https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org An international center for the preservation, study, and exhibition of film and video with a particular focus on American independent and avant-garde cinema and its precursors found in classic European, Soviet and Japanese film. en-us Thu, 18 Sep 2025 04:47:08 -0400 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=09&year=2025#showing-60047 <p>For Malcolm X – as for many Black revolutionaries – prison was a university. Held captive in a structure of unmediated, punitive state violence, he converted to Islam and entered into a dedicated period of self-education and study, reading widely, unlearning the world taught by white supremacy and catalyzing spiritual, intellectual, and political evolution. Although he did not have an espoused abolitionized platform, his fierce opposition to the racialized brutality of policing and coercive state power draws a clear connection to that dimension of struggle. “Unlearning Prisons” pairs two documentaries that interweave the fight against the carceral state and the centrality of education. Although the magnitude of his contributions is far less known, the radical bookstore owner turned jailhouse lawyer at the center of FRAME-UP! THE IMPRISONMENT OF MARTIN SOSTRE emerges as a parallel to Malcolm X – in their shared dedication to Black Liberation, political education, and internationalist anti-imperialism. Sostre was also at one point involved with the Nation of Islam, and along with an incarcerated comrade, once appealed to Malcolm X to testify in their trial. He was imprisoned at Attica in 1967, where a historic prisoner rebellion took place only a few years later in 1971, forming the subject of TEACH OUR CHILDREN. Choy and Robeson’s film documents the insurgency and interviews those incarcerated there, tracing the development of a broader prisoners’ rights movement and development of an anti-carceral abolitionism to which Sostre contributed hugely.<br /><br />Steven Fischler, Joel Sucher, and Howard Blatt<br />FRAME-UP! THE IMPRISONMENT OF MARTIN SOSTRE<br />1974, 30 min, 16mm-to-digital<br /><br />Christine Choy & Susan Robeson<br />TEACH OUR CHILDREN<br />1974, 35 min, 16mm-to-digital<br /><br />Total running time: ca. 70 min.<br /><br /><em><strong>The screening on Thurs, Sept 18 will be followed by a conversation between filmmaker Christine Choy, activist-educator Rosemari Mealy (JD, PhD), and guest-curator Yasmina Price!</strong></em><br /><br /><a href="https://ticketing.us.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr"><strong>CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS NOW!</strong></a></p> Thursday, September 18 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=09&year=2025#showing-60032 <p>Harry Smith remains an enduring figure in American culture, as demonstrated by the numerous exhibitions, biographies, and other publications that have emerged in the past several years alone. This evening’s program heralds the release of a new volume, “The Occult Harry Smith”, edited by Peter Valente and published by Inner Traditions in Vermont. In celebration of the new book, Anthology – in collaboration with Raymond Foye and John Zorn – has organized a very special event, which will feature the world premiere of Anthology’s new restoration of Smith’s FILM NO. 20: FRAGMENTS OF A FAITH FORGOTTEN, as well as rare recordings and home movies of Harry Smith.<br /><br /><strong>To make the event even more unmissable, Anthology’s Composer in Residence John Zorn will be performing live (on sax), along with Ikue Mori (electronics), Jorge Roeder (bass), and Ches Smith (drums)!</strong><br /><br />“Alchemist, magician, filmmaker, artist, mystic, anthropologist, collector, rebel, eternal omnivore, and 20th century Renaissance man, Harry Smith was many things to many people and this outstanding collection of lovingly written testimonies pays tribute to Harry with wit, respect, love, and laser-like precision. It is absolutely impossible to forget any interaction you had with Harry – and the beautiful tales in this remarkably readable and heartfelt book will have you awestruck, laughing out loud, and hungry for more. Perhaps the best collection of writings about one of the most enigmatic and fascinating figures the world has ever known.” –John Zorn on “The Occult Harry Smith”<br /><br />Harry Smith<br />FILM NO. 20: FRAGMENTS OF A FAITH FORGOTTEN<br />1980, 28 min, 35mm-to-DCP. Restored by Anthology Film Archives and The Film Foundation with support from the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.<br />In 1980, Harry Smith combined his two Wizard of Oz-related films (FILM NO. 16 and 19) and called the new work FILM NO. 20: FRAGMENTS OF A FAITH FORGOTTEN. The film was to premiere accompanied by a live score at an Anthology fundraising event at Alice Tully Hall, but, unfortunately, the event was canceled and it never screened. As a special preview to our new 35mm restorations of FILM NO. 16 and 19, we present FILM NO. 20 for the first time ever with a live score by Anthology’s Composer in Residence, John Zorn, along with Ikue Mori, Jorge Roeder, and Ches Smith.<br /><br /><strong>TICKETS FOR THIS EVENT ARE $20 GENERAL AND $15 FOR ANTHOLOGY MEMBERS.</strong><br /><br /><strong>SOLD OUT!</strong></p> Thursday, September 18 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=09&year=2025#showing-60050 <p>Malcolm X was always both a student and a teacher. From his self-education in prison to the transformation of his religious and ideological beliefs to his clear statement at the founding of the Organization of Afro-American Unity – “Education is an important element in the struggle for human rights” – he consistently embodied and encouraged learning in the broadest terms. He objected to miseducation by the American system which fostered violent injustice and racialized inferiority, instead calling for a political awakening and cultural revolution based on a different kind of learning. Black people needed to know their history, access and safeguard their collective memory, and understand the system of oppression they were within before acting to undo it. Aisha al-Adawiya is a formidable community leader and organizer for whom Malcolm served as indirect teacher: hearing him speak at a rally in the1960s brought her to Islam and compelled her towards a path of movement building, collective transformation, and liberatory education. Hisham Aïdi and Sophie Schrago’s SISTER AISHA: QUEEN MOTHER OF HARLEM chronicles a life of service, consistently pushing anti-imperial efforts to end wars and standing in solidarity with Palestinian liberation, organizing against policing, and working for 30 years at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. In the documentary, poet Sonia Sanchez fittingly compares Sister Aisha to Queen Mother Moore. TWO GODS (2020) traces kindred bonds of mentorship on a quiet scale, centered on Hanif, a Black Muslim casket maker and body washer in New Jersey. Nurturing spiritual peace through his faith and care for the dead, Hanif also mentors two adolescent boys, Furquan and Naz, passing on what he learned in his life to guide theirs. The nature of Hanif’s work also evokes the perpetual sense of mourning and grief which suffuses the remembrance of Malcolm X.<br /><br />Zeshawn Ali<br />TWO GODS<br />2020, 82 min, DCP<br /><br />Hisham Aïdi & Sophie Schrago<br />SISTER AISHA: QUEEN MOTHER OF HARLEM<br />2024, 47 min, DCP<br /><br />Total running time: ca. 135 min.<br /><br /><em><strong>The screening on Thurs, Sept 18 will be introduced by filmmakers Hisham Aïdi & Zeshawn Ali!</strong></em><br /><br /><a href="https://ticketing.us.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr"><strong>CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS NOW!</strong></a></p> Thursday, September 18 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=09&year=2025#showing-60053 <p>Just before his life was cut short – and not by coincidence – Malcolm X had internationalized his vision of the struggle against domination and discrimination. He unmasked the façade of democracy draped over U.S. imperial hegemony, keenly understanding white supremacy as an architecture of global power in the context of the Cold War and Civil Rights movement, anti-communism, and the endless predation of capitalism. The solution was the transnational interdependence of all colonized and oppressed peoples. MALCOLM X: STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM is a capsule of how this Third-Worldist perspective consolidated only months before his assassination, during a period of travels to Mecca, Africa, and Europe. Opening with an internationalist newsreel montage by photographer John Taylor, the documentary sees Malcolm X in Paris at a critical juncture. It was made by Lebert “Sandy” Bethune, a Jamaican poet, educator, and documentary filmmaker who worked in an orbit of Black writers, artists, and thinkers linked to Négritude and revolutionary militancy. Crucially filling out the picture of Malcolm X’s ties to the African continent and Sudan in particular, MALCOLM X AND THE SUDANESE draws from his exchanges with economist Ahmed Siddig Osman. After meeting in Harlem in 1962, Osman made the arrangements for his Hajj to Mecca and influenced his shift to Sunni Islam. The documentary is a rare glimpse into his evolving spiritual life and political thought within a Pan-African historical memory. MALCOLM X SPEAKS (1971) frames this final stage within the story of his life – the Nebraska childhood that preceded the young city-hopping Malcolm X, incarceration and conversion, and his entry and exit from the Nation of Islam – before movingly closing by intertwining Betty Shabazz and their children. Together, the three documentaries of “You Remember Internationalism” form a cinematic historical memory of how he came to be, a prismatic perspective on the Malcolm X who stood in solidarity with Palestinian Liberation, the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya, the Cuban Revolution, and the anti-colonial efforts of the Vietnamese and Algerian peoples.<br /><br />Sophie Schrago<br />MALCOLM X AND THE SUDANESE<br />2020, 26 min, DCP<br /><br />Charles Hobson<br />MALCOLM X SPEAKS<br />1971, 44 min, 16mm. Print courtesy of the Reserve Film and Video Collection of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, with funding from the National Film Preservation Foundation.<br /><br />Lebert Bethune<br />MALCOLM X: STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM<br />1967, 22 min, 16mm. Preserved by the Reserve Film and Video Collection of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, with funding from the National Film Preservation Foundation.<br /><br />Total running time: ca. 95 min.<br /><br /><em><strong>The screening on Sat, Sept 13 will be introduced by Hisham Aïdi (writer and producer of MALCOLM X AND THE SUDANESE)!<br /><br /></strong><strong>The screening on Fri, Sept 19 will be followed by a conversation with Lebert Bethune and Baba Zayid Muhammad of the Malcolm X Commemoration Committee! </strong></em><br /><br /><a href="https://ticketing.us.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr"><strong>CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS NOW!</strong></a></p> Friday, September 19 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=09&year=2025#showing-60034 <p>Tone Glow – a newsletter dedicated to showcasing the best in experimental music – is excited to present a special screening of Thomas White’s WHO’S CRAZY? (1965), a freewheeling portrait of inmates who escape from a mental institution. Shot in rural Belgium, the film’s actors were from New York’s Living Theatre troupe, left in exile after the company’s founders were jailed over alleged tax fraud. WHO’S CRAZY? serves as a feature-length expansion of their ideals, where communal expression served as a way to imagine new futures. “If one can experiment in theatre, one can experiment in life,” co-founder Julian Beck once stated. White’s goal with the film was to “pose the problem of the relativity of insanity,” and he brought in Ornette Coleman to deliver an original soundtrack to elevate its madcap proceedings. Over nine hours of footage was edited down to its final 73-minute runtime; Denise de Casabianca, who worked with Jacques Rivette on works such as OUT 1, PARIS BELONGS TO US, and THE NUN, was the film’s editor.