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Washington Post
09-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
How a film projectionist creates ‘visions on screen'
Carolyn Funk has handled thousands of miles of celluloid. She works for various repertory theaters and museums in New York, one of the last places on Earth where it is still possible to build a career as a film projectionist. According to Screen Slate, there are usually between four and 12 celluloid screenings in the city each day. The dark booths where Carolyn spends her working hours are meant to be invisible to moviegoers. For her, they are private worlds of machinery, images and sound. In medieval times, nuns and mystics were confined to tight, enclosed spaces. It has been suggested that enclosure elicited visions. Sometimes it can feel like that in the projection booth. You're alone in this dark room with no windows. The hours are brutal. But you're producing these images, these visions, on the screen. I learned to project in 2006, when I was a grad student working at the university cinema. The head film tech offered to teach me, and I was so excited. It's not an easy skill to learn. Story continues below advertisement Advertisement I learned through trial and error that summer, which is something you cannot do now that film is so rare. I was given room to make mistakes, like when the soundtrack showed up on-screen because the reel was wound incorrectly. In 2007, I got my first job as a projectionist, at Anthology Film Archives, and joined New York's projectionist union, Local 306. Story continues below advertisement Advertisement The union was founded in 1913. At its height, in 1950, it had 2,450 members. Its members were considered blue-collar laborers. When I joined, we still had a healthy membership because all the major multiplexes used film. But between 2010 and 2012, membership decreased dramatically. That was when all the major movie theaters switched to digital projection. Many projectionists lost their jobs, and the art of film projection became an even more specialized skill. The experience of seeing a film is so ephemeral. It's hard to comprehend how much of the job is physical. Now, all film is considered archival and projectionists are required to do in-depth print inspections. Studios don't make hundreds of prints of a single film anymore. I lay the film out on a rewind bench with a little light box, looking for damage. Celluloid is so beautiful and tactile. It's heavy and translucent. It can sometimes smell like vinegar. You can see scratches made by previous screenings. Every time a film is screened, it is damage from an archivist's perspective, but the point of a print is for it to be shown. I recently projected a series of Hiroshi Shimizu films from the 1930s that the Museum of the Moving Image had shipped from Japan. They had never been shown in the United States, and they could be screened only once. Handling those prints was a beautiful experience. My specialty is reel-to-reel projection, which most archival films use. Reels can be up to about 20 minutes long, and you need to switch them out throughout the screening. So a two-hour film is usually six reels. It's very labor-intensive, and you're tied to the screen, looking for these cue marks that signal when to do these changeovers. The machine is noisy and fills the whole environment. You can forget yourself. I sometimes feel as if I'm part of the machine. For that reason, it's rare for me to be moved by a film from the booth, but I've had some exceptions. Story continues below advertisement Advertisement For example, I screened a collector's print of David Lynch's 'The Elephant Man,' which I had never seen. It is such a beautiful, moving movie; I remember crying in the booth while I watched it. I have always had plenty of work as a projectionist in New York, but there's nowhere else I could do this job. There are celluloid screenings every day in this city because there are so many arthouse theaters. There's a community of people who really appreciate the experience of being in a theater. Map of movie theaters that show film in New York City CENTRAL PARK Movie theaters that show film QUEENS MANHATTAN East River NEW YORK NEW JERSEY BROOKLYN PROSPECT PARK N 1 MILE Source: OpenStreetMaps contributors CENTRAL PARK Hudson River Movie theaters that show film MANHATTAN QUEENS East River NEW YORK NEW JERSEY BROOKLYN PROSPECT PARK N 1 MILE Source: OpenStreetMaps contributors Movie theaters that show film JERSEY CITY Hudson River NEW JERSEY NEW YORK CENTRAL PARK MANHATTAN East River BROOKLYN QUEENS PROSPECT PARK N 1 MILE Source: OpenStreetMaps contributors Hudson River JERSEY CITY Movie theaters that show film NEW JERSEY MANHATTAN CENTRAL PARK NEW YORK East River BROOKLYN QUEENS PROSPECT PARK N 1 MILE Source: OpenStreetMaps contributors I am freelancing at museums and theaters now because I started to feel burnout. Working 14-hour days alone in dark booths is exhausting. I also screen digital, which is its own presentation, skill and technology. You're ingesting files, building playlists, testing and sometimes reformatting digital content. It still requires a lot of attention to detail and a skilled technician, but it's a different headspace. You don't feel as physically connected to the process. It might be the same movie, but the experience is vastly different, just as it might be for the audience. Story continues below advertisement Advertisement You can still have a deeply moving experience, but there's nothing like celluloid. Celluloid is magic.
