Boxoffice Pro - March 2020

TRADE TALK
PETER AARON -– OTTO
Film Forum Receives
$1M Anniversary Gift
from King Family
Karen Cooper, director of New York City’s
Film Forum since 1972, announced more than $1
million in gifts to commemorate the theater’s 50th
anniversary this year, including a $1 million gift
from the Charles & Lucille King Family Foundation
in memory of the foundation’s founder and
longtime chair and president, Diana King, who
passed away in January 2019. Film Forum has
received funding from the foundation every year
since 2005, and since 2015 specifically to support
its “Film Forum Jr.” program of weekend classics
for children. Film Forum is honoring King’s legacy
with the naming of the Diana King Theater.
The Robert Jolin Osborne Trust will make a
$250,000 gift to Film Forum during its anniversary
year, to establish the Robert Jolin Osborne
Endowed Fund for American Classic Cinema
of the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s. Robert Osborne
(1932–2017) was the iconic silver-haired host on
Turner Classic Movies (TCM) for more than two
decades; he was termed “a one-of-a-kind cinematic
savant” by The New York Times.
Having opened on the Upper West Side in
1970 with 50 folding chairs, the nonprofit cinema
has grown to its present incarnation: four screens,
469 seats, open 365 days year, with a $6 million
operating budget. Film Forum maintains a dual
profile—as a leading cinema for NYC premieres
of independent foreign and American features,
and as a leading repertory cinema, championing
classic movies and overlooked masterpieces.
In addition to the naming of the Diana King
Theater and the establishment of the Robert Jolin
Osborne Endowed Fund, Film Forum is marking
its 50th anniversary with projects including
in-person filmmaker presentations, special series
presentations, two celebrity-studded anniversary
trailers, a six-minute original film, and a new
Film Forum T-shirt design.
6 / MARCH 2020