<br /><br />In honor of the film’s soundtrack, this screening of WHO’S CRAZY? will be preceded by a rare duo performance by drummer William Hooker and saxophonist Alan Braufman, two musicians associated with New York’s venerated loft scene during the 1970s. The two will play music from their recently unearthed 1977 album “A Time Within” (released in March by Valley of Search).<br /><br />Thomas White<br />WHO’S CRAZY?<br />1966, 73 min, 35mm-to-DCP. Digitized and distributed by Grand Motel Films (with assistance from Anthology’s Archivist John Klacsmann); special thanks to Vanessa McDonnell, Aaron Schimberg, and Spectacle Theater.<br /><br />For more info about Tone Glow visit: <a href="https://toneglow.substack.com/">https://toneglow.substack.com/</a> <br /><br /><strong>TICKETS FOR THIS EVENT ARE $20 GENERAL AND $15 FOR ANTHOLOGY MEMBERS.</strong><br /><br /><a href="https://ticketing.us.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr"><strong>CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS NOW!</strong></a></p> Friday, September 19 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=09&year=2025#showing-60056 <p>Through the flames of a cleansing fire, the Black migrant worker and protagonist of SOLEIL Ô (1970) sees a portrait of Malcolm X, conjured next to those of Patrice Lumumba, Che Guevara, and Mehdi Ben Barka. The Mauritanian filmmaker Med Hondo was part of the swell of Third Worldist and Pan-African filmmaking of the 1960s and 1970s, a global circuit of cinematic reckonings with labor, empire, migration, and colonization. With his incendiary debut feature, he directly analyzed and condemned the conditions of immigrant African labor in Europe in an audiovisual assault against domination told through a fragmented patchwork of allegory, Marxist theory, psychic alienation, and autobiographical experience. Hondo – who loathed Spike Lee’s biopic and loved Amiri Baraka’s critique of it – ended his eruptively militant, jaggedly stylized, and caustically funny experimental film by placing Malcolm X amongst a cadre of Third World revolutionary leaders. The final vision of SOLEIL Ô condensed the breathtaking cinematic polemic into a visual political compass, cementing a call to arms for an international rebellion against all forms of exploitation under colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism.<br /><br />Med Hondo<br />SOLEIL Ô<br />1970, 102 min, 35mm-to-DCP. In French and Arabic with English subtitles.<br /><br />Preceded by:<br /><br />Sohail Daulatzai<br />FROM THE RUINS: A PRELUDE<br />2025, 6 min, digital<br />FROM THE RUINS: A PRELUDE is a reckoning with the histories of radical internationalism that Malcolm X demanded and a portal into the tensions between the catastrophic and the quotidian, here and there, then and now.<br /><br />Total running time: ca. 110 min.<br /><br /><em><strong>The screening on Sun, Sept 14 will be followed by a conversation between writer Sohail Daulatzai and guest-curator Yasmina Price!</strong></em><br /><br /><a href="https://ticketing.us.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr"><strong>CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS NOW!</strong></a></p> Friday, September 19 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=09&year=2025#showing-60059 <p>It would be difficult to overstate the impact, popularity, and readership of “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”, which was published the same year as his assassination, and became the primary source material for numerous filmic adaptations and unfulfilled scripts (notably, one by James Baldwin). At once a classic of the genre and a break with convention, it was co-authored with a journalist, delivered “as told to Alex Haley.” The text is therefore a mirror and a mask, a first-person narrative written by a second person, an exercise in mythmaking and collaborative creation that gets closer to the process of filmmaking than it might have otherwise. Arnold Perl’s 1972 MALCOLM X: HIS OWN STORY AS IT REALLY HAPPENED – which benefited from the advisory role of Malcolm X’s widow Betty Shabazz – is guided by James Earl Jones reading from the text. The documentary like the book is haunted by loss: after Arnold Perl passed away during the editing, it was completed by producer Nancy Reals Perl, his widow. A rich compilation of newsreel footage, speeches, interviews, and contextual archival material, MALCOLM X: HIS OWN STORY AS IT REALLY HAPPENED maps out the transformational arc from Malcolm Little to el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz, opening with Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit”, which sets a tone of mourning as the precursor to a life of militancy.<br /><br />Arnold Perl<br />MALCOLM X: HIS OWN STORY AS IT REALLY HAPPENED<br />1972, 91 min, 35mm-to-DCP<br /><br /><a href="https://ticketing.us.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr"><strong>CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS NOW!</strong></a></p> Saturday, September 20 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=09&year=2025#showing-60010 <p>This newly completed work – made after Johnston’s death – constructs a highly revealing portrait of the artist via interviews with his sister, Marjory (who in his later years collaborated with Daniel on his artwork and continues to advocate for and promote his work), a special focus on his drawings, as well as documentation of his last home, a house in Waller, Texas, which he filled with a truly mind-boggling volume of books, records, VHS tapes, and other collections, all of which serve as a kind of self-portrait of a unique mind and sensibility.<br /><br />Plus, additional clips and excerpts!<br /><br /><a href="https://ticketing.us.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr"><strong>CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS NOW!</strong></a></p> Saturday, September 20 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=09&year=2025#showing-60062 <p>Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. are often presented as two opposing sides of Black Liberation: self-defense and separatism vs. non-violence and integration. Both assassinated at age 39 following a political turning point, they also share the fate of having their individual and related legacies oversimplified and defanged. Bill Duke’s THE MEETING (1989), adapted from a 1987 one-act play by Jeff Stetson, attempts to stage a more complex picture through a speculative, covert exchange that takes place in a Harlem hotel room. A few years earlier, Duke had made his feature debut with THE KILLING FLOOR (1984), a jolting and lucid account of interracial labor organizing in Chicago’s stockyards leading up to the 1919 Race Riot. His process of careful research and consciousness of class struggle also inform this later film. Couched in an ensnaring atmosphere of tension and palpable danger, THE MEETING is set on February 14, 1965, in the immediate aftermath of the firebombing of Malcolm X’s home – which occurred while he, Betty Shabazz, and their four young daughters were inside – and exactly a week before his assassination. Though the imagined conversation between Malcolm and MLK sometimes teeters into an overly schematic compare-and-contrast that is too on the nose (they do arm wrestle), the film strives towards clarity of political philosophies and psychological nuance. The cramped space of a hotel room becomes an expanded theatrical container for the riveting and peculiar historical “what-if” of an unmediated conversation between the two leaders.<br /><br />Bill Duke<br />AMERICAN PLAYHOUSE: THE MEETING<br />1989, 74 min, video. Courtesy of the Peabody Awards Collection, University of Georgia Libraries.<br /><br /><a href="https://ticketing.us.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr"><strong>CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS NOW!</strong></a></p> Saturday, September 20 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=09&year=2025#showing-60013 <p>This acclaimed film – made with the cooperation of Daniel Johnston – is the definitive documentary portrait of the singer-songwriter. Delving deeply and sensitively into Johnston’s extraordinary music, his equally singular and accomplished artwork, and his struggles with mental illness, it’s a profoundly revealing exploration not only of a particular artist and his work, but of the relationship that so often exists between artistic creation and psychological disturbance.<br /><br /><a href="https://ticketing.us.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr"><strong>CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS NOW!</strong></a></p> Saturday, September 20 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=09&year=2025#showing-60065 <p>A triptych portrait, the NET-produced public television special THE NEGRO AND THE AMERICAN PROMISE (1963) presents Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and James Baldwin as the three faces of the Civil Rights movement. Educator and psychologist Kenneth Clark acts as host, setting the discursive scene around “the racial confrontation in America,” interspersed with contextual documentary footage. The three guests are each interviewed separately, filmed in tight close-up, emphasizing an organizational logic in which the program focuses on their points of difference, as they touch on organizing strategies, morality, governance, religious ideologies, and childhood. Establishing a hefty historical record, the program productively sequences Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and James Baldwin as witnesses and engineers of an at-once unchanging and transforming national landscape.<br /><br />Fred Barzyk<br />THE NEGRO AND THE AMERICAN PROMISE<br />1963, 59 min, 16mm. Print courtesy of the Reserve Film and Video Collection of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, with funding from the National Film Preservation Foundation.<br /><br /><strong>This program will be free of charge / suggested donation. Advance tickets are available for a suggested donation cost of $8, or will be available at the box office during the evening of each screening for free, or for whatever donation amount audience members wish.</strong><br /><br /><a href="https://ticketing.us.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr"><strong>CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS NOW!</strong></a></p> Saturday, September 20 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=09&year=2025#showing-60016 <p>This concert film captures one of Daniel Johnston’s greatest live performances, a July 2007 appearance at London’s Union Chapel. Joined by an impressive array of friends and admirers, including longtime collaborator Brett Hartenbach, Scottish folksinger James Yorkston, and English composer Adem, Daniel delivers definitive renditions of favorites from across his body of work.<br /><br /><a href="https://ticketing.us.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr"><strong>CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS NOW!