New York Times
25-06-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
P. Adams Sitney, Leading Scholar of Avant-Garde Film, Dies at 80
P. Adams Sitney, who pioneered the study of avant-garde film, helping to focus attention on a rarefied corner of American filmmaking, died on June 8 at his home in Matunuck, R.I. He was 80. His daughter Sky Sitney said the cause was cancer. In books and magazine articles, and at Anthology Film Archives in New York City, which he helped found, and Princeton University, where he taught film history and other subjects in the humanities for over 35 years, Mr. Sitney championed a type of film that is largely unknown to the cinema-going public, but which forms a distinctive part of the American artistic canon. His passion was mostly short films that had nothing to do with narrative or characters and everything to do with light, images, objects and dreams. His book 'Visionary Film: The American Avant-Garde,' which has gone through three editions since first being published in 1974, is still regarded as the leading study of the genre. He championed the work of avant-garde pioneers like Maya Deren, Stan Brakhage, Gregory Markopoulos, Jonas Mekas and Peter Kubelka, several of whom helped him found Anthology Film Archives, the East Village bastion of avant-garde cinema, in 1970. He saw their films as pure experiments toward achieving one of cinema's true vocations: the mirror of the dream state. 'Fragmentation brought the imagery to the brink of stasis, so that after some hours hovering around that threshold, the image of a couple walking into a Japanese garden had the breathtaking effect of the reinvention of cinematic movement,' he wrote of an episode in Mr. Markopoulos's 80-hour, 22-part 1991 epic, 'Eniaios.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Why Eliminating the NEA Would Be a Disaster For Our Country (Guest Column)
I come from a family rooted in the arts. My grandmother, Enid Flender, was a dancer-turned-public school teacher; my grandfather, Harold Flender, was a writer; and my mother, uncle, brother and I were shaped by a public-school education that prioritized the performing arts. I grew up in Manhattan Plaza in New York City, a federally subsidized building for artists, and fell in love with movies at Anthology Film Archives in the East Village. I have had the utmost privilege of knowing a life with creativity at the center of it. And yet if it weren't for the National Endowment for the Arts, I don't know if I would have pursued a life as an actor. More from The Hollywood Reporter Jon Voight's Hollywood Coalition Asks Trump to Consider Tax Incentives, Too Cannes Dealmakers Are Already Sick of Talking About Trump's Tariffs Is Europe the Last Bastion of DEI in Film and TV? My first time on stage was with the National Dance Institute, or NDI, a nonprofit that benefits directly from funding from the NEA. Created in 1976 by Jacques D'Amboise, a star dancer of the New York City Ballet, NDI provides dance classes built into the public elementary school curriculum along with free summer programs. When I think of my time with NDI, my strongest memory is when a group of us were standing around a piano, clapping our hands, as we learned to keep the beat to the song 'Cement Mixer Putti- Putti.' (We were young.) We couldn't really find the beat; there were always a few of us a little out of sync. So the teacher had us close our eyes. Within a few claps, the entire group was synchronized. The key was to focus purely on what we were hearing and feeling as opposed to watching everyone else. Once we got it and opened our eyes, we were ecstatic. We had connected. We were a team. Now we got to concentrate our energy into our common goal: the performance. I remember the pure joy of being on stage at that performance after such hard work of rehearsing — a feeling not unlike what some children describe when playing a game after months of work in the gym. Some of my friends from the NDI program pursued artistic careers, but many did not. Even those who went into other professions still reflect upon their experience positively, though, for the values it instilled. In learning choreography, we gained discipline. In mastering a new song, we found confidence. We learned resilience, adaptability, and the value of working as a team. All skills that are useful whether you're a lawyer, a therapist, a pastry chef or a space engineer. (And as an actor, I will happily play any of these characters in a movie). The NEA made it possible. Right now, federal funding for the arts is in serious danger. The latest budget proposal that the White House sent to Congress asks that the group be eliminated. Many theaters and other arts organizations have already been told that their grants have been revoked, creating a haze of operational uncertainty. Their very survival is at stake. This is why I recently went to Capitol Hill with the nonprofit arts organization The Creative Coalition to advocate for the NEA, meeting with the Congressional staffers whose bosses are on the fence about the value of federal arts funding. It was a powerful experience to talk with these influential players and walk the halls of our nation's legislative offices. It was also sobering. We encountered resistance. Taxpayers shouldn't be supporting the arts, some staffers told us. But the visit reaffirmed my belief in the importance