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Drucker wrote: Tue Dec 30, 2025 7:40 pm There are regular movie-goers but that doesn't explain how nearly every Visconti screening sold out in June of 2018 at Lincoln Center.

hearthesilence wrote: Tue Dec 30, 2025 10:45 pm

Drucker wrote: Tue Dec 30, 2025 7:40 pm There are regular movie-goers but that doesn't explain how nearly every Visconti screening sold out in June of 2018 at Lincoln Center.

IIRC this was due to MoviePass - I used it many times for that retrospective.

Drucker wrote: Wed Dec 31, 2025 12:37 am Outside of Film Forum, New York's rep screenings definitely over-index to young hipsters (myself included). Metrograph, MOMI, and Roxy Tribeca all skew young. Metrograph is legitimately a cool place to be, and caters towards under-40 moviegoers. Screening ends at midnight and you can be partying downtown within 15 minutes. Makes sense to me.

Black Hat wrote:Had to chuckle at the shock of ticket prices. The biggest factor is movies are the cheapest thing to do in New York, thus why you have a bizarre mix of olds and college age people attending. That being said, I found a 10 year old ticket a while back for $7. Prices have doubled in 10 years. I noticed for save and project that MoMA has started limiting free tickets to two per person. Only a matter of time before they start charging. Frankly, I’m surprised it hasn’t happened yet.

rrenault wrote: Wed Dec 31, 2025 4:18 pm

Drucker wrote: Wed Dec 31, 2025 12:37 am Outside of Film Forum, New York's rep screenings definitely over-index to young hipsters (myself included). Metrograph, MOMI, and Roxy Tribeca all skew young. Metrograph is legitimately a cool place to be, and caters towards under-40 moviegoers. Screening ends at midnight and you can be partying downtown within 15 minutes. Makes sense to me.

Don't worry. I'm not criticizing you here, but it does seem in general like one can't win. Either the repertory scene over-indexes to young pretentious hipsters or, in the case of Film Forum, it sticks with old-established Boomer-approved classics whether classic Hollywood or legacy Janus fare, so it's like a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation.

At the end of the day though, a vibrant rep scene needs both a steady supply of the "Janus stuff" and things like Brakhage, Straub/Huillet, and so forth if and when possible.

Regarding screenings quickly selling out, a lot more people do go to the cinema during that Christmas to New Year bridge, so that could be a contributing factor too.

MichaelB wrote: Wed Dec 31, 2025 4:58 pm

Black Hat wrote:Had to chuckle at the shock of ticket prices. The biggest factor is movies are the cheapest thing to do in New York, thus why you have a bizarre mix of olds and college age people attending. That being said, I found a 10 year old ticket a while back for $7. Prices have doubled in 10 years. I noticed for save and project that MoMA has started limiting free tickets to two per person. Only a matter of time before they start charging. Frankly, I’m surprised it hasn’t happened yet.

Back in the 1980s, I had to watch everything in the double or triple bill, otherwise I wouldn’t get my £2.50 worth.

FrauBlucher wrote: Wed Dec 31, 2025 8:20 pm

rrenault wrote: Wed Dec 31, 2025 4:18 pm

Drucker wrote: Wed Dec 31, 2025 12:37 am Outside of Film Forum, New York's rep screenings definitely over-index to young hipsters (myself included). Metrograph, MOMI, and Roxy Tribeca all skew young. Metrograph is legitimately a cool place to be, and caters towards under-40 moviegoers. Screening ends at midnight and you can be partying downtown within 15 minutes. Makes sense to me.

Don't worry. I'm not criticizing you here, but it does seem in general like one can't win. Either the repertory scene over-indexes to young pretentious hipsters or, in the case of Film Forum, it sticks with old-established Boomer-approved classics whether classic Hollywood or legacy Janus fare, so it's like a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation.

At the end of the day though, a vibrant rep scene needs both a steady supply of the "Janus stuff" and things like Brakhage, Straub/Huillet, and so forth if and when possible.

Regarding screenings quickly selling out, a lot more people do go to the cinema during that Christmas to New Year bridge, so that could be a contributing factor too.

Just for reference sake, Film Forum repertory programs are and have been scheduled by Bruce Goldstein for a very long time, and he owns Janus’ equal , Rialto Pictures. So it makes sense for FF to operate the way it does.

Black Hat wrote: Tue Dec 30, 2025 10:39 pm Had to chuckle at the shock of ticket prices. The biggest factor is movies are the cheapest thing to do in New York, thus why you have a bizarre mix of olds and college age people attending. That being said, I found a 10 year old ticket a while back for $7. Prices have doubled in 10 years. I noticed for save and project that MoMA has started limiting free tickets to two per person. Only a matter of time before they start charging. Frankly, I’m surprised it hasn’t happened yet.

beamish14 wrote: Tue Dec 30, 2025 8:55 pm

Black Hat wrote: Tue Dec 30, 2025 6:34 pm

rrenault wrote: Tue Dec 30, 2025 5:15 pm Why are people this stringently anti-DCP?

