Bleecker Street Cinema
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Cinema name : Bleecker Street Cinemas
Address : 144 Bleecker Street Neighborhood : SoHo Years of occupancy : 1962 - 1990 Screens (seats) : 1 (250) Active individuals: Lionel Rogosin (owner and documentary filmmaker) |
Quotes & Notes
Lionel Rogosin founded Bleecker St. Cinema to present his film “Come Back Africa” in 1960. He continued to operate it until 1974 as a venue for first-run independent films. His film Good Times, Wonderful Times made a powerful anti-war statement shortly before the start of the Vietnam War and thus was unable to secure commercial distribution. In 1966 he started Impact films to distribute 16mm films as part of an alternative cinema circuit. He writes that Bleecker St. Cinema gained a reputation for showcasing innovative works but was not much of a financial success due to its small size and undesirable location. Rogosin eventually withdrew his support for the cinema in 1974 after operating at a loss for several years. Other repertory cinemas, such as The Elgin on 23rd St., were showing independent films but had the luxury of more space and larger advertising budgets.(1)
The Bleecker St. Cinema was originally built as rowhouses in 1832. The first owner, Placido Mori, ran the space as a restaurant (popular among writers at the time) but closed in 1937 and remained vacant until 1944. Several unsigned frescoes were discovered on the wall of a fire escape (see NY Times article on locating the former tenants of this space from 1944-1960).
Jackie Raynal-Sarre owned the building for a portion of its history and ran the cinema. (2)
(1) Rogosin, Lionel (2007). "The Building of an Alternate Cinema." Lionel Rogosin (official site). Retrieved February 23, 2014 from www.lionelrogosin.org
(2) Gray, Christopher (November 4, 1990). "Streetscapes: The Bleecker Street Cinema; The 'Lost' Frescoes of an Artist-Soldier". The New York Times.
The news is that the Renata Theatre and West Broadway, which has long been home for off-Broadway theatrical productions has been acquired, on a three-year lease, by an independent group headed by Lionel Rogosin, youthful film producer, who will operate the intimate (250-seat) theatre as the Bleecker Street Cinema
http://terpconnect.umd.edu/~molouns/amst450/village/bleecker.html. -A.H. Weiler, New York Times, Feb. 28, 1960
The Film-Makers' Distribution Center will make its public debut this week with two striking exploratory films at New York's Bleecker Street Cinema despite recent action by New York License Commissioner Joel J. Tyler to close a traditional underground showcase, The Film-Makers' Cinematheque, for allegedly showing films of "sexual immorality, lewdness, perversion and homosexuality.
http://terpconnect.umd.edu/~molouns/amst450/village/bleecker.html. Newsweek, April 25, 1966
The Bleecker Street Cinema, a popular Greenwich Village theater that has shown foreign and avant-garde films since 1962, will shut down on Aug. 30 because of a sharp rent increase, its owners said yesterday. The abrupt decision to close the small, two-screen theater came after a bitter struggle for control of the theater's four-story building at 144 Bleecker Street, near LaGuardia Place. And it shocked the theater's employees and many of its patrons. The Cinema Studio, near Lincoln Center, closed this spring, and in the late 1980s the Embassy, Regency, Metro, Thalia and New Yorker theaters on the Upper West Side were all either closed or converted into first-run theaters. In addition, the Film Forum theater in SoHo closed last year, although it will re-open next month at a new location. The theaters, all closing in the last few years, succumbed to a combination of real-estate pressures, the growing popularity of videocassettes and the desire of larger theater chains to convert single-screen "art" or "revival" theaters into more profitable multi-screen complexes showing new Hollywood movies.
http://terpconnect.umd.edu/~molouns/amst450/village/bleecker.html. Andrew Yarrow, Aug. 17, 1990
Image credit: Robert Otter (1965). Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/13/nyregion/thecity/13otte.html
The Bleecker St. Cinema was originally built as rowhouses in 1832. The first owner, Placido Mori, ran the space as a restaurant (popular among writers at the time) but closed in 1937 and remained vacant until 1944. Several unsigned frescoes were discovered on the wall of a fire escape (see NY Times article on locating the former tenants of this space from 1944-1960).
Jackie Raynal-Sarre owned the building for a portion of its history and ran the cinema. (2)
(1) Rogosin, Lionel (2007). "The Building of an Alternate Cinema." Lionel Rogosin (official site). Retrieved February 23, 2014 from www.lionelrogosin.org
(2) Gray, Christopher (November 4, 1990). "Streetscapes: The Bleecker Street Cinema; The 'Lost' Frescoes of an Artist-Soldier". The New York Times.
The news is that the Renata Theatre and West Broadway, which has long been home for off-Broadway theatrical productions has been acquired, on a three-year lease, by an independent group headed by Lionel Rogosin, youthful film producer, who will operate the intimate (250-seat) theatre as the Bleecker Street Cinema
http://terpconnect.umd.edu/~molouns/amst450/village/bleecker.html. -A.H. Weiler, New York Times, Feb. 28, 1960
The Film-Makers' Distribution Center will make its public debut this week with two striking exploratory films at New York's Bleecker Street Cinema despite recent action by New York License Commissioner Joel J. Tyler to close a traditional underground showcase, The Film-Makers' Cinematheque, for allegedly showing films of "sexual immorality, lewdness, perversion and homosexuality.
http://terpconnect.umd.edu/~molouns/amst450/village/bleecker.html. Newsweek, April 25, 1966
The Bleecker Street Cinema, a popular Greenwich Village theater that has shown foreign and avant-garde films since 1962, will shut down on Aug. 30 because of a sharp rent increase, its owners said yesterday. The abrupt decision to close the small, two-screen theater came after a bitter struggle for control of the theater's four-story building at 144 Bleecker Street, near LaGuardia Place. And it shocked the theater's employees and many of its patrons. The Cinema Studio, near Lincoln Center, closed this spring, and in the late 1980s the Embassy, Regency, Metro, Thalia and New Yorker theaters on the Upper West Side were all either closed or converted into first-run theaters. In addition, the Film Forum theater in SoHo closed last year, although it will re-open next month at a new location. The theaters, all closing in the last few years, succumbed to a combination of real-estate pressures, the growing popularity of videocassettes and the desire of larger theater chains to convert single-screen "art" or "revival" theaters into more profitable multi-screen complexes showing new Hollywood movies.
http://terpconnect.umd.edu/~molouns/amst450/village/bleecker.html. Andrew Yarrow, Aug. 17, 1990
Image credit: Robert Otter (1965). Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/13/nyregion/thecity/13otte.html