</strong></a></p> Sunday, September 21 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=09&year=2025#showing-60068 <p>Both places where Malcolm X made his mark, Mississippi and Chicago, are the coordinates of a historical and geographic trajectory of Black life in the U.S. – the Great Migration, the SNCC, the Black Panther Party, violence, kinships, survival, and struggle. From the work of photographer Harvey Richards, WE’LL NEVER TURN BACK (1963) collects the testimonies of sharecroppers and voter registration activists (including the extraordinary community organizer and civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer) as a crucial record of the motivations and stakes of the struggle to access avenues of political participation. The documentary is a crucial record of the immense danger and violence experienced by sharecropping communities in the South – threats, intimidation, retaliation in employment and housing, beatings and murder – and their efforts to oppose it. Two years later, in 1965, Malcolm X would deliver his “Advice to the Youth of Mississippi” speech, naming the enemy depriving Black people of their rights, and prescribing a plan of action: “Treat them like that and fight them, and you’ll get your freedom.” During a 1969 speech on Malcolm X’s birthday, Fred Hampton praised how he modelled “constructive, revolutionary criticism.” Hampton was a fellow electrifying speaker, galvanizing leader, and martyr of Black Liberation. Initially intended as a chronicle of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party by Howard Alk of The Film Group, the documentary took an investigative turn at the crossroads of Hampton’s assassination, orchestrated as a police raid implicated with FBI counterinsurgency. Entering the scene in the early aftermath, THE MURDER OF FRED HAMPTON (1971) brings together Hampton’s powerful leadership and the BPP’s extensive organizing for self-governance with an exposé of brutal suppression. Each of the films in “Mississippi to Chicago” expose the dialectic of insurgency and repression, offering a way to remember Malcolm X within a network of organizers, revolutionaries, and everyday people.<br /><br />Harvey Richards<br />WE’LL NEVER TURN BACK<br />1963, 29 min, 16mm-to-DCP<br /><br />Howard Alk<br />THE MURDER OF FRED HAMPTON<br />1971, 88 min, 35mm. Photochemically preserved in 2017 by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. 35mm print courtesy of Chicago Film Archives.<br /><br />Total running time: ca. 120 min.<br /><br /><em><strong>The screening on Tues, Sept 16 will be introduced by archivist Andrea Battleground!</strong></em><br /><br /><a href="https://ticketing.us.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr"><strong>CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS NOW!</strong></a></p> Sunday, September 21 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=09&year=2025#showing-60011 <p>This newly completed work – made after Johnston’s death – constructs a highly revealing portrait of the artist via interviews with his sister, Marjory (who in his later years collaborated with Daniel on his artwork and continues to advocate for and promote his work), a special focus on his drawings, as well as documentation of his last home, a house in Waller, Texas, which he filled with a truly mind-boggling volume of books, records, VHS tapes, and other collections, all of which serve as a kind of self-portrait of a unique mind and sensibility.<br /><br />Plus, additional clips and excerpts!<br /><br /><a href="https://ticketing.us.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr"><strong>CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS NOW!</strong></a></p> Sunday, September 21 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=09&year=2025#showing-60014 <p>This acclaimed film – made with the cooperation of Daniel Johnston – is the definitive documentary portrait of the singer-songwriter. Delving deeply and sensitively into Johnston’s extraordinary music, his equally singular and accomplished artwork, and his struggles with mental illness, it’s a profoundly revealing exploration not only of a particular artist and his work, but of the relationship that so often exists between artistic creation and psychological disturbance.<br /><br /><a href="https://ticketing.us.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr"><strong>CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS NOW!</strong></a></p> Monday, September 22 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=09&year=2025#showing-59956 <p>SPECIAL SCREENING + LIVE PERFORMANCE!<br /><br />Join us for an intimate evening of music and film with guitarist and composer William Tyler, featuring a special screening of TIME INDEFINITE, a visual album co-directed by Elise Tyler and Aaron Anderson. Set to William Tyler’s new album “Time Indefinite”, the film weaves together found footage from his family archives into a poetic meditation on memory, decay, and the passage of time.<br /><br />The night opens with a live solo performance by William Tyler, followed by the NYC premiere of the film, and will conclude with a post-screening conversation with William and director Elise Tyler.<br /><br /><a href="https://ticketing.us.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr"><strong>CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS NOW!</strong></a></p> Tuesday, September 23 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=09&year=2025#showing-59963 <p>(PRÄSTÄNKAN)<br /><br />In this lyrical, early Dreyer comedy, a young parson wins a plum parish in 17th-century Norway, but is obliged to marry the widow of his deceased predecessor and pretend his attractive young fiancée is his sister. Dreyer’s touch is evident in the close-ups of the pastor’s would-be rivals and parishioners, and in a slow pan presaging the 360-degree views of VAMPYR.<br /><br /><a href="https://ticketing.us.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr"><strong>CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS NOW!</strong></a> </p> Wednesday, September 24 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=09&year=2025#showing-59964 <p>Shot by the great German cinematographers Karl Freund and Rudolph Maté, MICHAEL concerns the unconsummated homosexual love between a painter and his manipulative, larcenous model. The Danish director Benjamin Christensen stars as artist Claude Zoret, modeled in part after Rodin, whose irrepressible love finds its most complete expression in his last painting.<br /><br /><a href="https://ticketing.us.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr"><strong>CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS NOW!</strong></a> </p> Wednesday, September 24 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=09&year=2025#showing-59923 <p>PRESENTED BY ISSUE PROJECT ROOM<br /><br />This fall, Anthology joins forces with ISSUE Project Room to present a special screening of Robert Ashley’s MUSIC WITH ROOTS IN THE AETHER: THE MUSIC OF DAVID BEHRMAN (1975). Ashley’s seminal video opera (which in its totality lasts 14 hours) explores the lives and works of key figures within the American experimental tradition, and documents the post-serial, post-Cage stylistic shift that transformed American concert music beginning in the 1960s. Shot in long, unedited takes, the visual style presents performance without interference, where the frame itself becomes the stage. This rigorous approach not only preserves the integrity of the music but also transforms each interview into a quiet, embodied theater of ideas.<br /><br />The whole series episodically centers seven different composers including Philip Glass, Alvin Lucier, Gordon Mumma, Pauline Oliveros, Terry Riley, and Ashley himself. But ISSUE and Anthology will focus on the episode that centers the pioneering music of 2025 ISSUE Gala honoree, David Behrman, in recognition of his innovative contributions to electronic and experimental music, his collaborative spirit, and his influence on the integration of technology and live performance.<br /><br /><em><strong>David Behrman will be here to introduce the screening in person!</strong></em><br /><br />For more info about ISSUE Project Room and the 2025 ISSUE Gala, visit: <a href="https://issueprojectroom.org/">https://issueprojectroom.org/</a> <br /><br />Robert Ashley<br />MUSIC WITH ROOTS IN THE AETHER: DAVID BEHRMAN<br />1975, 115 min, digital<strong><br /><br /></strong><a href="https://ticketing.us.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr"><strong>CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS NOW!</strong></a></p> Thursday, September 25 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=09&year=2025#showing-59942 <p><strong>REVIVAL RUN – NEW RESTORATION!</strong><br /><br />Digitally restored by Anthology Film Archives in collaboration with The Municipal Art Society of New York and the Project for Public Spaces.<br /><br />In 1980, the urbanist, sociologist, city planner, and writer William H. Whyte published a book based on the fruits of many years of research and observation into pedestrian behavior and city dynamics, conducted as part of his Street Life Project (which operated under the umbrella of the New York City Planning Commission). The result, “The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces”, closely analyzed the functioning (or malfunctioning) of public spaces in various cities, above all in NYC. The book quickly became a classic text within the realm of city planning, and remains beloved not only for the perceptiveness, elegance, and wisdom of its insights into the ways city dwellers interact with the urban environment, but for its disarmingly unpretentious, no-nonsense, and often flat-out funny tone. Though the book is familiar to generations of teachers and students of urbanism and city planning, the project is not widely known outside those circles. Perhaps even less well known – but hopefully not for long – is that, as a supplement to the published text, Whyte simultaneously produced an hour-long film of the same name.<br /><br />The film version of THE SOCIAL LIFE OF SMALL URBAN SPACES fully embodies all the qualities of the book: its intelligence, its empathetic, common-sense insight into what makes a city truly work for its residents (in contrast to the grandiose, often authoritarian instincts of architects, politicians, and developers), and its gentle yet often pointed wit. The film also boasts its own, unique qualities. Unlike the book, the film is graced by Whyte’s own voice: sounding very much like Jimmy Stewart’s city planner cousin, Whyte delivers the narration with a lack of polish and an often-self-deprecatory folksiness that’s charmingly at odds with the stentorian tone of most educational films. The film is also effectively a work of street photography. Though it was produced as a kind of filmic report and a pedagogical tool, Whyte and his team’s dedication to observing – and recording – the actual behavior of city dwellers, and their sharp eye for the behaviors and gestures that are most revealing of city life, result in a film that is – almost incidentally – a classic city symphony. Taking place primarily in New York (with brief detours to Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, and other urban centers), THE SOCIAL LIFE OF SMALL URBAN SPACES is one of the great films about that strangest of creatures – the city dweller – in its natural habitat.<br /><br />One of the few “civilians” who have appreciated and celebrated the film in recent years is filmmaker John Wilson, who programmed it during a carte-blanche at Anthology in 2023. We were so enamored with the film – which at that time was only available in a very poor-quality video transfer – that we embarked on a quest to locate better elements. In collaboration with Project for Public Spaces (an organization that grew out of Whyte’s Street Life Project) and the Municipal Art Society of New York (which acted as the film’s initial distributor and where Whyte was a board member), we have managed to restore the film. Now, as part of Project for Public Spaces’ 50th anniversary, and to celebrate the shared history of PPS and MAS, we are overjoyed to present the new, beautiful restoration with a week-long revival run.<br /><br />“William Whyte is a legendary people watcher who likes to study the subtle ways public space is used. I think about this film constantly whenever I’m out shooting.” –John Wilson<br /><br />Co-presented by the Municipal Art Society of New York (<a href="https://www.mas.org">https://www.mas.org</a>) and Project for Public Spaces (<a href="https://www.pps.org/">https://www.pps.org/</a>).<br /><br /><strong>On opening night – Fri, Sept 26 – following the 7pm screening, the Municipal Art Society and Project for Public Spaces will host a special panel discussion focusing on how social life and the public realm have evolved since the film’s original release in New York and beyond. Panelists will include ‍Rosa Chang (Gotham Park), Setha Low (CUNY), Claire Weisz (WXY Architecture), and moderator Nate Storring (Project for Public Spaces).