Amelia Thompson is a television, radio, and emerging media student at Brooklyn college. Throughout her time living in NYC she has always had an interest in the independent film scene in the city, being sure to visit each theater and trying to catch rare screenings on film. Unlike many places across the United States, New York City is one of the few places with a thriving film scene, with over 15 active independent cinemas, the city is constantly dishing out new and exciting programs. The following are only a few examples of the incredible series coming to the city that you should be aware of!
17TH ANNUAL CUNY FILM FEST @ Macaulay Honors College: May 08, May 09, and May 10th. This will be a selection of CUNY made films!
ANTHOLOGY FILM ARCHIVES:
- ‘SENSES OF CINEMA ISSUE LAUNCH: CINEMA OF GLOBAL SOLIDARITY AND PALESTINIAN STRUGGLE’: Thursday, May 1
–A series of ‘multifaceted narratives of the Palestinian struggle’. Five restored short films -created by Iraqi, Egyptian, German, and Japanese filmmakers- that circulated leftist communities in Japan during the 1970’s and 1980s. ‘The project explores the historical and ideological conditions that shaped the anti-colonial networks of global solidarity with the Palestinian revolution.’
- ‘CINEMA FOR LIBERATION’: May 2 – 31, 2025
– A program focusing on films relating the “struggles in Palestine and the United States – struggles for home, livelihood, and liberation, against exile, accumulation, and imprisonment”. Each film tries to find connection between two struggles but all align on a common goal: “How do we strike fatal blows against the forces of colonialism and capitalism that endanger our shared world?”
JAPAN SOCIETY:
- ‘The John and Miyoko Davey Classic Film Series: Mikio Naruse: The World Betrays Us – Part I’: May 9 – 31, 2025
– This retrospective explores the work of Mikio Naruse, who is referred to as the “fourth great master” of Japanese cinema. Throughout the month of may each of his films will be playing to commemorate Naruse on the 120th anniversary of his birth with his first New York retrospective in 20 years.
BROOKLYN ACADEMY OF MUSIC:
- ‘Wuhan, Different Every Day’: May 2—May 7, 2025
– This program displays various films created in Wuhan, a city in China that was the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. ‘This series brings together a diverse
lineup of feature films and documentaries shot in Wuhan, exploring different facets of China’s River City’.
SPECTACLE THEATER:
- Coming soon (hopefully)
METROGRAPH:
- ‘Scenes from the “End of History”’: May 2—May 18, 2025
– This series centers around the historic period during the end of the 1980s. So much political turmoil that political scientist Francis Fukuyama wrote a book titled “The End of History”. In this Lnovel he stated that this period was: “not just … the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: That is, the end-point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government”. The program features ‘cinematic responses to a world of new freedoms and new dangers’ that were released in the late 1980s.
- ‘The Time that Remains’: May 2—May 18, 2025
– This is a collection of films that all take place after discovering a terminal diagnosis. These films show responses ranging from heightened urgency, painstaking realizations, rueful regret, and bittersweet acceptance. They capitalize on human existence and gesture to the “contradictory ways that human beings deal with the painful and inevitable fact of having to let go of the lives they’ve built and the people they’ve built them with.”
MAYSLES DOCUMENTARY CENTER:
- ‘The Watermelon Woman’: May 8th, 2025
– This film is regarded as the first American feature to be directed by a black lesbian. Directed by Cheryl Dunye and produced by Brooklyn College professor, Alexandra Juhasz; this mockumentary follows a lesbian as she attempts to discover the identity of a black character in a film who is not given any credit and titled only: ‘watermelon woman’. This landmark of queer cinema: “testifies to the power of excavating legacies of oppression and in the process creates a progressive legacy of its own”.
FILM FORUM:
- ‘René Clément’s FORBIDDEN GAMES’: Friday, May 9 – Thursday, May 15 – This restoration follows two children who build a special, secret friendship after a little girl’s parents and dog are killed after a Nazi air raid. The children grow close as they try to make sense of the chaotic and crumbling world around them, attempting to cope with death as war rages around them. The film won ‘Best
Foreign Feature’ at the Oscars in 1952 and continues to break hearts and awe anyone with the fortune to see the film. The film reveals that: “in a world in turmoil, the first thing to be sacrificed is childhood innocence. As Forbidden Games shows, it is a terrible sacrifice. Yet, at the same time, the film exhibits a spirit of hope, a spirit which shines through the bleak horrors of war.In a world in turmoil, the first thing to be sacrificed is childhood innocence. As Forbidden Games shows, it is a terrible sacrifice. Yet, at the same time, the film exhibits a spirit of hope, a spirit which shines through the bleak horrors of war. It is this deep respect for the human spirit that gives Forbidden Games its very special glow” (Criterion Collection).
