New York Film Festival comes to Brooklyn Army Terminal CINEMA
COURIER LIFE, SEPT. 11–17, 2020 29
OUR ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO THE BOROUGH OF KINGS
BY KEVIN DUGGAN
Brooklynites looking to catch the
latest and greatest of the big screen
are in luck, as the 58th annual New
York Film Festival will come to Sunset
Park on Sept. 17 — bringing three
weeks of drive-in movies, documentaries,
shorts, and historic fi lms to the
Brooklyn Army Terminal, said the festival’s
organizer.
“We thought about how do we invite
and engage both a new generation
of New Yorkers, but also how do we engage
with parts of the city and citizens
of New York who might not have otherwise
felt welcome or invited or known
about it,” said Eugene Hernandez, the
festival’s deputy director.
The usually Manhattan-centric festival,
which has been hosted at Lincoln
Center for nearly six decades, will partner
with Rooftop Films to bring the silver
screen to fi lm buffs in Sunset Park
and Flushing Meadows Corona Park
in Queens, via virtual showings.
Hernandez said he’d been hoping to
expand the fi lm bash beyond Manhattan
even before the pandemic, inspired
by past efforts to bring new movies to
communities beyond the distant isle —
including when the organization’s predecessor,
the Film Society of Lincoln
Center, hosted outdoor screenings at
parks around the fi ve boroughs in the
1970s.
“I’ve heard stories from a longtime
Lincoln Center board member about
how, she would say, ‘a bunch of hippies
getting into a van, and driving projectors
around the city,’” Hernandez said.
Rooftop Film has been hosting
drive-in screenings all summer, with
measures like social distancing, regular
cleaning, and contact-free check-in
that provide a safe movie-going experience
in the age of COVID-19, said Hernandez.
The car-borne entertainment also
offers a healthy dose of nostalgia, especially
against the backdrop of the Brooklyn
waterfront, said the organizer.
“For me it brought back those kinds
of very warm and positive memories,
drive-ins were a fun and memorable
activity that imprinted on my early
childhood,” Hernandez said.
Haute drive-in
New York Film Festival at Brooklyn
Army Terminal, 80 58th St., at First
Avenue in Sunset Park, www.fi lmlinc.
org. Sept. 17–Oct. 11. Most drive-in
screenings begin at 8 pm, doors at
7 pm. $45 per car for drive-in, virtual
showings start at $12. Tickets go on
sale Sept. 11 at 2 pm.
IN CARS: The New York Film Festival will come to drive-in screenings at Brooklyn Army
Terminal in Sunset Park. (Above) Tilda Swinton in Pedro Almodóvar’s “The Human Voice” will
play on Sept. 24. (Top) Rooftop Films (Bottom) El Deseo – Iglesias Más
/www.fi
/www.fi