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
Brooklyn Film Festival 2023 Screens Stories About Life & Those Who Live It
A film festival of Brooklyn’s independent, international energy.
June 2-11, 2023
WINDMILL STUDIOS
Greenpoint
WYTHE HOTEL
Williamsburg
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Open Roads New Italian Cinema is a Window on Italian Culture
A new crop of Italian movie legends and emerging filmmakers with a focus on Mario Martone.
FILM AT LINCOLN CENTER
June 1-8, 2023
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Human Rights Watch Film Festival Brings Global Problems into Focus
We have a lot of problems that we can only solve together, including war, women’s rights, transgender rights, health, environmental destruction, and press freedom.
FILM AT LINCOLN CENTER
May 31 – June 11, 2023
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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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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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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.