My theory on this is film twitter, letterboxd, and the social aspect of groupthink, follow the leader. The first part is that a few people in middling positions of tenuous employment are loudly obnoxious about this topic. As the younger crowd looks up to these silly individuals, they think beating this drum scores points, which, to be fair, it does as nobody in human history does low self esteem like a millennial cinephile. The way these freaks behave reminds you of stories you hear about collective masturbation at all boys boarding schools. Nothing beats the thrill of a crackling print of a Renoir film in shambles.

There is absolutely a specialness and sense of collective appreciation for seeing a pristine print, even if that hails from a digital source. I love it when we send gratitude to the projectionist (who is often no longer anonymous as in days past). You’re in the company of people who seem to have more discerning taste, and they treat the experience as something sacred; they’re probably not going to use their smartphones or ruffle plastic bags. Prints are what helped make me a cinephile for sure

Black Hat wrote:Michael, have you ever done a cinematic tour of New York? Very curious what impressions someone like yourself would have, and how it compares to European cities you're familiar with.

rrenault wrote: Thu Jan 01, 2026 7:19 pm $17 seems to be standard in NYC for non-PLF screenings these days. I’m pretty sure back in 2010 or so Film Forum would have charged around $12.

I’m not MichaelB, but as someone familiar with both the Paris and NYC rep scenes I’d say the former’s rep scene in general is far more FF-y than Metrograph-y. There’s far less pretense and indexing to the trendy crowd. You still get that peculiar mix of under-25s and over-65s, but on both sides it’s just normies(and some Boomer-aged intellectual types) who simply “like movies”. The Paris rep scene vibe in general has much more of an old school cinephilia flavor to it.

My one gripe is that 35mm rep screenings seem to be more common in NYC than in Paris for some reason.

I do think the Paris rep and indie cinema scene is arguably better than NYC’s in terms of the breadth of what’s on offer in the city on any given day, even if some of the individual venues in NYC are ‘sexier’ and ‘glitzier’ than those in Paris.

hearthesilence wrote: Thu Jan 01, 2026 8:49 pm tbh, I feel like there was a big push to skew the repertory scene towards younger audience members sometime in the 2010s. Lincoln Center in particular launched various programs intended for younger viewers or students - for example, the New Wave program that involves quite a few social gatherings or the academy program for aspiring film critics - and I figured it was mostly done to secure their future rather than rely too much on older patrons who (not to sound morbid) weren't going to be around as long

The Elegant Dandy Fop wrote: Thu Jan 01, 2026 11:36 pm

beamish14 wrote: Tue Dec 30, 2025 8:55 pm

Black Hat wrote: Tue Dec 30, 2025 6:34 pm My theory on this is film twitter, letterboxd, and the social aspect of groupthink, follow the leader. The first part is that a few people in middling positions of tenuous employment are loudly obnoxious about this topic. As the younger crowd looks up to these silly individuals, they think beating this drum scores points, which, to be fair, it does as nobody in human history does low self esteem like a millennial cinephile. The way these freaks behave reminds you of stories you hear about collective masturbation at all boys boarding schools. Nothing beats the thrill of a crackling print of a Renoir film in shambles.

There is absolutely a specialness and sense of collective appreciation for seeing a pristine print, even if that hails from a digital source. I love it when we send gratitude to the projectionist (who is often no longer anonymous as in days past). You’re in the company of people who seem to have more discerning taste, and they treat the experience as something sacred; they’re probably not going to use their smartphones or ruffle plastic bags. Prints are what helped make me a cinephile for sure

I'm not opposed to a 4K restoration as that has its values as much as an archival print does. Films to me exist in versions and contemporary restorations are just another version of a film. Any of these 4K scans from the original camera negative far surpasses what the film even looked like upon original release. I just saw the new 4K restoration of Duel in the Sun and can't imagine the film looking any better. But is that how the film was supposed to look? Between all the duped optical effects, visible brown face makeup, and obvious matte paintings, does the film benefit from this upgrade? Yes and no. Is this how the film was designed to be seen? I'd also think yes and no. It's stunning, it's gorgeous, it has been digitally fine-tuned to remove every scratch and blemish in the print and to fix any issues with phasing from the Technicolor process (also removing imperfection that comes along with the analog nature of film), but it's not how the film was designed to be seen during production and isn't exactly an accurate representation of the final film released in 1946. I can't complain as the results are still marvelous, but I think it's not without its faults. I often remember a Chris Marker essay where he discusses that the experience of watching An American in Paris on DVD on his laptop during a flight that surpassed the version he remembered seeing upon original release with Alain Resnais. He was right as the technology for film presentation and digital technology has surpassed whatever film could do.

