Alice Tully Hall

Tuesday, October 3----Audiences attending the NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL screenings cannot help but notice that there is massive construction going on in and around Lincoln Center these days.

The front of the Festival's main screening venue, Alice Tully Hall, is being remodeled, and the overpass on West 65th Street has been torn down to create a more airy environment. Missing is the escalator entrance from Broadway and the colonaded walkway that took adventurous filmgoers past the Julliard School of Performing Arts to the Walter Reade Theater, the year-round venue of the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

Walter Reade Theater

However, when the dust finally does settle (not until late 2008, sorry), West 65th Street will have been transformed into a vibrant new "street of the arts", which will include a modernized Alice Tully Hall and the addition of a new two-screen cinematheque, dubbed the Elinor Bunin-Munroe Film Center.

Alice Tully Hall will reopen as a modernized state-of-the-art performing arts center, for a mix of music, dance and film, with a glorious new exterior and a dramatically refurbished interior, both designed by the architectural firm of Diller, Scofidio and Renfro.

Aside from the new aesthetics, Alice Tully Hall will be outfitted with state-of-the-art film and digital projection equipment and enhanced acoustics that will make it one of the most exciting venues in the country to screen films and digital works.

In 2009, the new Elinor Bunin-Monroe Film Center will open on the south side of West 65th Street, opposite the Walter Reade Theater. The Film Center will house two new theaters (90 and 150 seats respectively) and an ampitheater, all designed by innovative architect David Rockwell.

With three screens available, the Film Society of Lincoln Center will be able to offer a smorgasboard of innovative programming, retrospectives and film series year-round and expand the venue options for both the New York Film Festival and New Directors New Films, its collaboration with the Film Department of the Museum of Modern Art.

According to Film Society Executive Director Claudia Bonn, "the new facilities will be a welcome addition to our year-round programming, and allow our enthusiastic staff to bring many excitng film events to fruition, including the creation of a new educational initiative."

Claudia Bonn

While Alice Tully Hall undergoes its extensive renovation in 2007 and 2008, the New York Film Festival will move to the recently opened Frederick Rose Hall, home of Jazz At Lincoln Center, located in the nearby Time Warner Center.

Big changes are happening at the Film Society of Lincoln Center....giving New York cinephiles more opportunities to appreciate the classic films of the past and the "new classics" of the future.

Sandy Mandelberger
Festivals Editor