</strong><br /><br /><strong>On William H. Whyte’s birthday – Wed, Oct 1 – following the 7pm screening, the Social Life Project with Project for Public Spaces will host a special panel discussion focusing on how Holly’s insights have inspired their work and how that spark lives on today in the global placemaking movement. Panelists will include PPS and Social Life Project Founders Fred Kent, Kathy Madden, and Steve Davies, as well as Ethan Kent (PlacemakingX). Nate Storring (Project for Public Spaces) will introduce.</strong><br /><br /><a href="https://ticketing.us.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr"><strong>CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS NOW!</strong></a></p> Friday, September 26 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=09&year=2025#showing-59965 <p>(LA PASSION DE JEANNE D’ARC)<br /><br />Spiritual rapture and institutional hypocrisy are brought to stark, vivid life in one of the most transcendent achievements of the silent era. Chronicling the trial of Joan of Arc in the final hours leading up to her execution, Dreyer depicts her torment with startling immediacy, employing an array of techniques – including expressionistic lighting, interconnected sets, and painfully intimate close-ups – to immerse viewers in her subjective experience. Anchoring Dreyer’s audacious formal experimentation is a legendary performance by Renée Falconetti, whose haunted face channels both the agony and the ecstasy of martyrdom.<br /><br /><span>“With THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC, there occurs a most striking change in both the film-maker’s style and his intensity of thematic concentration. A few potent shots in previous movies hardly promise the unique and brilliant imagery which here bursts forth frame after frame. […] The vision of JOAN is inspired or demoniac. Her passion is observed with clinical detail in the sharp-etched, stark compositions, many relentless close-ups. But this is also loving detail, for Joan is the first of Dreyer’s possessed, a lineage which may be traced through the victims of VAMPYR to Anne in DAY OF WRATH and Johannes in ORDET; characters who work out their passions throughout the process of their films with peculiar intensity and directness, so that identification with the director himself is implicit.” –Ken Kelman, FILM CULTURE<br /><br /></span><a href="https://ticketing.us.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr"><strong>CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS NOW!</strong></a></p> Friday, September 26 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=09&year=2025#showing-60019 <p>Jonas Mekas WALDEN: REEL 2 (1969, 40 min, 16mm)<br />“Kreeping Kreplachs meet (Ginsberg, Ed Sanders, Tuli, Warhol, Barbara Rubin, etc) / Hare Krishna walk; autumn scenes; Sitney’s wedding; New Year’s Evening in Times Square; Goofing on 42nd Street; Uptown Party; Velvet Underground; Deep of Winter; Naomi visits Ken & Flo Jacobs; Amy stops for Coffee; Coop Directors meet; Dreams of Cocteau; In Central Park; What Leslie saw thru the Coop window; Olmsted Hike.” –Jonas Mekas<br /><br />Marjorie Keller THE FALLEN WORLD (1983, 9.5 min, 16mm. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives.)<br />“An elegy for a Newfoundland dog named Melville and a portrait of his owner.” –Marjorie Keller<br /><br />Marjorie Keller PRIVATE PARTS (1988, 13 min, 16mm, silent)<br />“PRIVATE PARTS is the third in a series of in-camera edited films. A portrait of Blake Sitney on some summer days.” –Marjorie Keller<br /><br />Stan Brakhage FILMS BY STAN BRAKHAGE: AN AVANT-GARDE HOME MOVIE (1961, 4 min, 16mm, silent)<br />“I had a camera with which I could make multiple superimpositions spontaneously. It had been lent to me for a week. I was also given a couple of rolls of color film which had been through an intensive fire. The chance that the film would not record any image at all left me free to experiment and try to create the sense of the daily world in which we live, and what it meant to me. I wanted to record our home, and yet deal with it as being that area from which the films by Stan Brakhage arise, and try to make one arise at the same time.” –Stan Brakhage<br /><br />Plus, additional special surprises!<br /><br /><a href="https://ticketing.us.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr"><strong>CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS NOW!</strong></a></p> Saturday, September 27 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=09&year=2025#showing-59943 <p><strong>REVIVAL RUN – NEW RESTORATION!</strong><br /><br />Digitally restored by Anthology Film Archives in collaboration with The Municipal Art Society of New York and the Project for Public Spaces.<br /><br />In 1980, the urbanist, sociologist, city planner, and writer William H. Whyte published a book based on the fruits of many years of research and observation into pedestrian behavior and city dynamics, conducted as part of his Street Life Project (which operated under the umbrella of the New York City Planning Commission). The result, “The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces”, closely analyzed the functioning (or malfunctioning) of public spaces in various cities, above all in NYC. The book quickly became a classic text within the realm of city planning, and remains beloved not only for the perceptiveness, elegance, and wisdom of its insights into the ways city dwellers interact with the urban environment, but for its disarmingly unpretentious, no-nonsense, and often flat-out funny tone. Though the book is familiar to generations of teachers and students of urbanism and city planning, the project is not widely known outside those circles. Perhaps even less well known – but hopefully not for long – is that, as a supplement to the published text, Whyte simultaneously produced an hour-long film of the same name.<br /><br />The film version of THE SOCIAL LIFE OF SMALL URBAN SPACES fully embodies all the qualities of the book: its intelligence, its empathetic, common-sense insight into what makes a city truly work for its residents (in contrast to the grandiose, often authoritarian instincts of architects, politicians, and developers), and its gentle yet often pointed wit. The film also boasts its own, unique qualities. Unlike the book, the film is graced by Whyte’s own voice: sounding very much like Jimmy Stewart’s city planner cousin, Whyte delivers the narration with a lack of polish and an often-self-deprecatory folksiness that’s charmingly at odds with the stentorian tone of most educational films. The film is also effectively a work of street photography. Though it was produced as a kind of filmic report and a pedagogical tool, Whyte and his team’s dedication to observing – and recording – the actual behavior of city dwellers, and their sharp eye for the behaviors and gestures that are most revealing of city life, result in a film that is – almost incidentally – a classic city symphony. Taking place primarily in New York (with brief detours to Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, and other urban centers), THE SOCIAL LIFE OF SMALL URBAN SPACES is one of the great films about that strangest of creatures – the city dweller – in its natural habitat.<br /><br />One of the few “civilians” who have appreciated and celebrated the film in recent years is filmmaker John Wilson, who programmed it during a carte-blanche at Anthology in 2023. We were so enamored with the film – which at that time was only available in a very poor-quality video transfer – that we embarked on a quest to locate better elements. In collaboration with Project for Public Spaces (an organization that grew out of Whyte’s Street Life Project) and the Municipal Art Society of New York (which acted as the film’s initial distributor and where Whyte was a board member), we have managed to restore the film. Now, as part of Project for Public Spaces’ 50th anniversary, and to celebrate the shared history of PPS and MAS, we are overjoyed to present the new, beautiful restoration with a week-long revival run.<br /><br />“William Whyte is a legendary people watcher who likes to study the subtle ways public space is used. I think about this film constantly whenever I’m out shooting.” –John Wilson<br /><br />Co-presented by the Municipal Art Society of New York (<a href="https://www.mas.org">https://www.mas.org</a>) and Project for Public Spaces (<a href="https://www.pps.org/">https://www.pps.org/</a>).<br /><br /><strong>On opening night – Fri, Sept 26 – following the 7pm screening, the Municipal Art Society and Project for Public Spaces will host a special panel discussion focusing on how social life and the public realm have evolved since the film’s original release in New York and beyond. Panelists will include ‍Rosa Chang (Gotham Park), Setha Low (CUNY), Claire Weisz (WXY Architecture), and moderator Nate Storring (Project for Public Spaces).</strong><br /><br /><strong>On William H. Whyte’s birthday – Wed, Oct 1 – following the 7pm screening, the Social Life Project with Project for Public Spaces will host a special panel discussion focusing on how Holly’s insights have inspired their work and how that spark lives on today in the global placemaking movement. Panelists will include PPS and Social Life Project Founders Fred Kent, Kathy Madden, and Steve Davies, as well as Ethan Kent (PlacemakingX). Nate Storring (Project for Public Spaces) will introduce.</strong><br /><br /><a href="https://ticketing.us.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr"><strong>CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS NOW!</strong></a></p> Saturday, September 27 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=09&year=2025#showing-59944 <p><strong>REVIVAL RUN – NEW RESTORATION!</strong><br /><br />Digitally restored by Anthology Film Archives in collaboration with The Municipal Art Society of New York and the Project for Public Spaces.<br /><br />In 1980, the urbanist, sociologist, city planner, and writer William H. Whyte published a book based on the fruits of many years of research and observation into pedestrian behavior and city dynamics, conducted as part of his Street Life Project (which operated under the umbrella of the New York City Planning Commission). The result, “The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces”, closely analyzed the functioning (or malfunctioning) of public spaces in various cities, above all in NYC. The book quickly became a classic text within the realm of city planning, and remains beloved not only for the perceptiveness, elegance, and wisdom of its insights into the ways city dwellers interact with the urban environment, but for its disarmingly unpretentious, no-nonsense, and often flat-out funny tone. Though the book is familiar to generations of teachers and students of urbanism and city planning, the project is not widely known outside those circles. Perhaps even less well known – but hopefully not for long – is that, as a supplement to the published text, Whyte simultaneously produced an hour-long film of the same name.<br /><br />The film version of THE SOCIAL LIFE OF SMALL URBAN SPACES fully embodies all the qualities of the book: its intelligence, its empathetic, common-sense insight into what makes a city truly work for its residents (in contrast to the grandiose, often authoritarian instincts of architects, politicians, and developers), and its gentle yet often pointed wit. The film also boasts its own, unique qualities. Unlike the book, the film is graced by Whyte’s own voice: sounding very much like Jimmy Stewart’s city planner cousin, Whyte delivers the narration with a lack of polish and an often-self-deprecatory folksiness that’s charmingly at odds with the stentorian tone of most educational films. The film is also effectively a work of street photography. Though it was produced as a kind of filmic report and a pedagogical tool, Whyte and his team’s dedication to observing – and recording – the actual behavior of city dwellers, and their sharp eye for the behaviors and gestures that are most revealing of city life, result in a film that is – almost incidentally – a classic city symphony. Taking place primarily in New York (with brief detours to Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, and other urban centers), THE SOCIAL LIFE OF SMALL URBAN SPACES is one of the great films about that strangest of creatures – the city dweller – in its natural habitat.