From the fight for gay rights to basement recording studios, to people making their home in dark subway tunnels and the energy of Williamsburg, Brooklyn in the '80s, these films transport the viewer to a different time in New York City's history. There might have been graffiti covering the subway and wild packs of dogs roaming the streets, but the possibilities for art, life, resistance and relationships were endless.
Directed by Greta Schiller; Co-Directed by Robert Rosenberg • Documentary • With Rita Mae Brown, Ann Bannon, Martin Duberman, Allen Ginsberg, Dr. Evelyn Hooker, Audre Lorde, Harry Hay • 1984 • 87 minutes
In 1969 the police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City's Greenwich Village,...
Directed by Shirley Clarke • Drama • With William Redfield, Warren Finnerty, Roscoe Lee Browne • 1961 • 110 minutes
Created by director Shirley Clarke at a time when female filmmakers were in short supply, The Connection shatters stereotypes to become one of the most vital American independent ...
Directed by David Riker • Drama • With Anthony Rivera, Joseph Rigano, Miguel Maldonado • 1998 • 88 minutes
LA CIUDAD, the feature film debut of writer/director David Riker, is a dramatically photographed collection of stories of love, hope, and loss, and an affecting portrait of disenfranchised ...
Directed by Marc Singer • Documentary • 2000 • 82 minutes
For years, a homeless community took root in a train tunnel beneath New York City, braving dangerous conditions and perpetual night. DARK DAYS explores this surprisingly domestic subterranean world, unearthing a way of life unimaginable t...
Directed by Nora Claire Miller, Peter Miller & Amy Linton • Documentary • 2020 • 15 minutes
EGG CREAM is a short film about the enduring meaning of a beloved chocolate soda drink born on the Jewish Lower East Side. The egg cream contained neither eggs nor cream – it was a product of necessity an...
Directed by Petra Costa • Documentary • With Petra Costa, Elena Andrade • 2012 • 80 minutes
Elena, a young Brazilian woman, travels to New York with the same dream as her mother, to become a movie actress. She leaves behind her childhood spent in hiding during the years of the military dictators...
Directed by Adam Yauch • Documentary • 2008 • 97 minutes
On the corner of 155th Street and Frederick Douglas Boulevard in Harlem, New York, lies Rucker Park. By appearances, the green concrete pavement, anchored on either end by its run down slab bleachers, is no different than any other basketb...
Directed by Stephen Wilkes • Documentary • With Jay Maisel • 2019 • 79 minutes
JAY MYSELF documents the monumental move of renowned photographer and artist, Jay Maisel, who, in February 2015 after forty-eight years, begrudgingly sold his home—the 36,000 square-foot, 100-year-old landmark buildin...
Directed by Jennifer Dworkin • Documentary • 2003 • 155 minutes
Jennifer Dworkin’s groundbreaking documentary LOVE & DIANE presents a searingly honest and moving examination of poverty, welfare and drug rehabilitation in the United States today. Filmed in New York City over a five-year period, D...
Directed by Roger Paradiso • Documentary • 2018 • 90 minutes
The Lost Village is a devastating expose of how Greenwich Village, the epicenter of the counterculture in the 1960s and '70s, is being turned into a wasteland of chain stores, banks and multi-million dollar condos.
This award-winning ...
Directed by Lionel Rogosin • Documentary • With Ray Salyer, Gorman Hendricks, Frank Matthews • 1956 • 65 minutes
On the Bowery chronicles three days in the drinking life of Ray Salyer, a part-time railroad worker adrift on New York’s skid row. When the film first opened in 1956, it exploded on t...
Directed by Helene Klodawsky • Documentary • 1987 • 25 minutes
Sue Coe continues to shock and inform the art establishment with her graphic depictions of the world around her. This energetic and moving film introduces Coe’s passionate art and explores her vision. Produced early in her career, it...
Directed by Ryan Douglass and Sara Leavitt • Documentary • 2015 • 75 minutes
For over 30 years, Martin Bisi has recorded music from his studio in Brooklyn's Gowanus neighborhood. After a chance New York encounter, the studio was founded with money from Brian Eno, who subsequently worked on the a...
Directed by Manfred Kirchheimer • Documentary • 1981 • 46 minutes
Stations of the Elevated (1981) is a 45-minute city symphony directed, produced and edited by Manfred Kirchheimer. Shot on lush 16mm color reversal stock, the film weaves together vivid images of graffiti- covered elevated subway ...
Directed by Diego Echeverria • Documentary • 1984 • 57 minutes
Diego Echeverria’s LOS SURES probes the residents of the Southside of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, pre-gentrification. Poverty, drugs, gang violence, crime, abandoned real estate, racial
tension, single-parent homes, and inadequate local ...
Directed by Lynne Sachs • Documentary • 2013 • 64 minutes
Since the early days of New York’s Lower East Side tenement houses, working class people have shared beds, making such spaces a fundamental part of immigrant life. Initially documented in Jacob Riis’ now controversial late 19th Century ph...