of arts funding. After all, even the skeptical staffers often had a favorite performance memory – a music lesson or play or dance classes that they had participated in. The argument to them almost made itself: if we only relied on private funding, many of them and other middle-class children may well have not had the chance. Arts funding is often the first thing to be cut by governments, when in fact it should be protected as essential. Creativity gives us purpose. Imagination advances humanity. The arts foster empathy, understanding, and connection. Access to creative expression — whether through dance, music, painting, theater, or film — helps us communicate on a deeper level and provides a bridge into the shared experience of what it means to be human. The National Endowment for the Arts doesn't cost very much. The United States allocates just 0.004 percent of its annual budget to the NEA. (In contrast, smaller countries like France, Germany, and the UK each invest a much greater percentage, over a billion dollars annually apiece.) And the money stimulates the economy. NEA grants have a powerful multiplier effect, according to the Creative Coalition: every $1 awarded to an arts organization is shown to typically generate about $9 in private investment or consumer spending, turning that $207 million into roughly $2 billion. That NEA grant isn't a handout—it's a seal of approval for a project that then generates all kinds of private dollars that follow. These projects aren't Hollywood productions or Broadway shows, but local jazz festivals, museums exhibitions, arts education, and community theater — initiatives that enrich neighborhoods, build cultural identity, and stimulate local economies. These are year-round programs like the Miami Lighthouse for the Blind and the Visually Impaired, which provides music education for the visually impaired. Or Creative Forces, which supports arts programming for active military members and veterans. And hundreds more like them. The NEA is particularly vital for small and rural arts organizations that would otherwise lack access to major donors or corporate sponsorships. (Forty percent of NEA funding is distributed through state and local arts agencies, ensuring communities have a direct say in how funds are used.) Without the NEA, large cities might still sustain their cultural scenes, but I fear that rural and small-town projects — from arts education in Idaho to community theater in Maine — could vanish. Senior leaders at the NEA have just resigned en masse in the wake of the cuts. This is disheartening. But it doesn't make me lose hope. Congress will likely still have a say in what happens. And we can lobby Congress I'll even include number for the Congressional switchboard: 202-224-3121. If there's one thing I learned in Washington, it's that elected officials are tracking the feedback; these calls matter. Nearly every one of our 541 representatives has constituents who benefit from NEA grants. This is the moment to let each one of them know that they should keep the NEA alive. Every kid who wants to learn how to keep the beat to a song, every visually impaired person who wants to play a musical instrument and every Iraq or Afghanistan veteran who could use a little art therapy to help them recover from their trauma needs the NEA to stick around. Let's remind our representatives that they're out there. On our final night in DC, at a fundraising dinner, a few of my fellow delegates from The Creative Coalition did an impromptu musical jam at the front of the room. The space was filled with many of the Republican and Democratic staff members who we had met with earlier that day. Everyone started singing and dancing. (Or swaying!) As I looked around the room, the value was clear: the arts remind us to connect with each other. To have fun with each other. To sing with each other. The arts don't just entertain us —they bind us, define us, and give us the language to imagine the future. Pauline Chalamet is an actor and producer living in Los Angeles. Best of The Hollywood Reporter From 'Lady in the Lake' to 'It Ends With Us': 29 New and Upcoming Book Adaptations in 2024 Meet the Superstars Who Glam Up Hollywood's A-List Rosie O'Donnell on Ellen, Madonna, Trump and 40 Years in the Queer Spotlight
New York Post
10-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Post
Behind the glamorous — and often tragic — lives of Andy Warhol's muses
Earlier this year, Anthology Film Archives in the Lower East Side hosted a screening devoted to Naomi Levine. Touted by some as Andy Warhol's 'first female superstar,' Levine performed in many of the pop artist's early underground movies, like 1963's 'Tarzan and Jane Regained… Sort Of' and 1964's pornographic 'Couch.' Like many of Warhol's actors, she took off her clothes for his camera. Levine didn't care about fame, and never became famous, which is maybe why she doesn't even get a mention in Laurence Leamer's new book, 'Warhol's Muses: The Artists, Misfits, and Superstars Destroyed by the Factory Fame Machine' (G.P. Putnam's Sons, out May 6). She doesn't fit with its thesis. 'Warhol's Muses' is the latest entry in a long line of books and movies about the artist and his band of misfits. Like many, it portrays Warhol as a leech who used and manipulated others for the sake of his art and celebrity. 