<br /><br />One of the few “civilians” who have appreciated and celebrated the film in recent years is filmmaker John Wilson, who programmed it during a carte-blanche at Anthology in 2023. We were so enamored with the film – which at that time was only available in a very poor-quality video transfer – that we embarked on a quest to locate better elements. In collaboration with Project for Public Spaces (an organization that grew out of Whyte’s Street Life Project) and the Municipal Art Society of New York (which acted as the film’s initial distributor and where Whyte was a board member), we have managed to restore the film. Now, as part of Project for Public Spaces’ 50th anniversary, and to celebrate the shared history of PPS and MAS, we are overjoyed to present the new, beautiful restoration with a week-long revival run.<br /><br />“William Whyte is a legendary people watcher who likes to study the subtle ways public space is used. I think about this film constantly whenever I’m out shooting.” –John Wilson<br /><br />Co-presented by the Municipal Art Society of New York (<a href="https://www.mas.org">https://www.mas.org</a>) and Project for Public Spaces (<a href="https://www.pps.org/">https://www.pps.org/</a>).<br /><br /><strong>On opening night – Fri, Sept 26 – following the 7pm screening, the Municipal Art Society and Project for Public Spaces will host a special panel discussion focusing on how social life and the public realm have evolved since the film’s original release in New York and beyond. Panelists will include ‍Rosa Chang (Gotham Park), Setha Low (CUNY), Claire Weisz (WXY Architecture), and moderator Nate Storring (Project for Public Spaces).</strong><br /><br /><strong>On William H. Whyte’s birthday – Wed, Oct 1 – following the 7pm screening, the Social Life Project with Project for Public Spaces will host a special panel discussion focusing on how Holly’s insights have inspired their work and how that spark lives on today in the global placemaking movement. Panelists will include PPS and Social Life Project Founders Fred Kent, Kathy Madden, and Steve Davies, as well as Ethan Kent (PlacemakingX). Nate Storring (Project for Public Spaces) will introduce.</strong><br /><br /><a href="https://ticketing.us.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr"><strong>CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS NOW!</strong></a></p> Saturday, September 27 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=09&year=2025#showing-60021 <p>Gregory Markopoulos was among the filmmakers whose work P. Adams Sitney most respected and treasured. He wrote about Markopoulos’s work on many occasions, in “Visionary Film” and elsewhere, and traveled to experience the quadrennial presentations of the artist’s monumental final work, ENIAIOS (1947-91) at the Temenos site near Lyssarea, Greece. As part of our memorial tribute to Sitney, and with the generous cooperation of filmmaker Robert Beavers (the Director of the Temenos Archive), we will present two reels drawn from ENIAIOS IV, which have never been presented in this configuration.<br /><br />Total running time: ca. 60 min.<br /><br /><a href="https://ticketing.us.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr"><strong>CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS NOW!</strong></a></p> Sunday, September 28 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=09&year=2025#showing-59945 <p><strong>REVIVAL RUN – NEW RESTORATION!</strong><br /><br />Digitally restored by Anthology Film Archives in collaboration with The Municipal Art Society of New York and the Project for Public Spaces.<br /><br />In 1980, the urbanist, sociologist, city planner, and writer William H. Whyte published a book based on the fruits of many years of research and observation into pedestrian behavior and city dynamics, conducted as part of his Street Life Project (which operated under the umbrella of the New York City Planning Commission). The result, “The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces”, closely analyzed the functioning (or malfunctioning) of public spaces in various cities, above all in NYC. The book quickly became a classic text within the realm of city planning, and remains beloved not only for the perceptiveness, elegance, and wisdom of its insights into the ways city dwellers interact with the urban environment, but for its disarmingly unpretentious, no-nonsense, and often flat-out funny tone. Though the book is familiar to generations of teachers and students of urbanism and city planning, the project is not widely known outside those circles. Perhaps even less well known – but hopefully not for long – is that, as a supplement to the published text, Whyte simultaneously produced an hour-long film of the same name.<br /><br />The film version of THE SOCIAL LIFE OF SMALL URBAN SPACES fully embodies all the qualities of the book: its intelligence, its empathetic, common-sense insight into what makes a city truly work for its residents (in contrast to the grandiose, often authoritarian instincts of architects, politicians, and developers), and its gentle yet often pointed wit. The film also boasts its own, unique qualities. Unlike the book, the film is graced by Whyte’s own voice: sounding very much like Jimmy Stewart’s city planner cousin, Whyte delivers the narration with a lack of polish and an often-self-deprecatory folksiness that’s charmingly at odds with the stentorian tone of most educational films. The film is also effectively a work of street photography. Though it was produced as a kind of filmic report and a pedagogical tool, Whyte and his team’s dedication to observing – and recording – the actual behavior of city dwellers, and their sharp eye for the behaviors and gestures that are most revealing of city life, result in a film that is – almost incidentally – a classic city symphony. Taking place primarily in New York (with brief detours to Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, and other urban centers), THE SOCIAL LIFE OF SMALL URBAN SPACES is one of the great films about that strangest of creatures – the city dweller – in its natural habitat.<br /><br />One of the few “civilians” who have appreciated and celebrated the film in recent years is filmmaker John Wilson, who programmed it during a carte-blanche at Anthology in 2023. We were so enamored with the film – which at that time was only available in a very poor-quality video transfer – that we embarked on a quest to locate better elements. In collaboration with Project for Public Spaces (an organization that grew out of Whyte’s Street Life Project) and the Municipal Art Society of New York (which acted as the film’s initial distributor and where Whyte was a board member), we have managed to restore the film. Now, as part of Project for Public Spaces’ 50th anniversary, and to celebrate the shared history of PPS and MAS, we are overjoyed to present the new, beautiful restoration with a week-long revival run.<br /><br />“William Whyte is a legendary people watcher who likes to study the subtle ways public space is used. I think about this film constantly whenever I’m out shooting.” –John Wilson<br /><br />Co-presented by the Municipal Art Society of New York (<a href="https://www.mas.org">https://www.mas.org</a>) and Project for Public Spaces (<a href="https://www.pps.org/">https://www.pps.org/</a>).<br /><br /><strong>On opening night – Fri, Sept 26 – following the 7pm screening, the Municipal Art Society and Project for Public Spaces will host a special panel discussion focusing on how social life and the public realm have evolved since the film’s original release in New York and beyond. Panelists will include ‍Rosa Chang (Gotham Park), Setha Low (CUNY), Claire Weisz (WXY Architecture), and moderator Nate Storring (Project for Public Spaces).</strong><br /><br /><strong>On William H. Whyte’s birthday – Wed, Oct 1 – following the 7pm screening, the Social Life Project with Project for Public Spaces will host a special panel discussion focusing on how Holly’s insights have inspired their work and how that spark lives on today in the global placemaking movement. Panelists will include PPS and Social Life Project Founders Fred Kent, Kathy Madden, and Steve Davies, as well as Ethan Kent (PlacemakingX). Nate Storring (Project for Public Spaces) will introduce.</strong><br /><br /><a href="https://ticketing.us.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr"><strong>CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS NOW!</strong></a></p> Sunday, September 28 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=09&year=2025#showing-60023 <p>“Displaying a cinematic originality comparable to that of Pasolini, the Lombardian, Ermanno Olmi, concentrated in his first feature films on the ways in which the new conditions of industrial labor in the flowering of the economic miracle took hold of the lives of workers. His emphasis on the centrality of work experience in the sentimental education of his young male protagonists was new in the Italian cinema. […] A great part of Olmi’s peculiar and impressive achievement in IL POSTO and I FIDANZATI was the originality with which he contextualized otherwise conventional stories of amorous longing and maturing love within the dynamics of the industrial workplace. The clarity and precision with which he records the particulars of corporate labor contribute to the impression he convincingly renders that new rhythms and altered expectations have changed the character of daily life in Italy.” –P. Adams Sitney, VITAL CRISES IN ITALIAN CINEMA<br /><br /><a href="https://ticketing.us.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr"><strong>CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS NOW!</strong></a></p> Sunday, September 28 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=09&year=2025#showing-59946 <p><strong>REVIVAL RUN – NEW RESTORATION!</strong><br /><br />Digitally restored by Anthology Film Archives in collaboration with The Municipal Art Society of New York and the Project for Public Spaces.<br /><br />In 1980, the urbanist, sociologist, city planner, and writer William H. Whyte published a book based on the fruits of many years of research and observation into pedestrian behavior and city dynamics, conducted as part of his Street Life Project (which operated under the umbrella of the New York City Planning Commission). The result, “The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces”, closely analyzed the functioning (or malfunctioning) of public spaces in various cities, above all in NYC. The book quickly became a classic text within the realm of city planning, and remains beloved not only for the perceptiveness, elegance, and wisdom of its insights into the ways city dwellers interact with the urban environment, but for its disarmingly unpretentious, no-nonsense, and often flat-out funny tone. Though the book is familiar to generations of teachers and students of urbanism and city planning, the project is not widely known outside those circles. Perhaps even less well known – but hopefully not for long – is that, as a supplement to the published text, Whyte simultaneously produced an hour-long film of the same name.