FEBRUARY 23, 2024

OpenDox’s THIS WORLD IS NOT MY OWN wins Best Documentary Award Special Mention at Palm Springs, is picked up by Juno Films for a 2024 theatrical release!

Over four acts, This World is Not My Own traces the lifespan of an artist who struggles to dedicate her life to art while exploring the personal and political events that shaped her singular body of work. The film mixes traditional documentary techniques with animations and scripted scenes shot in intricately detailed sets to bring her dynamic story to life.

Opendox created film sets that reimagine Nellie’s “Playhouse,” and partnered with Kaktus Film to design and animate 3D characters in Nellie’s and her gallerist’s likenesses. Actresses, Uzo Aduba and Amy Warren, perform scripted scenes based on Nellie Mae Rowe quotes. Their recorded voices and movements make the animated Nellie and Judith come to life.

December 9, 2023

CINEMA CONSERVANCY celebrates the career of Manfred Kirchheimer in his 92nd year!

With Manfred Kirchheimer in Person 

This screening of works from legendary documentarian Manfred Kirchheimer, including two world premieres, honors the diverse and remarkable career of one New York City’s most invaluable cinematic chroniclers. 

Up the Lazy River 
Dir. Manfred Kirchheimer. 2021, 33 mins. DCP. This buoyantly mobile film is the climactic movement of the urban symphonic suite Kirchheimer began with 2018’s Dream of a City. Carrying us back again to late fifties New York for a final trip through the lost illusions of a city and civilization, Kirchheimer works at an even greater contemplative remove than in the film’s predecessors, ultimately expressing the contingent status of all human eras.

By Any Means: Manny Kirchheimer Makes “Sons” at 90
Dir. Taiki Sugioka. 2022, 11 mins. DCP. Sugioka follows Kirchheimer and his dedicated film crew as they make Sons, finding the filmmaker as incisive, energetic, and wry as ever at the ripe young age of 90.

Sons 
Dir. Manfred Kirchheimer. 2023, 67 mins. DCP. This frank generational portrait assembles a gallery of aging men, all baby boomers drawn from the filmmaker’s community of friends and family, to share and reflect upon tender, often painful memories of their parents. Assembled with an unassuming but always attentive editorial sense, Kirchheimer’s film weaves this polyphony of interviews into a single collective expression of filial yearning. World premiere. 

Presented during Q&A:

City Scraps 
Dir. Manfred Kirchheimer. 2023, 12 mins. DCP. A collage of still and moving images spanning Kirchheimer’s work from 1960 to 2014, this cinematic scrapbook juxtaposes the hazy, faraway memory of one city, embalmed in 16mm grain and grayscale, with the nearer, clearer memory of another, captured in sharply vivid video. Scenes of demonstration and protest remind us that the political dreams of an entire populace continue to be deferred from one century to the next, while the spontaneously filmed sight of a red-tailed hawk signals something else, the undefeated spirit of a still miraculous place. World premiere. 

OCTOBER 25, 2023

JAMES BALDWIN: FROM ANOTHER PLACE and OUTTAKES screen at VIENNALE 2023

In JAMES BALDWIN: FROM ANOTHER PLACE, Turkish artist Sedat Pakay designs an intimate, luminous sketch of James Baldwin during a stay in Istanbul. From leisurely moving about his room to the activity of the city and its curious denizens, the author/activist comfortably expounds on his sense of privacy, sexuality and expat tendencies. New facets of this encounter are revealed in the recently compiled and restored OUTTAKES FROM SEDAT PAKAY’S “JAMES BALDWIN: FROM ANOTHER PLACE”. (Brittany Gravely)

This film will be shown as part of the screening JAMES BALDWIN ABROAD.
In the presence of Kathy Pakay.

Preserved by the Yale Film Archive with support from the National Film Preservation Foundation.

“It’s a small miracle, a jewel of a documentary…”
—John Talbird, Film International

January 2, 2023

At Film Forum Jan 6-12 followed by a nationwide run:
JAMES BALDWIN: FROM ANOTHER PLACE as part of program JAMES BALDWIN ABROAD: A PROGRAM OF 3 FILMS

Set in Istanbul, the film opens with a surprisingly candid scene of Baldwin leisurely awakening in his bedroom. Sedat Pakay, a Turkish filmmaker who studied with Walker Evans, is known for his photographic portraits of famous artists and writers, Baldwin among them. Here in Istanbul, Baldwin seems relatively relaxed, walking among crowds in a public park or on the city’s streets. His focus is personal, even intimate: “The life I live is very different from what people imagine. I love a few men. I love a few women. Love comes in many strange packages; it never comes to you as you think it will. I think the trick is to say yes to life.” He speaks of how difficult it is concentrate and to write in the United States and says that “American men are paranoiac on the subject of homosexuality.”  The film offers us a self-reflective James Baldwin, one who fearlessly examines his most private thoughts and feelings.

