Firehouse Theater Devoted to Documentary Movies Opens in NYC

Manhattan’s Downtown Neighborhood Tv Heart celebrated the opening of the media arts heart’s long-anticipated nonprofit, 67-seat movie show, Firehouse: DCTV’s Cinema for Documentary Movie, on Tuesday.

The one movie show in New York Metropolis devoted to screening documentaries, Firehouse is an official Academy Award-qualifying theater that may display first-run movies and curated applications.

On Sept. 23, Abigail Disney and Kathleen Hughes’ self-distributed “The American Dream and Different Fairy Tales” in regards to the rising inequalities in America and higher pay for Disneyland forged members, would be the inaugural docu to play at Firehouse cinema. The week-long screening will function the movie’s qualifying run in New York. Disney is ready to look in individual for opening weekend Q&As.

At a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Tuesday, Disney stated, “It takes braveness to poke huge Mouse within the eye, and also you (Firehouse) are doing it proper out of the gate.” 

Situated in a landmarked firehouse constructing in Manhattan’s Chinatown, Firehouse cinema was funded by New York state and metropolis. The undertaking was conceived over 20 years in the past and took roughly two years to finish.

Co-founded in 1972 by Academy Award-nominated docu filmmaker Jon Alpert (“Lifetime of Crime 1984-2020”) and his spouse, doc producer Keiko Tsuno, DCTV has supported documentary filmmakers for the final 50 years. The middle devoted to docs helps produce nonfiction tasks and hosts group screenings, discussions, youth media, and persevering with teaching programs.

“That is the temple for documentary filmmaking,” Alpert stated at Tuesday’s ceremony. “Documentary movies for years didn’t get the respect that they deserved. This can be a second when documentary movies are flourishing, and this a spot to fulfill with members of the documentary group to essentially honor all the documentary filmmakers that we have now.”

Alpert and Tsuno function the group’s co-executive administrators. Dara Messinger, DCTV’s long-time director of programming, will oversee the theater’s first-run and curated programming.

“I’m excited to champion all several types of filmmakers making new and thrilling work,” stated Messinger. “I wish to diversify the quantity of makers and completely different views that we will be displaying within the documentary. I really like having an area the place folks can see issues that they’ll’t see elsewhere. And even when they’ll see movies we display elsewhere, they’ll come right here and be a part of a group and share this area collectively.”

After screening “The American Dream and Different Fairy Tales,” Firehouse will host unique runs of first-run docs, together with two Sundance 2022 nonfiction movies: Reid Davenport’s “I Didn’t See You There,” about on a regular basis life from the disabled filmmaker’s viewpoint, and Nina Menkes’ “Brainwashed: Intercourse-Digital camera-Energy,” an examination of the male gaze by cinema historical past.

Along with first-run movies, Firehouse will even be curating specialty programming year-round. This fall will characteristic particular occasions with documentary filmmakers, together with Laura Poitras, Barbara Kopple, Stanley Nelson, and Jessica Kingdon. Additionally, this fall, a Firehouse-based sequence titled “Higher Collectively” will showcase documentary quick movies from Vimeo and New York-based manufacturing homes together with Area of Imaginative and prescient, and Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective.

Firehouse would be the official New York Metropolis host for the Intl. Documentary Affiliation’s DocuClub, the group’s work-in-progress screening sequence, in addition to the IDA’s biennial Getting Actual documentary convention. 

Later within the yr, in tribute to DCTV’s 50-year historical past, a “DCTV @ 50” repertory sequence will showcase DCTV’s productions, together with early work from founders Alpert and Tsuno.

“The documentary type continues to evolve in new and thrilling methods,” Messinger stated. “The work we display at Firehouse will showcase a plethora of views that problem energy and methods of seeing and understanding.”