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History Build in 1963 in the shell of a turn of the century fire station, Cinema
Village is the oldest continuously operated cinema in Greenwich Village
and one of the oldest continuously operated art cinemas in the city.
Undermined by home video, buy outs by major circuits and real estate development, commercial repertory cinema virtually disappeared in the city by the late 1980's. Cinema Village only escaped closing and survived with a switch to limited engagements of highly alternative first run programming.
In 2000 our patron's support was rewarded with a long deferred renovation and expansion of screens. When we reopened, we had transformed ourselves into a thoroughly modern three screen facility with state of the presentation. Our additional screens allow an even more diverse programming mix and permit us to extend runs of special films to extraordinary lengths (Mulholland Drive: 18 weeks; Yi Yi: 21 weeks; The Piano Teacher: 28 weeks).
Nearing its fourth decade, Cinema Village is proud of its longevity and thankful to have survived the pitfalls that have taken down so many other independent cinemas. Notwithstanding our resourcefulness, our ability to survive is testimony entirely to the New York City audience. We could probably only exist where we are: in the midst of most diverse, cosmopolitan and cine-aware of cities.
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Auditoriums Screen #1 Screen #2 Screen #3 |
Theater RentalThe Cinema Village is available for private screenings, film festivals, corporate meetings or special events etc. Arrangements can be made by contacting us by Email
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Visit our other venues
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Through most of it's first three decades of life Cinema Village was
one of Manhattan's several repertory cinemas. Showcasing a canon of
vintage classics, cult and contemporary critical favorites on double
bills that would usually change three times a week, this once essential
programming format has now largely died out in commercial cinemas in
the city and around the country. Before the video revolution, short
of a private film collection, going to a repertory cinema was virtually
the only way to see many films after their initial theatrical run.
Rep houses like Cinema Village, the recently re-opened Thalia and the
now long closed Bleeker Street, Carnegie Hall, 8th Street Playhouse
and Regency were the autodidacts' film school and favorite haunts of
cineastes for decades.
This resulted in an eclectic mix of slip through-the-cracks American
indie sleepers (Red Rock West), the occasional revival (In the Realm
of the Senses, Two Lane Blacktop, The Leopard), documentaries (Theremin,
Waco: Rules of Engagement, Kurt & Courtney), festivals, animation
compilations, Japanese cult cinema (Tokyo Decadence, Angel Dust, Ghost
in the Shell) and heavy doses of Hong Kong cinema.
In the early nineties before Jackie Chan, John Woo, Michele Yeoh and
their stunt coordinators went Hollywood, Cinema Village became known,
through its annual festivals and other bookings, as the place to see
the amazing Hong Kong films of what would soon to acknowledged as a
filmmaking golden age. For filmgoers who never ventured to Chinatown
or had only seen blurry bootleg videos, these films were a revelation
and they would soon have a profound influence on international filmmaking
styles. During this period we also had the privilege of playing host
to personal appearances by talents such as Michele Yeoh, Chow Yun Fat,
Wong Kar Wai and Peter Chan.
In 2001 we quietly introduced digital video projection capabilities
to accommodate the increasing reliance on digital video by independent
productions. This now gives us the potential to play deserving features
without the burden to distributors or filmmakers of an expensive conversion
to celluloid. 