Screens with:
MEETING THE MAN: JAMES BALDWIN IN PARIS (1971) directed by Terence Dixon
BALDWIN’S N****R (1968) directed by Horace Ové

Preserved by the Yale Film Archive with support from the National Film Preservation Foundation.

November 14, 2022

Prashanth Kamalakanthan’s HAVE A NICE LIFE has its New York Premiere at Roxy Cinema!

Shot mostly in Kamalakanthan’s native North Carolina, “Have a Nice Life” is a surreal stoner comedy and road movie, tracing the unlikely friendship between Jyothi, a lonely Indian housewife (played by the director’s mother, Jagathi Kamalakanthan), and Sophie, an unemployed stoner musician (Lucy Kaminsky). After hitting dead ends in life, the pair meet by chance at a pawn shop and soon find themselves on the run from the law, together on a wild American road trip from Durham, North Carolina to Montreal, Canada.

Q&A with Director Prashanth Kamalakanthan after the film.

January 26, 2022

Outtakes from JAMES BALDWIN: FROM ANOTHER PLACE

In 2021, the Yale Film Archive preserved Sedat Pakay's FROM ANOTHER PLACE (1973) from the 35mm original negatives, with support from the National Film Preservation Foundation. This new print premiered in the Revivals section of the New York Film Festival in September of that year. This year, Cinema Conservancy is partnering with the Yale Film Archive to edit together the never-before-seen outtakes, in which Baldwin and Pakay explore topics not touched upon in the original documentary.

JUNE 30TH, 2021

Manfred Kirchheimer’s FREE TIME for one night only at Film Forum! Kirchheimer in-person for Intro and Q&A!

The film marks the third time the filmmaker has crafted impressions of a New York gone by from 45,000 feet of footage shot with Walter Hess from 1958-1960 (the previous two films being CLAW and DREAM OF A CITY). The film debuted last fall at the New York Film Festival and is now set to open soon, when both the city and Film Forum deem it safe to do so.

Click the press links below and the Film Forum website to purchase tickets.

MAY 23rd, 2021

Prashanth Kamalakanthan’s HAVE A NICE LIFE Premieres at MdFF!

HAVE A NICE LIFE, the first feature by Indian-American writer/director Prashanth Kamalakanthan, a winner at 2020’s U.S. In Progress, will premiere for North American audiences at the 2021 Maryland Film Festival on Sunday, May 23, at 4 PM Eastern, followed by live Q&A and extended viewing window. Executive Produced by Jake Perlin and Andrew Adair of Cinema Conservancy, the film stars actors Lucy Kaminsky (The Plagiarists, Chained for Life) and Onur Tukel (Applesauce, The Misogynists) alongside a cast of non-professionals and first-timers, including the director’s own mother in a leading role.

Shot mostly in Kamalakanthan’s native North Carolina, “Have a Nice Life” is a surreal stoner comedy and road movie, tracing the unlikely friendship between Jyothi, a lonely Indian housewife (played by the director’s mother, Jagathi Kamalakanthan), and Sophie, an unemployed stoner musician (Lucy Kaminsky). After hitting dead ends in life, the pair meet by chance at a pawn shop and soon find themselves on the run from the law, together on a wild American road trip from Durham, North Carolina to Montreal, Canada.

January 3rd, 2021

Cinema Conservancy Supports African Film Festival!

The African Film Festival, Inc. was founded in 1990 as a dynamic platform dedicated to increasing exposure to African arts and culture through the screening of cinematic works made by and about the people of Africa and the African Diaspora.

Click their logo on the right for more info!

October 5th, 2020

Cinema Conservancy Supports The Luminal Theater!

Cinema Conservancy is proud to announce its donation in support of The Luminal Theater, “a nomadic cinema that provides fully-curated exhibitions of diverse cinema and media of the Black/African diaspora (African-American, African, Caribbean, Afro-European, etc.), allowing these artists to present their work within our unique brand of shared audience experiences, centered in Bedford-Stuyvesant (Bed-Stuy), Brooklyn, Central Brooklyn, and surrounding communities.”

See what they’re up to by clicking their logo to the left!