UPTOWNflavor

While we continue to await the arrive of the ImageNation Soul Cinema, we can satisfy our need for art house cinema vérité by checking out the Maysles Cinema. If you remember, earlier this year Maysles started offering “Harlem Screenings” once a month. I also remember posting something about a program that teaches Harlem youth how to become filmmakers offered by Maysles:

The cinema, which on Sunday will begin Strangers in Strange Lands, an 11-film series of travelogues by noted French directors, occupies the street level of a Lenox Avenue/Malcolm X Boulevard building (between 127th and 128th streets) that also houses the offices of Mr. Maysles’s production company, Maysles Films, as well as the Maysles Institute, which runs film education programs. The institute was launched three years ago, around the time the production company relocated to Harlem.

“We knew we’d use that space for teaching, but then it just made sense as an overall exhibition and teaching center,” the program coordinator of the institute and general manager of the production company, Laura Coxson, said. “It all kind of intermingles a little bit.”

The theater will feature films from around the world but intends to feature films by “local” filmmakers in the future:

In keeping with the local spirit, Ms. Coxson said she wants to get more Harlem filmmakers to show their work at the cinema. She also emphasized the importance of offering what the cinema’s mission statement calls “a forum for the discussion of questions of social, racial, and economic justice.”

“This neighborhood, specifically right now, is going through all these changes,” she said. “It’s really important as a mostly all-white institution coming into Harlem that we’re at least addressing those issues.”

According to Philip Maysles, a series entitled “New York Changes” is in the works for the fall and will focus on city neighborhoods undergoing dramatic change, demographic or otherwise.

Admission to the films is $7 and seating is limited. For schedules and additional information visit:

Website: Mayles Films

MAYSLES CINEMA
343 Malcolm X Blvd / Lenox Ave (Between 127th and 128th Streets)
cinema@mayslesfilms.com

Source: NY Sun