Cinema 16: Documents Toward a History of the Film Society

It is a catastrophic fallacy to assume that running a film society involves nothing more than an idealistic concern with good films, coupled with their lackadaisical presentation to willing audiences. On the contrary, the individual brave enough to venture into this troublesome field, must be—no matter what the size of the society—an organizer, promoter, publicist and copywriter, businessman, public speaker, and artist; a conscientious, if not pedantic, person versed in mass psychology. He must have roots in his community. And he must know a good film when he sees it.

Amos Vogel

Scholars of independent cinema, and especially of that arena of independent cinema variously known as “avant-garde film,” “experimental film,” “underground film”..., have tended to approach the field in one of two ways. Some have written with the idea of attracting a wider audience to the full range of cinema; others have explored specific contributions to particular historical and/or theoretical developments. Unfortunately, little sustained critical/scholarly attention has been accorded the histories of those institutions that have nurtured and sustained alternative cinema. ¹ One result has been a fragmented sense of film history. Another is the sadly marginal and precarious situation in which so many institutions devoted to the broadest sense of film history continue to find themselves in the late 1990s. If even the most remarkable institutional contributions to alternative production, distribution, and exhibition are not studied, how can those who might be willing to commit themselves to the development of a more vital film and video scene learn from the past to reinvigorate the present and the future? If those who have honored alternative cinemas at the cost of their labor and their personal resources are not themselves honored by those of us who profit from the field they have helped develop, can we expect a younger generation to make the necessary sacrifices to maintain and re-energize this field?

It is to the credit of Wide Angle and its current editor, Ruth Bradley, that the journal has decided to devote considerable space to the development of a more complete sense of the institutional contexts within which so many of the glories of our cinematic heritage have developed. Wide Angle’s publication in 1995 (Volume 17, Nos. 1–4) of The Flaherty: Four Decades in the Cause of Independent Cinema, edited by Erik Barnouw and Patricia R. Zimmermann, was a breakthrough contribution in this regard, and my hope is that this documentation of the New York Film Society, Cinema 16, will be a worthy successor to it. The purpose of Cinema 16: Documents Toward a History of the Film Society is to provide a wide range of materials that future scholars, historians, critics, teachers, students, and film-lovers will find interesting and useful in reassessing the development of alternative cinema in the United States and the institutions that have contributed to this development.

In general, the documents speak for themselves, sometimes with considerable eloquence; but we have also provided various forms of context that may be useful, especially for those currently unfamiliar with the pivotal role of Cinema 16 in American independent film history. Of course, while this project attempts to reveal something of the remarkable scope of Cinema 16’s activities and contributions, it can make no pretense of being a complete, or even a thorough, exploration of the film society. At most, we provide a lure toward a remarkable moment in the institutional history of independent film—a lure we hope other scholars will be attracted by.

Backgrounds

From 3the end of 1947 until mid-1963, the New York City cultural scene was energized by Cinema 16, the most successful and influential membership film society in North American history. At its height, Cinema 16 boasted seven thousand members who filled a sixteen-hundred-seat auditorium at the High School of Fashion Industries (in Manhattan’s garment district) twice a night, as well as two and sometimes three five-hundred-seat, first-run theaters at various Manhattan locations, for monthly presentations. These audiences were presented with a very wide range of film forms, often programmed so...