<br /><br />The film version of THE SOCIAL LIFE OF SMALL URBAN SPACES fully embodies all the qualities of the book: its intelligence, its empathetic, common-sense insight into what makes a city truly work for its residents (in contrast to the grandiose, often authoritarian instincts of architects, politicians, and developers), and its gentle yet often pointed wit. The film also boasts its own, unique qualities. Unlike the book, the film is graced by Whyte’s own voice: sounding very much like Jimmy Stewart’s city planner cousin, Whyte delivers the narration with a lack of polish and an often-self-deprecatory folksiness that’s charmingly at odds with the stentorian tone of most educational films. The film is also effectively a work of street photography. Though it was produced as a kind of filmic report and a pedagogical tool, Whyte and his team’s dedication to observing – and recording – the actual behavior of city dwellers, and their sharp eye for the behaviors and gestures that are most revealing of city life, result in a film that is – almost incidentally – a classic city symphony. Taking place primarily in New York (with brief detours to Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, and other urban centers), THE SOCIAL LIFE OF SMALL URBAN SPACES is one of the great films about that strangest of creatures – the city dweller – in its natural habitat.<br /><br />One of the few “civilians” who have appreciated and celebrated the film in recent years is filmmaker John Wilson, who programmed it during a carte-blanche at Anthology in 2023. We were so enamored with the film – which at that time was only available in a very poor-quality video transfer – that we embarked on a quest to locate better elements. In collaboration with Project for Public Spaces (an organization that grew out of Whyte’s Street Life Project) and the Municipal Art Society of New York (which acted as the film’s initial distributor and where Whyte was a board member), we have managed to restore the film. Now, as part of Project for Public Spaces’ 50th anniversary, and to celebrate the shared history of PPS and MAS, we are overjoyed to present the new, beautiful restoration with a week-long revival run.<br /><br />“William Whyte is a legendary people watcher who likes to study the subtle ways public space is used. I think about this film constantly whenever I’m out shooting.” –John Wilson<br /><br />Co-presented by the Municipal Art Society of New York (<a href="https://www.mas.org">https://www.mas.org</a>) and Project for Public Spaces (<a href="https://www.pps.org/">https://www.pps.org/</a>).<br /><br /><strong>On opening night – Fri, Sept 26 – following the 7pm screening, the Municipal Art Society and Project for Public Spaces will host a special panel discussion focusing on how social life and the public realm have evolved since the film’s original release in New York and beyond. Panelists will include ‍Rosa Chang (Gotham Park), Setha Low (CUNY), Claire Weisz (WXY Architecture), and moderator Nate Storring (Project for Public Spaces).</strong><br /><br /><strong>On William H. Whyte’s birthday – Wed, Oct 1 – following the 7pm screening, the Social Life Project with Project for Public Spaces will host a special panel discussion focusing on how Holly’s insights have inspired their work and how that spark lives on today in the global placemaking movement. Panelists will include PPS and Social Life Project Founders Fred Kent, Kathy Madden, and Steve Davies, as well as Ethan Kent (PlacemakingX). Nate Storring (Project for Public Spaces) will introduce.</strong><br /><br /><a href="https://ticketing.us.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr"><strong>CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS NOW!</strong></a></p> Sunday, September 28 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=09&year=2025#showing-59947 <p><strong>REVIVAL RUN – NEW RESTORATION!</strong><br /><br />Digitally restored by Anthology Film Archives in collaboration with The Municipal Art Society of New York and the Project for Public Spaces.<br /><br />In 1980, the urbanist, sociologist, city planner, and writer William H. Whyte published a book based on the fruits of many years of research and observation into pedestrian behavior and city dynamics, conducted as part of his Street Life Project (which operated under the umbrella of the New York City Planning Commission). The result, “The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces”, closely analyzed the functioning (or malfunctioning) of public spaces in various cities, above all in NYC. The book quickly became a classic text within the realm of city planning, and remains beloved not only for the perceptiveness, elegance, and wisdom of its insights into the ways city dwellers interact with the urban environment, but for its disarmingly unpretentious, no-nonsense, and often flat-out funny tone. Though the book is familiar to generations of teachers and students of urbanism and city planning, the project is not widely known outside those circles. Perhaps even less well known – but hopefully not for long – is that, as a supplement to the published text, Whyte simultaneously produced an hour-long film of the same name.<br /><br />The film version of THE SOCIAL LIFE OF SMALL URBAN SPACES fully embodies all the qualities of the book: its intelligence, its empathetic, common-sense insight into what makes a city truly work for its residents (in contrast to the grandiose, often authoritarian instincts of architects, politicians, and developers), and its gentle yet often pointed wit. The film also boasts its own, unique qualities. Unlike the book, the film is graced by Whyte’s own voice: sounding very much like Jimmy Stewart’s city planner cousin, Whyte delivers the narration with a lack of polish and an often-self-deprecatory folksiness that’s charmingly at odds with the stentorian tone of most educational films. The film is also effectively a work of street photography. Though it was produced as a kind of filmic report and a pedagogical tool, Whyte and his team’s dedication to observing – and recording – the actual behavior of city dwellers, and their sharp eye for the behaviors and gestures that are most revealing of city life, result in a film that is – almost incidentally – a classic city symphony. Taking place primarily in New York (with brief detours to Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, and other urban centers), THE SOCIAL LIFE OF SMALL URBAN SPACES is one of the great films about that strangest of creatures – the city dweller – in its natural habitat.<br /><br />One of the few “civilians” who have appreciated and celebrated the film in recent years is filmmaker John Wilson, who programmed it during a carte-blanche at Anthology in 2023. We were so enamored with the film – which at that time was only available in a very poor-quality video transfer – that we embarked on a quest to locate better elements. In collaboration with Project for Public Spaces (an organization that grew out of Whyte’s Street Life Project) and the Municipal Art Society of New York (which acted as the film’s initial distributor and where Whyte was a board member), we have managed to restore the film. Now, as part of Project for Public Spaces’ 50th anniversary, and to celebrate the shared history of PPS and MAS, we are overjoyed to present the new, beautiful restoration with a week-long revival run.<br /><br />“William Whyte is a legendary people watcher who likes to study the subtle ways public space is used. I think about this film constantly whenever I’m out shooting.” –John Wilson<br /><br />Co-presented by the Municipal Art Society of New York (<a href="https://www.mas.org">https://www.mas.org</a>) and Project for Public Spaces (<a href="https://www.pps.org/">https://www.pps.org/</a>).<br /><br /><strong>On opening night – Fri, Sept 26 – following the 7pm screening, the Municipal Art Society and Project for Public Spaces will host a special panel discussion focusing on how social life and the public realm have evolved since the film’s original release in New York and beyond. Panelists will include ‍Rosa Chang (Gotham Park), Setha Low (CUNY), Claire Weisz (WXY Architecture), and moderator Nate Storring (Project for Public Spaces).</strong><br /><br /><strong>On William H. Whyte’s birthday – Wed, Oct 1 – following the 7pm screening, the Social Life Project with Project for Public Spaces will host a special panel discussion focusing on how Holly’s insights have inspired their work and how that spark lives on today in the global placemaking movement. Panelists will include PPS and Social Life Project Founders Fred Kent, Kathy Madden, and Steve Davies, as well as Ethan Kent (PlacemakingX). Nate Storring (Project for Public Spaces) will introduce.</strong><br /><br /><a href="https://ticketing.us.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr"><strong>CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS NOW!</strong></a></p> Monday, September 29 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=09&year=2025#showing-59966 <p>A farmer’s family is torn apart by faith, sanctity, and love – one child believes he’s Jesus Christ, a second proclaims himself agnostic, and the third falls in love with a fundamentalist’s daughter. Layering multiple stories of faith and rebellion, Dreyer’s adaptation of Kaj Munk’s play is a meditation on faith and fanaticism.<br /><br /><a href="https://ticketing.us.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr"><strong>CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS NOW!</strong></a> </p> Monday, September 29 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=09&year=2025#showing-59948 <p><strong>REVIVAL RUN – NEW RESTORATION!</strong><br /><br />Digitally restored by Anthology Film Archives in collaboration with The Municipal Art Society of New York and the Project for Public Spaces.<br /><br />In 1980, the urbanist, sociologist, city planner, and writer William H. Whyte published a book based on the fruits of many years of research and observation into pedestrian behavior and city dynamics, conducted as part of his Street Life Project (which operated under the umbrella of the New York City Planning Commission). The result, “The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces”, closely analyzed the functioning (or malfunctioning) of public spaces in various cities, above all in NYC. The book quickly became a classic text within the realm of city planning, and remains beloved not only for the perceptiveness, elegance, and wisdom of its insights into the ways city dwellers interact with the urban environment, but for its disarmingly unpretentious, no-nonsense, and often flat-out funny tone. Though the book is familiar to generations of teachers and students of urbanism and city planning, the project is not widely known outside those circles. Perhaps even less well known – but hopefully not for long – is that, as a supplement to the published text, Whyte simultaneously produced an hour-long film of the same name.<br /><br />The film version of THE SOCIAL LIFE OF SMALL URBAN SPACES fully embodies all the qualities of the book: its intelligence, its empathetic, common-sense insight into what makes a city truly work for its residents (in contrast to the grandiose, often authoritarian instincts of architects, politicians, and developers), and its gentle yet often pointed wit. The film also boasts its own, unique qualities. Unlike the book, the film is graced by Whyte’s own voice: sounding very much like Jimmy Stewart’s city planner cousin, Whyte delivers the narration with a lack of polish and an often-self-deprecatory folksiness that’s charmingly at odds with the stentorian tone of most educational films. The film is also effectively a work of street photography. Though it was produced as a kind of filmic report and a pedagogical tool, Whyte and his team’s dedication to observing – and recording – the actual behavior of city dwellers, and their sharp eye for the behaviors and gestures that are most revealing of city life, result in a film that is – almost incidentally – a classic city symphony. Taking place primarily in New York (with brief detours to Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, and other urban centers), THE SOCIAL LIFE OF SMALL URBAN SPACES is one of the great films about that strangest of creatures – the city dweller – in its natural habitat.<br /><br />One of the few “civilians” who have appreciated and celebrated the film in recent years is filmmaker John Wilson, who programmed it during a carte-blanche at Anthology in 2023. We were so enamored with the film – which at that time was only available in a very poor-quality video transfer – that we embarked on a quest to locate better elements. In collaboration with Project for Public Spaces (an organization that grew out of Whyte’s Street Life Project) and the Municipal Art Society of New York (which acted as the film’s initial distributor and where Whyte was a board member), we have managed to restore the film. Now, as part of Project for Public Spaces’ 50th anniversary, and to celebrate the shared history of PPS and MAS, we are overjoyed to present the new, beautiful restoration with a week-long revival run.