From: 40 Frames (email suppressed)
Date: Thu May 28 2009 - 09:52:19 PDT
Amidst all the doom and gloom, this is truly wonderful news. I am however
curious about how long this arrangement will last? Does anyone know if FMC
signed a long-term lease?
--Alain
On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 9:38 AM, Adam Hyman <email suppressed> wrote:
> Today's NY Times:
> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/28/movies/28film.html?_r=2
>
> Avant-Garde Film Group Gets New Home, Cheap
>
> The Film-Makers± Cooperative±s new home will include space designed to
> protect its archives.
>
> By LARRY ROHTER
> Published: May 27, 2009
>
> After months of uncertainty, the Film-Makers± Cooperative, whose future was
> threatened early this year when it received an order of eviction from a
> city-owned building in TriBeCa, has found a new home, and on terms that are
> likely to make it the envy of other arts organizations and tenants across
> the city.
>
> The group, which archives, distributes and restores experimental and
> avant-garde movies, has signed a five-year lease with the real estate
> developer Charles S. Cohen that calls for the organization to pay a
> symbolic
> rent of $1 a year.
>
> ³It±s amazing,² said Jonas Mekas, a filmmaker and one of the cooperative±s
> founders, ³and amazing that there are still people like Cohen in this
> world.²
>
> The new quarters, which the group hopes to occupy by Labor Day, are at 475
> Park Avenue South, on the northeast corner of 32nd Street. The sixth-floor
> site will offer nearly four times as much space as the co-op±s current
> location at the Clocktower Building, where it is paying about $1 a square
> foot for approximately 900 square feet.
>
> ³It±s a beautiful and more accessible space,² said M. M. Serra, the film
> group±s executive director. ³We±ll have offices and archives, and our
> films,
> some of which are one of a kind, will be in air-conditioning specifically
> designed to protect them, which we don±t have where we are now.²
>
> As part of the move, a 15-seat theater is also being built at the 32nd
> Street location, ³for the use of scholars and others who want to do
> research² into the approximately 5,000 films that the cooperative has in
> its
> archives, in formats ranging from 8 millimeter to video, Mr. Mekas said.
> Tentatively, it is to be named the Charles Theater, a double homage, to Mr.
> Cohen and to the old Charles Theater in the East Village, one of the first
> places in New York to show experimental films.
>
> Mr. Cohen, the president and chief executive of Cohen Brothers Realty, is
> known as a film aficionado. He is the author of a book of movie trivia, won
> a Kodak Movie Award for a comedy short he wrote and directed, and was an
> executive producer of ³Frozen River,² the feature-length film starring
> Melissa Leo that was released last year and earned two Oscar nominations.
>
> ³I was in a position to help, and I thought that I should,² Mr. Cohen said.
> ³They are a wonderful group doing important work, and there is no other
> place to go and see this kind of thing. They needed a storage space for
> their archives, and this meets their needs.²
>
> Founded in 1962, the Film-Makers± Cooperative has since the start of the
> decade occupied space controlled by the P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center,
> another bulwark of the city±s avant-garde artistic establishment. But late
> last year, P.S. 1 decided to give up the site and turn it over to Alanna
> Heiss, its founder and former executive director, so that she could use the
> location as a base for her latest project, an Internet radio station called
> Art International Radio.
>
> Before that, the Film-Makers± Cooperative operated for many years out of an
> office on Lexington Avenue at 31st Street, which it had to leave in 2000
> because of redevelopment there. So returning to the same neighborhood on
> such favorable terms ³in a way brings things full circle,² Mr. Mekas said.
>
>
> __________________________________________________________________
> For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.
>
-- 40 FRAMES Alain LeTourneau Pam Minty 425 SE 3rd #400 Portland, OR 97214 United States +1 503 231 6548 40frames.org 16mmdirectory.org __________________________________________________________________ For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.