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.<br />
"<br />
tan and foreign independent productions<br />
that are billed as "challenging,<br />
provocative and controversial," while<br />
the 194-seat Film Forum II, a repertory<br />
cinema programmed by Bnice Goldstein,<br />
specializes in dazzling film revivals.<br />
"Fantasy & Science Fiction"<br />
(where seats were wired for mild shocks<br />
during the showing of William Castle's<br />
classic, "The Tingler"), "Hollywood Before<br />
the Code" and "Westerns — The<br />
First Genre" are among a panoply of<br />
screen festivals featured. If it's innovative,<br />
classic or offbeat — from "The Battle<br />
of Chile," a three-hour documentary<br />
about the Allende regime, to "The<br />
Atomic Cafe," to Looney Tunes, to a celebration<br />
of Josephine Baker — it's probably<br />
a Film Forum presentation.<br />
As the theatre grew in visibility, so did<br />
the need for a larger space. Like many<br />
cutting edge artists in 1970s Manhattan,<br />
Film Forum and Karen Cooper moved<br />
dovmtown to a 199-seat theatre on Van-<br />
"Theatres like Film<br />
Forum broaden the<br />
notion of what<br />
constitutes<br />
entertainment. It's vital<br />
to have someplace to<br />
show a unique, singular,<br />
personal, often<br />
signiBcant vision of our<br />
world.<br />
dam Street in the West Village. They<br />
stayed from 1975-1981, even though the<br />
rake of the seats was so small that<br />
audiences could barely read the subtitles<br />
on foreign films. It was then that<br />
Cooper applied for a S400,000 low interest<br />
Ford Foundation loan to build her<br />
own two-screen movie house {the initial<br />
loan, plus $70,000 in interest, was repaid<br />
within five years)<br />
She found it in the most unlikely of<br />
places — a garage on Watts Street, one<br />
block from the Holland Tunnel. The<br />
exposed truss and high ceilings attest to<br />
the industrial nature of the building,<br />
while the use of bright production lights<br />
in the lobby space allude to filmmaking.<br />
The design may be spare and low-key,<br />
but the atmosphere is charged with<br />
excitement, for audiences and distributors<br />
alike. Consider one of Cooper's<br />
coups: introducing New York audiences<br />
to the "Big Three" of German cinema —<br />
Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog<br />
and Wim Wenders. Long before they<br />
became trendy to savvy foreign film<br />
buffs in the U.S., they were part of Film<br />
Forum's mainline attractions.<br />
Daniel Talbot, president of New Yorker<br />
Films, an exhibition and distribution<br />
company that has premiered movies at<br />
Film Fonim, notes, "If you don't feel<br />
that a film has a chance in the big, wide<br />
world, then playing it at Film Fomm is<br />
veiy felicitous." In fact. Cooper offers<br />
distributors the best deal in town; 30<br />
percent of the boxoffice gross during a<br />
movie's standard two-week nm. And<br />
Film Forum even writes, designs and<br />
covers the cost of the advertising and<br />
publicity campaigns. These people are<br />
serious about independent cinema.<br />
Cooper has parlayed an initial budget<br />
of $19,000 into SI. 2 million, with help<br />
from the NYS Council on the Arts, the<br />
NEA, the MacArthur Foundation, and a<br />
host of public and private sources. Unlike<br />
commercial houses, she says Film<br />
Forum is "in the business of taking risks.<br />
I don't need a hit a week. I just need<br />
them every so often," she smiles.<br />
"Theatres like Film Fonim broaden the<br />
notion of what constitutes entertainment.<br />
It's vital to have someplace to<br />
show a unique, singular, personal, often<br />
significant vision of our world."<br />
As to the future of this unusual and<br />
extraordinary film house? "We have a<br />
20-year track record," boasts Cooper.<br />
"Right now we are taking things one day<br />
at a time. We're down, but we're not<br />
out."<br />
Stay tuned.<br />
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