<br /><br />“William Whyte is a legendary people watcher who likes to study the subtle ways public space is used. I think about this film constantly whenever I’m out shooting.” –John Wilson<br /><br />Co-presented by the Municipal Art Society of New York (<a href="https://www.mas.org">https://www.mas.org</a>) and Project for Public Spaces (<a href="https://www.pps.org/">https://www.pps.org/</a>).<br /><br /><strong>On opening night – Fri, Sept 26 – following the 7pm screening, the Municipal Art Society and Project for Public Spaces will host a special panel discussion focusing on how social life and the public realm have evolved since the film’s original release in New York and beyond. Panelists will include ‍Rosa Chang (Gotham Park), Setha Low (CUNY), Claire Weisz (WXY Architecture), and moderator Nate Storring (Project for Public Spaces).</strong><br /><br /><strong>On William H. Whyte’s birthday – Wed, Oct 1 – following the 7pm screening, the Social Life Project with Project for Public Spaces will host a special panel discussion focusing on how Holly’s insights have inspired their work and how that spark lives on today in the global placemaking movement. Panelists will include PPS and Social Life Project Founders Fred Kent, Kathy Madden, and Steve Davies, as well as Ethan Kent (PlacemakingX). Nate Storring (Project for Public Spaces) will introduce.</strong><br /><br /><a href="https://ticketing.us.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr"><strong>CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS NOW!</strong></a></p> Monday, September 29 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=09&year=2025#showing-59949 <p><strong>REVIVAL RUN – NEW RESTORATION!</strong><br /><br />Digitally restored by Anthology Film Archives in collaboration with The Municipal Art Society of New York and the Project for Public Spaces.<br /><br />In 1980, the urbanist, sociologist, city planner, and writer William H. Whyte published a book based on the fruits of many years of research and observation into pedestrian behavior and city dynamics, conducted as part of his Street Life Project (which operated under the umbrella of the New York City Planning Commission). The result, “The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces”, closely analyzed the functioning (or malfunctioning) of public spaces in various cities, above all in NYC. The book quickly became a classic text within the realm of city planning, and remains beloved not only for the perceptiveness, elegance, and wisdom of its insights into the ways city dwellers interact with the urban environment, but for its disarmingly unpretentious, no-nonsense, and often flat-out funny tone. Though the book is familiar to generations of teachers and students of urbanism and city planning, the project is not widely known outside those circles. Perhaps even less well known – but hopefully not for long – is that, as a supplement to the published text, Whyte simultaneously produced an hour-long film of the same name.<br /><br />The film version of THE SOCIAL LIFE OF SMALL URBAN SPACES fully embodies all the qualities of the book: its intelligence, its empathetic, common-sense insight into what makes a city truly work for its residents (in contrast to the grandiose, often authoritarian instincts of architects, politicians, and developers), and its gentle yet often pointed wit. The film also boasts its own, unique qualities. Unlike the book, the film is graced by Whyte’s own voice: sounding very much like Jimmy Stewart’s city planner cousin, Whyte delivers the narration with a lack of polish and an often-self-deprecatory folksiness that’s charmingly at odds with the stentorian tone of most educational films. The film is also effectively a work of street photography. Though it was produced as a kind of filmic report and a pedagogical tool, Whyte and his team’s dedication to observing – and recording – the actual behavior of city dwellers, and their sharp eye for the behaviors and gestures that are most revealing of city life, result in a film that is – almost incidentally – a classic city symphony. Taking place primarily in New York (with brief detours to Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, and other urban centers), THE SOCIAL LIFE OF SMALL URBAN SPACES is one of the great films about that strangest of creatures – the city dweller – in its natural habitat.<br /><br />One of the few “civilians” who have appreciated and celebrated the film in recent years is filmmaker John Wilson, who programmed it during a carte-blanche at Anthology in 2023. We were so enamored with the film – which at that time was only available in a very poor-quality video transfer – that we embarked on a quest to locate better elements. In collaboration with Project for Public Spaces (an organization that grew out of Whyte’s Street Life Project) and the Municipal Art Society of New York (which acted as the film’s initial distributor and where Whyte was a board member), we have managed to restore the film. Now, as part of Project for Public Spaces’ 50th anniversary, and to celebrate the shared history of PPS and MAS, we are overjoyed to present the new, beautiful restoration with a week-long revival run.<br /><br />“William Whyte is a legendary people watcher who likes to study the subtle ways public space is used. I think about this film constantly whenever I’m out shooting.” –John Wilson<br /><br />Co-presented by the Municipal Art Society of New York (<a href="https://www.mas.org">https://www.mas.org</a>) and Project for Public Spaces (<a href="https://www.pps.org/">https://www.pps.org/</a>).<br /><br /><strong>On opening night – Fri, Sept 26 – following the 7pm screening, the Municipal Art Society and Project for Public Spaces will host a special panel discussion focusing on how social life and the public realm have evolved since the film’s original release in New York and beyond. Panelists will include ‍Rosa Chang (Gotham Park), Setha Low (CUNY), Claire Weisz (WXY Architecture), and moderator Nate Storring (Project for Public Spaces).</strong><br /><br /><strong>On William H. Whyte’s birthday – Wed, Oct 1 – following the 7pm screening, the Social Life Project with Project for Public Spaces will host a special panel discussion focusing on how Holly’s insights have inspired their work and how that spark lives on today in the global placemaking movement. Panelists will include PPS and Social Life Project Founders Fred Kent, Kathy Madden, and Steve Davies, as well as Ethan Kent (PlacemakingX). Nate Storring (Project for Public Spaces) will introduce.</strong><br /><br /><a href="https://ticketing.us.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr"><strong>CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS NOW!</strong></a></p> Tuesday, September 30 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=09&year=2025#showing-60001 <p>Kathryn Whalen & John Parlante<br />ANOTHER LIGHT ON THE ROAD: ROBERT FRANK & JUNE LEAF’S CANADIAN HOME<br />2024, 79 min, DCP<br />A portrait of both June Leaf and the hardscrabble seaside farmhouse and studio she shared for 50 years with her husband, Robert Frank, in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, ANOTHER LIGHT ON THE ROAD stands as a testament not only to the artist couple’s powerfully intimate and creative relationship but also to their enduring ties to the Mabou community of Cape Breton. Robert and June were profoundly shaped by the landscape of Mabou, with its bitterly windswept winters, its rhythms of sea and light, and its pioneering routine of wood gathering, clothes hanging, window gazing, and art making. After Robert’s death, June continued working tirelessly on new sculptures and paintings. Not long before her own death, on July 1, 2024, June was able to watch a cut of the film and share her satisfaction with Whalen and Parlante, confiding, “You must be very happy to have made this film. I am happy to have this.”<br /><br />Preceded by:<br />Brigid Kennison A VISIT TO JUNE LEAF’S STUDIO – MY FIRST FILM (2018, 12 min, digital)<br />Andrea Glimcher [selected documentation of June Leaf in her NYC studio] (2018-24, ca. 10 min, digital)<br /><br />Total running time: ca. 95 min.<br /><br /><a href="https://ticketing.us.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr"><strong>CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS NOW!</strong></a></p> Tuesday, September 30 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=09&year=2025#showing-59950 <p><strong>REVIVAL RUN – NEW RESTORATION!</strong><br /><br />Digitally restored by Anthology Film Archives in collaboration with The Municipal Art Society of New York and the Project for Public Spaces.<br /><br />In 1980, the urbanist, sociologist, city planner, and writer William H. Whyte published a book based on the fruits of many years of research and observation into pedestrian behavior and city dynamics, conducted as part of his Street Life Project (which operated under the umbrella of the New York City Planning Commission). The result, “The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces”, closely analyzed the functioning (or malfunctioning) of public spaces in various cities, above all in NYC. The book quickly became a classic text within the realm of city planning, and remains beloved not only for the perceptiveness, elegance, and wisdom of its insights into the ways city dwellers interact with the urban environment, but for its disarmingly unpretentious, no-nonsense, and often flat-out funny tone. Though the book is familiar to generations of teachers and students of urbanism and city planning, the project is not widely known outside those circles. Perhaps even less well known – but hopefully not for long – is that, as a supplement to the published text, Whyte simultaneously produced an hour-long film of the same name.<br /><br />The film version of THE SOCIAL LIFE OF SMALL URBAN SPACES fully embodies all the qualities of the book: its intelligence, its empathetic, common-sense insight into what makes a city truly work for its residents (in contrast to the grandiose, often authoritarian instincts of architects, politicians, and developers), and its gentle yet often pointed wit. The film also boasts its own, unique qualities. Unlike the book, the film is graced by Whyte’s own voice: sounding very much like Jimmy Stewart’s city planner cousin, Whyte delivers the narration with a lack of polish and an often-self-deprecatory folksiness that’s charmingly at odds with the stentorian tone of most educational films. The film is also effectively a work of street photography. Though it was produced as a kind of filmic report and a pedagogical tool, Whyte and his team’s dedication to observing – and recording – the actual behavior of city dwellers, and their sharp eye for the behaviors and gestures that are most revealing of city life, result in a film that is – almost incidentally – a classic city symphony. Taking place primarily in New York (with brief detours to Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, and other urban centers), THE SOCIAL LIFE OF SMALL URBAN SPACES is one of the great films about that strangest of creatures – the city dweller – in its natural habitat.<br /><br />One of the few “civilians” who have appreciated and celebrated the film in recent years is filmmaker John Wilson, who programmed it during a carte-blanche at Anthology in 2023. We were so enamored with the film – which at that time was only available in a very poor-quality video transfer – that we embarked on a quest to locate better elements. In collaboration with Project for Public Spaces (an organization that grew out of Whyte’s Street Life Project) and the Municipal Art Society of New York (which acted as the film’s initial distributor and where Whyte was a board member), we have managed to restore the film. Now, as part of Project for Public Spaces’ 50th anniversary, and to celebrate the shared history of PPS and MAS, we are overjoyed to present the new, beautiful restoration with a week-long revival run.