They closed down Lincoln Center and put up a parking lot.
The New York Film Festival is the latest to announce that it will screen movies a la drive-in. Film at Lincoln Center announced today that the 58th iteration of its annual festival will open with not one but three Steve McQueen premieres and will take place, in part, at the Queens and Brooklyn drive-ins that were set up by Rooftop Films earlier this summer. More →
Last week we noted that several of the New York City area’s summer film festivals are– quite delightfully– taking the form of drive-in movie theaters. On Friday, Rooftop Films started its Brooklyn Drive-In with a screening of John Lewis: Good Trouble (eerily, news of the congressman’s death broke right after the documentary’s screening) and today the consummate curators have announced the details of their forthcoming Queens Drive-In. More →
When New York’s stay-at-home order went into effect in March, Siobhan O’Loughlin immediately panicked. Since 2015, she had been touring around the world for her theater project Broken Bone Bathtub, which usually takes place inside of a bathroom in someone’s home for an audience of however many people can fit—usually, five to 12. How could an artist whose work hinged on such immersive experiences survive the age of Zoom? More →
When theaters went dark in March, film festivals quickly adapted by curating content online, but let’s face it, summer has come and you’re not about to watch a movie on your laptop, with a desk fan blasting torrents of sweat off your face. Luckily the organizers of the city’s great seasonal film festivals– including Tribeca Films, Rooftop Films, and the Greenpoint Film Festival– have risen to the occasion with pop-up drive-in movie theaters. More →
Sabrina Chap had been avoiding protests in the city due to health concerns when she had a vision, mid-shower, of New Yorkers dancing simultaneously in their apartments to the music of Nina Simone. To the musician, it seemed like a workable alternative to traditional in-the-streets protest.
When New York City set its historic curfew on June 1, she saw an opportunity. “I felt that they were trying to intimidate us inside and quell our voices,” Chap said, “and I was like, well, fuck that, let’s just turn up the volume in our homes.” So Chap created @audioprotest. More →
It’s said that laughter is the best medicine, but with the cures for coronavirus and systemic racism nowhere in sight, comedians are questioning the role of comic relief in today’s world. More →
If there’s one thing Cris Matos doesn’t miss about her life before the coronavirus pandemic, it’s the way she moved throughout the five boroughs of New York City. The subway, Uber, and taxis used to be her religion. “Now, I can’t live without my bicycle,” said Matos. “I’m afraid to use the subway and I’m still concerned about getting inside a car with a driver I don’t know.” Whenever she needs to leave East Harlem, the first thing she does is plot bike lanes. More →
When Kalima DeSuze, founder of feminist bookstore Cafe Con Libros, opened her Instagram account days after the killing of George Floyd, she was shocked to see over 99 mentions.
“I said, ‘What the hell is happening? What is going on?’” DeSuze remembers. “I realized that someone had sent the list out of books to read and someone then said invest your money in Black-owned business, Black-owned bookstores. My life has not been the same since.”
DeSuze’s “tsunami” of orders for books about race in America was a small reverberation felt across the bookselling and publishing industry in the wake of the killing of George Floyd. More →
Some of the city’s cultural establishments are facing a deep reckoning, as New Yorkers speak out against institutionalized racism within the arts. More →