9 Andy Warhol with members of the Velvet Underground, including one of his most iconic female muses, Nico (to his left). Gerard Malanga But here, Leamer focuses on Warhol's women: the ever-evolving coterie of glamazons who accompanied him to parties, appeared in his films, and 'helped turn the Pittsburgh-born son of Eastern European immigrants into international artist Andy Warhol.' 'They would raise his social cachet dramatically and bring him the publicity and public adulation he so desired,' Leamer writes. Warhol called these women his 'superstars.' They included rebellious heiresses like Edie Sedgwick, bohemian artists like Christa Päffgen, a.k.a . Nico, and gorgeous outsiders like the trans icon Candy Darling. They helped the shy, awkward, gay Warhol meet rich buyers and gave him a sheen of glamour. And then, per Leamer, he cast them aside when they proved no longer useful. In 1964, Warhol was a successful commercial artist. But his 'fine art' — the paintings of Campbell's soup cans and Brillo boxes — wasn't selling, and his movies had barely made a blip. 9 Candy Darling, Andy Warhol, and Sylvia Miles at a premiere at the Rivoli Theater in 1971. Bettmann Archive Then he met Jane Holzer, a 23-year-old socialite living in an Upper East Side mansion with her young real-estate mogul husband, bored out of her mind. Holzer grew up in privilege in Palm Beach, Fla., yet had a defiant streak. When Warhol asked if she would be in one of his movies, she said: 'Sure, anything's better than [being] a Park Avenue housewife.' She made out with two men for 'Kiss.' She brushed her teeth and chewed gum for various 'screen tests.' Fully clothed, she suggestively peeled and ate a banana in 'Couch,' stealing the film from the naked people around her. 9 Andy Warhol with Edie Sedgwick, lighting a cigarette on one of his film sets. Getty Images In the evenings, she accompanied Warhol to party after party. By that fall, she was a bona fide celebrity, her every move documented by the press, who named her 'Baby Jane.' Her fame boosted Warhol's own star power. His art started selling, and he was appearing on the gossip pages, too. After Holzer was deemed passé, Warhol found other 'muses.' Brigid Berlin, the 'rotund and always foulmouthed' daughter of the chairman of Hearst Corporation, who went by the name Brigid Polk, entertained Warhol with anecdotes about her dysfunctional childhood. 9 Noami Levine was one of Warhol's earliest muses, according to sources. Anthology Film Archives 9 Andy Warhol and superstars Candy Darling (left) and Ultra Violet are shown at a press conference n 1971. Bettmann Archive Susan Mary Hoffman, a k a Viva, 'the Lucille Ball of the underground,' injected 'wicked wit and savage intelligence' into his porniest flicks. Isabelle Collin Dufresne, an erudite French girl known by the moniker Ultra Violet, had previously bedded Salvador Dalí, Warhol's idol. Many of these 'superstars,' however, crashed and burned. Warhol's silver studio, dubbed The Factory, attracted all manner of druggies, misfits and hangers-on. They shot up amphetamines so they could stay up all night. They worked for little to no pay, screen-printing designs or debasing themselves as Warhol coolly captured them on film. 9 Edie Sedgwick frolics in the bath in one of Warhol's 'underground' movies. Bettmann Archive 9 Victor Hugo (left), Jane Holzer (rear), and Andy Warhol attended the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute Gala, New York, New York, December 6, 1982. Getty Images Ingrid von Scheven, or Ingrid Superstar — a New Jersey secretary who sometimes turned tricks for money — ended up addicted to heroin after her stint at The Factory. In 1986, at the age of 42, she went out to buy a newspaper and vanished. Most notorious was Edie Sedgwick, the incandescent, damaged heiress who electrified 1960s New York with her silver hair, gamine beauty, and reckless extravagance. Warhol captured her haunting vulnerability on camera, filming her putting on makeup and smoking a cigarette. Leamer doesn't seem to think much of these movies, but they are mesmerizing and moving. She broke Warhol's heart when she went off with Bob Dylan. (She died of a drug overdose in 1971.) 9 'Warhol's Muses: The Artists, Misfits, and Superstars Destroyed by the Factory Fame Machine' is written by Laurence Leamer. By the time the radical feminist Valerie Solanas tried to assassinate Warhol in 1968, Leamer would have us believe that the artist had it coming. And yet, not all of Warhol's 'muses' were victims. Nico — the German model and actress — had tried to launch a singing career for years before Warhol installed her as the frontwoman for noisy art-rockers The Velvet Underground. Her association with the band lasted only one album, but she went on to have an iconic solo career. 9 Author Laurence Leamer focuses on Warhol's women: the ever-evolving coterie of glamazons who accompanied him to parties, appeared in his films. Jacek Gancarz Mary Woronov — an art student when she fell in with the Factory crowd — kicked her drug habit and continued acting in indie films through the 1970s, '80s, and '90s; she's still a painter in Los Angeles. Ultra Violet credited both Dalí and Warhol for her subsequent art career, and exhibited work till her death in 2014. As for Baby Jane, she survived her 15 minutes of fame. She now lives in Palm Beach, surrounded by her collection of Basquiats, Harings, and, yes, Warhols.