<br /><br />“William Whyte is a legendary people watcher who likes to study the subtle ways public space is used. I think about this film constantly whenever I’m out shooting.” –John Wilson<br /><br />Co-presented by the Municipal Art Society of New York (<a href="https://www.mas.org">https://www.mas.org</a>) and Project for Public Spaces (<a href="https://www.pps.org/">https://www.pps.org/</a>).<br /><br /><strong>On opening night – Fri, Sept 26 – following the 7pm screening, the Municipal Art Society and Project for Public Spaces will host a special panel discussion focusing on how social life and the public realm have evolved since the film’s original release in New York and beyond. Panelists will include ‍Rosa Chang (Gotham Park), Setha Low (CUNY), Claire Weisz (WXY Architecture), and moderator Nate Storring (Project for Public Spaces).</strong><br /><br /><strong>On William H. Whyte’s birthday – Wed, Oct 1 – following the 7pm screening, the Social Life Project with Project for Public Spaces will host a special panel discussion focusing on how Holly’s insights have inspired their work and how that spark lives on today in the global placemaking movement. Panelists will include PPS and Social Life Project Founders Fred Kent, Kathy Madden, and Steve Davies, as well as Ethan Kent (PlacemakingX). Nate Storring (Project for Public Spaces) will introduce.</strong><br /><br /><a href="https://ticketing.us.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr"><strong>CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS NOW!</strong></a></p> Tuesday, September 30 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=10&year=2025#showing-59951 <p><strong>REVIVAL RUN – NEW RESTORATION!</strong><br /><br />Digitally restored by Anthology Film Archives in collaboration with The Municipal Art Society of New York and the Project for Public Spaces.<br /><br />In 1980, the urbanist, sociologist, city planner, and writer William H. Whyte published a book based on the fruits of many years of research and observation into pedestrian behavior and city dynamics, conducted as part of his Street Life Project (which operated under the umbrella of the New York City Planning Commission). The result, “The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces”, closely analyzed the functioning (or malfunctioning) of public spaces in various cities, above all in NYC. The book quickly became a classic text within the realm of city planning, and remains beloved not only for the perceptiveness, elegance, and wisdom of its insights into the ways city dwellers interact with the urban environment, but for its disarmingly unpretentious, no-nonsense, and often flat-out funny tone. Though the book is familiar to generations of teachers and students of urbanism and city planning, the project is not widely known outside those circles. Perhaps even less well known – but hopefully not for long – is that, as a supplement to the published text, Whyte simultaneously produced an hour-long film of the same name.<br /><br />The film version of THE SOCIAL LIFE OF SMALL URBAN SPACES fully embodies all the qualities of the book: its intelligence, its empathetic, common-sense insight into what makes a city truly work for its residents (in contrast to the grandiose, often authoritarian instincts of architects, politicians, and developers), and its gentle yet often pointed wit. The film also boasts its own, unique qualities. Unlike the book, the film is graced by Whyte’s own voice: sounding very much like Jimmy Stewart’s city planner cousin, Whyte delivers the narration with a lack of polish and an often-self-deprecatory folksiness that’s charmingly at odds with the stentorian tone of most educational films. The film is also effectively a work of street photography. Though it was produced as a kind of filmic report and a pedagogical tool, Whyte and his team’s dedication to observing – and recording – the actual behavior of city dwellers, and their sharp eye for the behaviors and gestures that are most revealing of city life, result in a film that is – almost incidentally – a classic city symphony. Taking place primarily in New York (with brief detours to Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, and other urban centers), THE SOCIAL LIFE OF SMALL URBAN SPACES is one of the great films about that strangest of creatures – the city dweller – in its natural habitat.<br /><br />One of the few “civilians” who have appreciated and celebrated the film in recent years is filmmaker John Wilson, who programmed it during a carte-blanche at Anthology in 2023. We were so enamored with the film – which at that time was only available in a very poor-quality video transfer – that we embarked on a quest to locate better elements. In collaboration with Project for Public Spaces (an organization that grew out of Whyte’s Street Life Project) and the Municipal Art Society of New York (which acted as the film’s initial distributor and where Whyte was a board member), we have managed to restore the film. Now, as part of Project for Public Spaces’ 50th anniversary, and to celebrate the shared history of PPS and MAS, we are overjoyed to present the new, beautiful restoration with a week-long revival run.<br /><br />“William Whyte is a legendary people watcher who likes to study the subtle ways public space is used. I think about this film constantly whenever I’m out shooting.” –John Wilson<br /><br />Co-presented by the Municipal Art Society of New York (<a href="https://www.mas.org">https://www.mas.org</a>) and Project for Public Spaces (<a href="https://www.pps.org/">https://www.pps.org/</a>).<br /><br /><strong>On opening night – Fri, Sept 26 – following the 7pm screening, the Municipal Art Society and Project for Public Spaces will host a special panel discussion focusing on how social life and the public realm have evolved since the film’s original release in New York and beyond. Panelists will include ‍Rosa Chang (Gotham Park), Setha Low (CUNY), Claire Weisz (WXY Architecture), and moderator Nate Storring (Project for Public Spaces).</strong><br /><br /><strong>On William H. Whyte’s birthday – Wed, Oct 1 – following the 7pm screening, the Social Life Project with Project for Public Spaces will host a special panel discussion focusing on how Holly’s insights have inspired their work and how that spark lives on today in the global placemaking movement. Panelists will include PPS and Social Life Project Founders Fred Kent, Kathy Madden, and Steve Davies, as well as Ethan Kent (PlacemakingX). Nate Storring (Project for Public Spaces) will introduce.</strong><br /><br /><a href="https://ticketing.us.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr"><strong>CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS NOW!</strong></a></p> Wednesday, October 01 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=10&year=2025#showing-59952 <p><strong>REVIVAL RUN – NEW RESTORATION!</strong><br /><br />Digitally restored by Anthology Film Archives in collaboration with The Municipal Art Society of New York and the Project for Public Spaces.<br /><br />In 1980, the urbanist, sociologist, city planner, and writer William H. Whyte published a book based on the fruits of many years of research and observation into pedestrian behavior and city dynamics, conducted as part of his Street Life Project (which operated under the umbrella of the New York City Planning Commission). The result, “The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces”, closely analyzed the functioning (or malfunctioning) of public spaces in various cities, above all in NYC. The book quickly became a classic text within the realm of city planning, and remains beloved not only for the perceptiveness, elegance, and wisdom of its insights into the ways city dwellers interact with the urban environment, but for its disarmingly unpretentious, no-nonsense, and often flat-out funny tone. Though the book is familiar to generations of teachers and students of urbanism and city planning, the project is not widely known outside those circles. Perhaps even less well known – but hopefully not for long – is that, as a supplement to the published text, Whyte simultaneously produced an hour-long film of the same name.<br /><br />The film version of THE SOCIAL LIFE OF SMALL URBAN SPACES fully embodies all the qualities of the book: its intelligence, its empathetic, common-sense insight into what makes a city truly work for its residents (in contrast to the grandiose, often authoritarian instincts of architects, politicians, and developers), and its gentle yet often pointed wit. The film also boasts its own, unique qualities. Unlike the book, the film is graced by Whyte’s own voice: sounding very much like Jimmy Stewart’s city planner cousin, Whyte delivers the narration with a lack of polish and an often-self-deprecatory folksiness that’s charmingly at odds with the stentorian tone of most educational films. The film is also effectively a work of street photography. Though it was produced as a kind of filmic report and a pedagogical tool, Whyte and his team’s dedication to observing – and recording – the actual behavior of city dwellers, and their sharp eye for the behaviors and gestures that are most revealing of city life, result in a film that is – almost incidentally – a classic city symphony. Taking place primarily in New York (with brief detours to Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, and other urban centers), THE SOCIAL LIFE OF SMALL URBAN SPACES is one of the great films about that strangest of creatures – the city dweller – in its natural habitat.<br /><br />One of the few “civilians” who have appreciated and celebrated the film in recent years is filmmaker John Wilson, who programmed it during a carte-blanche at Anthology in 2023. We were so enamored with the film – which at that time was only available in a very poor-quality video transfer – that we embarked on a quest to locate better elements. In collaboration with Project for Public Spaces (an organization that grew out of Whyte’s Street Life Project) and the Municipal Art Society of New York (which acted as the film’s initial distributor and where Whyte was a board member), we have managed to restore the film. Now, as part of Project for Public Spaces’ 50th anniversary, and to celebrate the shared history of PPS and MAS, we are overjoyed to present the new, beautiful restoration with a week-long revival run.<br /><br />“William Whyte is a legendary people watcher who likes to study the subtle ways public space is used. I think about this film constantly whenever I’m out shooting.” –John Wilson<br /><br />Co-presented by the Municipal Art Society of New York (<a href="https://www.mas.org">https://www.mas.org</a>) and Project for Public Spaces (<a href="https://www.pps.org/">https://www.pps.org/</a>).<br /><br /><strong>On opening night – Fri, Sept 26 – following the 7pm screening, the Municipal Art Society and Project for Public Spaces will host a special panel discussion focusing on how social life and the public realm have evolved since the film’s original release in New York and beyond. Panelists will include ‍Rosa Chang (Gotham Park), Setha Low (CUNY), Claire Weisz (WXY Architecture), and moderator Nate Storring (Project for Public Spaces).</strong><br /><br /><strong>On William H. Whyte’s birthday – Wed, Oct 1 – following the 7pm screening, the Social Life Project with Project for Public Spaces will host a special panel discussion focusing on how Holly’s insights have inspired their work and how that spark lives on today in the global placemaking movement. Panelists will include PPS and Social Life Project Founders Fred Kent, Kathy Madden, and Steve Davies, as well as Ethan Kent (PlacemakingX). Nate Storring (Project for Public Spaces) will introduce.</strong><br /><br /><a href="https://ticketing.us.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr"><strong>CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS NOW!</strong></a></p> Wednesday, October 01