives is a research library and film presenter that preserves and screens independent film. anthologyfilmarchives.org
Cinema Tropical is one of America’s leading Latin film presenters. cinematropical.com 🇲🇽
Film at Lincoln Center produces film festivals all year long, including the New York Film Festival.
MoMA Film at the Museum of Modern Art holds one of the world’s leading film collections.
The Museum of the Moving Image is a film, television, and video museum on a historic film studio lot.
NYC Movie Theaters
These cinemas go beyond the usual commercial movie theaters.
Alamo Drafthouse
Cinépolis Chelsea
Director’s Guild of America (DGA Theater)
Film Forum
IFC Center
Maysles Documentary Center
Metrograph
Nitehawk
The Paris Theater is Netflix’s main movie theater.
Quad Cinema
Roxy Cinema
SVA Theatre
NYC Film Festivals
- African Diaspora International Film Festival
- Americas Film Festival
- Art of the Real
- Brooklyn Film Festival
- Bushwick Film Festival
- Colombian Film Festival
- Cortocircuito Latino short film festival
- Dance on Camera is a festival of dance films co-produced by the Dance Films Association at Film at Lincoln Center.
- Doc Fortnight is the Museum of Modern Art’s documentary film festival.
- DOC NYC
- Dominican Film Festival *
- Harlem International Film Festival 2023
- Havana Film Festival *
- Human Rights Watch film festival
- International New York Film Festival
- Jewish Film Festival
- Kicking + Screening Soccer Film Festival *
- May Sumak Quechua film festival
- Neighboring Scenes Latin American film festival is coproduced by Cinema Tropical at Film at Lincoln Center.
- New Directors / New Films
- New York African Film Festival
- New York Film Festival
- New York International Children’s Film Festival *
- New York Jewish Film Festival
- New York Latino Film Festival
- Open Roads: New Italian Cinema
- Queens World Film Festival
- ReelAbilities New York is a disability film festival at the Marlene Meyerson JCC in the Upper West Side. reelabilities.org
- Rendez-Vous with French Cinema
- Sephardic Film Festival *
- SoHo International Film Festival
- Tribeca Film Festival
- Winter Film Awards
NYC Film Museums
Anthology Film Archives is a research library and film presenter that preserves and screens independent film. anthologyfilmarchives.org
The Museum of Modern Art has one of the world’s leading film collections.
The Museum of the Moving Image is a film, television, and video museum on a historic film studio lot.
The Film Calendar
Film Festivals help determine which new films get released in the coming year.
The film festival calendar is oriented around the Oscars or Academy Awards, the world’s most prestigious film awards which are usually held in March.
The film year starts with Berlin in February. Cannes arrives in May. Tribeca is in June. Things get interesting in September with Venice, Toronto and New York. Oscar entries for Best International Feature Film are due at the end of October.
Studios try to screen their best films during the year-end holiday season, to be top-of-mind during film awards season.
The Origins of Film in New York City
Great human ideas often appear independently in two places at once, around the same time.
The first commercial movie screening was produced by the Lumiere brothers in 1895 Paris, but Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope began showing movies on machines in an amusement arcade at 1155 Broadway (at 27th St) in 1894.
The Black Maria at Edison’s labs in West Orange, New Jersey was the world’s first movie studio. It opened and made the first motion picture in 1893.
The first motion pictures were a lot like vaudeville. After all, it was the Vaudeville Era (1880s – 1920s). But after 1895, Edison began making “actualities” of street scenes of everyday life. Today we would call them short documentaries. New York City was the perfect scene.
Fort Lee, New Jersey was the center of America’s film industry from 1909 to 1918, before production moved to Hollywood.
The post-war Paris Theater in Midtown is Manhattan’s last single screen cinema. It was shut down, but was then purchased by Netflix.
A lot of film and television is still made in New York. The City itself is a star in many great movies.