New York has more nightly repertory programming than anywhere else in the country, and almost all of the confusion about it comes from treating the three downtown institutions as interchangeable. They are not. Film Forum, Metrograph and Anthology Film Archives are three different arguments about what cinema is for, and once you understand which argument you are in the mood for, the calendars stop being overwhelming and start being useful.
These calendars change weekly and the good screenings sell out days ahead without ever appearing on a listings site. Tell Karpo what you feel like watching and which night you are free, and get what is actually showing downtown that evening, what a ticket costs, and whether a membership would pay for itself.
Film Forum is the one to start with
A nonprofit on West Houston running repertory alongside first-run documentaries and restorations, it programmes with an unfussy, scholarly generosity — a Preston Sturges week, a new restoration of something French, a documentary in its third month. Tickets run eighteen dollars, twelve if you are a member, and the membership pays for itself quickly if you go more than about six times a year. The audience skews older and the room is quiet. If somebody has never done this before, this is where you take them.
Metrograph is the design-led one
On Ludlow Street on the Lower East Side, with two screens, a bookshop, a bar and a members' commissary upstairs, Metrograph programmes as much by taste as by canon — a director's obscure second feature, a themed run, a 35mm print of something that never made it to streaming. Membership is five dollars a month or fifty a year, which brings a ticket down to eleven from around eighteen, and there is an eighty-five-dollar dual tier if you always go with the same person. That dual tier is the quiet best value in New York repertory.
Anthology is the serious one, and it is cheap
Anthology Film Archives on Second Avenue is the avant-garde end — Jonas Mekas's institution, an archive as much as a cinema, running experimental work and its Essential Cinema canon in a building that has never pretended to be comfortable. General admission is fourteen dollars, ten for students and seniors, eight for members, which makes it the least expensive of the three by some distance. Go in knowing what you have chosen. A silent structuralist film at ninety minutes is a wonderful evening if you wanted that and a very long one if you did not.
How to actually read the calendars
All three publish a month at a time, and the useful habit is to look at the whole month once rather than the week repeatedly. Series and retrospectives are announced with the month; individual screenings within them sell at wildly different rates, with anything involving a rare print, an introduction or a guest going first. Book those the day they go on sale. Everything else is generally available until an hour before.
Prints, formats and the thing worth travelling for
The reason to care about which venue has which print is that a 35mm or 70mm screening is a genuinely different object from a digital restoration — grain, splices, reel changes, the lot. Repertory venues advertise the format when it is film, and if the listing does not say, it is digital. Larger-format bookings rotate through the city a few times a year and sell out in hours, so the practical approach is to follow the venues directly rather than waiting to read about it.
Making an evening of it
Metrograph has the built-in advantage of a bar and restaurant in the building, which makes it the easiest of the three to build a night around. Film Forum sits in a good part of the West Village for eating afterwards. Anthology's neighbourhood has more late food than either. And the practical New York rule: downtown repertory houses run their evening shows early enough that a seven o'clock screening finishes in time for a proper dinner afterwards, which is the correct order to do it in.
The rest of the map
These three are the core, but the city's repertory habit runs much wider: IFC Center in the Village, the Roxy in Tribeca, Nitehawk in Brooklyn with a kitchen attached, the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, BAM's cinema programme, and Lincoln Center's retrospectives. Uptown, the Paris Theater is the last single-screen house of its kind in the city. The practical value of knowing the wider list is that a sold-out screening downtown often has a sibling booking elsewhere in the same month, because restorations tour the city's venues rather than playing once and disappearing.
Practical notes
Film Forum on West Houston is eighteen dollars, twelve for members, and the best introduction. Metrograph on Ludlow is five a month or fifty a year, taking tickets from eighteen to eleven, with an eighty-five-dollar dual membership. Anthology on Second Avenue is fourteen, ten concession, eight for members, and programmes the experimental canon. Read the calendars monthly, book anything with a rare print or a guest immediately, and check whether a screening is film or digital before you travel for it.
Tags: #RepertoryCinema #FilmForum #Metrograph #AnthologyFilmArchives #NYCFilm #ArthouseCinema #LowerEastSide #WestVillage #HiddenGems #NYCWeekend #35mm #NewYorkCity #NYCGuide
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Ask Karpo first
Want to know what is screening downtown on the night you are free, whether it is a film print or a digital restoration, and if a membership would pay for itself at your rate of going? Ask Karpo for this week's calendar and a dinner plan around it.
