Film Forum @50: 1970 – 2020:
From Scrappy Little Screening Room to NYC Cultural Landmark
We're marking our half-century anniversary in the year 2020. Having opened on the Upper West Side in 1970, with 50 folding chairs, our nonprofit cinema has grown to its present incarnation: 4 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 an unparalleled repertory cinema, championing classic movies and over-looked masterpieces.
Our 50-year anniversary is being celebrated with 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. Film Forum has received funding from the Foundation every year since 2005, and since 2015 specifically to support our Film Forum Jr. program of weekend classics for children – introducing young people to the joys of movies from the silent era through favorites of the last several decades. Film Forum is proud to honor Diana King’s generous 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) is known to just about every American who ever turned on the TV to watch an old movie as the iconic, silver-haired host on Turner Classic Movies (TCM) for more than two decades.
50th Anniversary T-Shirts
Celebrate our 50th anniversary in style with our “Greetings from Film Forum” t-shirts, now available online and at concession. Click here for more information.
Additional anniversary projects for 2020:
- Several evenings of in-person presentations by directors and stars will focus on movies they saw at Film Forum which have had a lasting effect upon their lives and work, including noted actor Ethan Hawke (a Film Forum board member) appearing with Dennis Hopper’s rarely seen directorial feature THE LAST MOVIE.
- A limited-edition series by renowned artist Cindy Sherman (also a Film Forum board member) will be for sale to benefit the theater, through the artist’s generosity and that of her gallery, Metro Pictures.
- An anniversary trailer, created by Jump Cut, will be on our screens this spring.
- A 6-minute original movie The Projectionists is now playing on Film Forum’s YouTube channel, made by Coren H.G.