But I'm longtime analog fanatic, and I prefer the quality of film projection even though laser projection is technically brighter and more vibrant than any xenon projection. I love film to the point where my career specialty is projects using mediums like 16mm and 35mm projections. I do agree with Black Hat that the internet is filled with people in "middling positions of tenuous employment" who control discourse just because they have the free time to post all day, but I've been going to repertory screenings for the last seventeen years of my life, have worked at a cinematheque, and continue to apply those skills to this day simply because I love film projection so much. I'm not always a film purist either as my disdain for Tarantino's love for his beat-to-shit IB Tech prints, or some of the dubious quality 35mm prints I've seen of digitally shot contemporary films transferred to film (Zone of Interest being the worst among them), but it is my favorite medium and something I've embraced for nearly half of my life now. Looking at what I watched last year, I watched 60 films on either 16mm, 35mm, or 70mm and two programs of shorts on 16mm. Most of the prints I watched looked excellent with the only one of questionable quality that I saw this year, Gabriel Over the White House, had some odd issue I've rarely encountered where the print was warped. I'd also kill to see a crackling Renoir print because frankly, who's programming Renoir these days?

I also think the types of people who deal with film and project it are different than twenty years ago. I think if you deal with film now, you have to be considered a skilled technician who has to handle each print as though it's a work of art. As a result, I think film projection has gotten better and projectionists more meticulous than ever. I was working at a small cinematheque when Janus' restoration of L'avventura was making the rounds (one of their last film prints) and the theater I worked at was the first place to present this brand new 35mm print that came still slightly wet from the lab. The projectionist was so careful with it, he didn't even want to permanently add cue marks for the reel changes and instead used a grease pen to draw small dots instead as he didn't even want to compromise it. These are the folk that mostly deal with film now and they treat it like it's an art work.

rrenault wrote: Fri Jan 02, 2026 3:47 am I must admit I find it funny how catering to young people automatically means catering to “privileged pretentious hipsters” when in fact there are plenty of under 40s who are just schmucks from Queens or south Brooklyn who like movies.

It’s not like younger people from “uncool” parts of the city never trek to Film Forum or Lincoln Center to watch a film, even though “the young people” the rep scene is catering to are probably just affluent 20 and 30 somethings living in Williamsburg and the East Village.

It’s all just something I find amusing.

People tend to think of NYC rep screenings as only attracting baby boomers from the UWS and under-40 trust fund babies from Williamsburg, but “schmucks from Queens who like movies”, some of whom are the same age as the Williamsburg folks, go to those screenings too.

MichaelB wrote: Fri Jan 02, 2026 7:08 am

Black Hat wrote:Michael, have you ever done a cinematic tour of New York? Very curious what impressions someone like yourself would have, and how it compares to European cities you're familiar with.

No. I’ve barely set foot in the US (just two trips, in 1996 and 2016), I’ve spent just 24 hours (if that) in NYC, and I had my entire family with me, with all that that implies.

And I’m also not anticipating crossing the Atlantic again any time soon, as I’m certainly not about to divulge my social media passwords to some immigration goon. (And if I did, they most likely wouldn’t let me in anyway.). Even in 1996 I was asked—thankfully in writing, as I don’t think I’d have been able to keep a straight face otherwise—whether I had any involvement in Nazi genocide, which had me wondering if anyone had ever ticked the “yes” box.

Black Hat wrote: Fri Jan 02, 2026 7:09 am How many rep theaters are there in Paris? It's surprising we don't have enough (or any, is Tenia in Paris?) Parisian members here to have a Paris thread, what a delight that would be. I was referencing member pricing, but the regular price was $10. Lincoln Center is up to 19/14, Metrograph 18/11, Film Forum 17/11. It's interesting Paris wouldn't have many 35mm you would think with all the archives in the EU they but I guess everything needed to make that happen is cost prohibitive.

MichaelB wrote: Fri Jan 02, 2026 7:08 am Even in 1996 I was asked—thankfully in writing, as I don’t think I’d have been able to keep a straight face otherwise—whether I had any involvement in Nazi genocide, which had me wondering if anyone had ever ticked the “yes” box.

hearthesilence wrote: Wed Dec 17, 2025 5:08 am

Godfrey Cheshire via Facebook comment wrote:I have created a festival that will play the IFC Center in early January titled PANAHI & KIAROSTAMI: TWO MASTERS, so that people can see the whole range of Panahi’s work alongside that of his mentor.

And indeed, even though a link hasn't been put up on their homepage, Google has picked up the page for it.