Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Film Center
36 E. 8th Street,
New York,
NY
10003
36 E. 8th Street,
New York,
NY
10003
9 people
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It became the Movieland Triplex on June 20, 1986, it closed on December 28, 1995
“Tootsie” was the sole movie I saw here when it was The Art. After it was converted into the Movieland 8th Street Triplex, I saw many more, including “Wall Street,” “Joe Versus the Volcano,” “Glory,” “Revenge of the Nerds II,” just to name a few. I agree with randytheicon the upstairs theater was decent but the downstairs ones were narrow with somewhat small screens. Seeing a summer blockbuster like “Batman” for the first time in one of them wasn’t ideal but it was the most convenient Manhattan location for my dad and I at the time.
The Art in 1984 was a beautiful, single-screen house with a balcony. It’s where I saw Prince’s “Purple Rain” in August 1984. BS Moss VERY crudely turned it into a triplex, with two narrow theatres on the ground floor and a somewhat decent room on the upper level. In 1988 the entire Moss chain was acquired by United Artists, which closed the theatre in November 1995 (“Rocky Horror” was the last movie to play there).
Exterior photographs form July 2010.
Wow. Memory lane time. Never much for balconies, but when I think of triple-bill, dirt-cheap days in the dark I recall fondly St. Marks Cinema in East Village, Elgin in Chelsea, and…Art and perhaps 8th St. Playhouse, also Village locations. I also loved the Fifth Avenue Cinema, but don’t recall triple bills there.
Ed, this theatre was running some daily changes in late December 1977. If you can find listings for December 21 or 22 you may have the answer. By December 23 they had opened “OUTRAGEOUS!” for a week.
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=AAFOAAAAIBAJ&sjid=94sDAAAAIBAJ&pg=3218%2C6029574
No, that wasn’t it, Al… but thanks for the suggestion. I remember my folks had just seen “High Anxiety” during its initial release. My dad promised to take me to the movies and I really wanted to see the Mel Brooks film, but also wanted to go see (finally) “Magical Mystery Tour.” Since he had just seen “High Anxiety,” he agreed to trek into the city to take me to see the Beatles' movie. It wasn’t a program of Beatles films, just “Magical Mystery Tour” and the other two rock-music related movies. And definitely a theater with a balcony. I wish the old Cue Magazine was imaged online like the Voice and New York Magazine. I’m almost positive that’s where I found the listing for those films.
Ed, in December 1978 the Cinema Village was showing something called “Beatles Around the World”. Could that have been it?
Been searching the google archive of Village Voice and New York Magazine back issues to try and figure where in hell I saw a triple feature of the Beatles' “Magical Mystery Tour” along with “An American Band” (a short, almost coporate bio-reel about Grand Funk Railroad) and Jean Luc-Godard’s “Sympathy for the Devil” back around late December 1977 or January 1978. I know it was downtown somewhere, but I can’t recall exactly where, as my dad took me via a couple of subway lines and I wasn’t paying much attention. The theater definitely had a balcony, which is where we sat. Maybe I’m wrong about the date, but it was definitely while the Mel Brooks' movie “High Anxiety” was early in its release. Just been a personal quest of mine to figure out where I saw films with my dad – and this one has been a bitch to nail down!
Ed, it mostly played second run in the late seventies.
Did this theater ever have a balcony when it was a single screen? And did it ever run repertory or revival in the late ‘70’s?
The Movieland 8th Street and Movieland Times Square overlapped by two years. The name was NOT moved down when the Times square location closed, as the intro suggests.
This intro should be corrected as follows;
The Art opened on October 7, 1940 with the first-run of the 1933 French film “Whirlpool” (“Remous”) which was allegedly based on the banned novel LADY CHATTERLEY’S LOVER.
Does anyone have any recollection of the Harlequin Caffe Playhouse running films in 1960?
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Here is an ad for “Tunes of Glory” at the ART exclusively.
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In December of 1980 the Art ran a series of somewhat rare British films in great 35mm prints. I remember catching the 1936 Sweeney Todd: Demon Barber of Fleet Street on a double bill with Joseph Losey’s infrequently seen Time Without Pity from 1957.
The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Film Center is primarily used as a classroom facility for New York University. It has 3 screening rooms and is home to various international film festivals as well as student screenings and other events.
For information regarding booking (requires NYU affiliation or written departmental sponsorship) or for a calendar of upcoming events, ring 212.998.4100.
I too attended “Legal Eagles” at the UA 8th Street ‘plex back when it originally released. I remember wanted to go to the FF when it was still on Watts Street that night and whatever was playing that night — maybe “Chinatown” — sold out so I opted for LE. The line was around the block.
I didn’t go to the UA 8th Street much even when I lived in the Village from ‘82 to '87, but over the years I would tend to go there on Thursday nights for the late screenings because it seemed films about to close always seemed to play at the UA 8th Street last. I remember seeing Van Peebles’ “Panther,” The Coen Brothers' “Hudsucker Proxy” and “The St. of Ft. Washington” at that theatre.
The last commercial film I saw there was in the early 1990s—“The Paper,” starring Glenn Close. It was about a NYC newspaper. Michael Keaton co-starred, back when that meant something, to someone. :–)
As part of the NYU conglomerate, the Cantor has been open to the public (that I know of) when film festivals are in town. For example, for several years, the New Festival (gay and lesbian) had films showing there and at the New School’s great auditorium, until last year, when the festival snagged the Loew’s 34th Street for all of its films.
One of the first movies I saw at the Art was Michelangelo Antonioni’s gorgeous color experiment “The Red Desert” with Monica Vitti and Richard Harris. The film had previously opened at the Beekman in February of 1965 and had a subsequent run here.
It is, although I’m not sure how often all three auditoriums are used concurrently.
Is it still a triplex?
The Art operated as the Movieland 8th Street Triplex for about 10 years, from June of 1986 (‘Back to School’, with Rodney Dangerfield, and the Robert Redford flick ‘Legal Eagles’ were among its first offerings) through the spring of ‘96. After a lobby and exterior renovation, it reopened as the Cantor Film Center in 1998, which it operates as to this day.
Lets not forget to add UA into the mix who was partnered running the BS Moss theatres The Criterion, The Art and The Movieland Douglaston in Queens.