Cinema Village
22 E. 12th Street,
New York,
NY
10003
22 E. 12th Street,
New York,
NY
10003
29 people
favorited this theater
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Please update, theatre open October 5, 1964. Grand opening in photos
CC thank you for the update.
Due to recent water damage, Cinema Village is closed until further notice, and will not be one of the NYC theatres re-opening today. Owner quoted in this article on some other cinemas not re-opening. Click here
Please update, open as 3 screens on March 5, 1999.
An assortment of exterior and interior images of Cinema Village can be viewed here
Hello –
to Mike(saps) thanks for the info. on the photo pages for this theater is the ad from when the film opened and was surprised to see it was rated R. I was never aware it had been officially rated. I remember some the sex scenes being quite graphic so I’m surprised it didn’t get an X rating at the time.
It’s available for viewing on Amazon Prime…
Hello-
I rather enjoyed A Very Natural Thing which opened here the summer of 1974. its one of the top gay themed films ever in my opinion. oddly I don’t think its ever been issued on home video, vhs or dvd let alone Blu-ray.
I wonder if it meets the building code.
Hello-
to Al A. believe me its the smallest movie theater
men’s room I’ve ever seen. for instance they have
only 1 stall. again I can’t believe it meets the
NYC Building Code.
I don’t think I have ever been in their men’s room.
Hello-
thanks for your post. but what do you think' of my comment about the fact the CV’s men’s room has got to be the smallest of any movie theater in the city. I can’t believe it meets the NYC building code.
In 1991-1992, this briefly became known as ‘Cinema 12th street’ as the ‘Cinema Village’ name moved to the Bijou. By 1993 they were know as the ‘Cinema Village’ and the ‘Cinema Village on 3rd Avenue’, respectively.
Hello-
what thehorror13’s post fails to mention is the uncomfortably small size of the men’s room. i am surprised they didn’t expand it during the 2000 tri-plexing. i can’t believe it meets the NYC Building Code standards.
Built 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.
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.
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.
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 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).
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.
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.
Auditoriums
Screen #1 Capacity: 155 seats Projection: DCP, QuickTime, Blue-ray, 35mm,16mm Sound: Dolby Digital
Screen #2 Capacity: 63 seats Projection: DCP, QuickTime, Blue-ray, 35mm Sound: Dolby Digital
Screen #3 Capacity: 69 seats Projection: DCP, QuickTime, Blue-ray Sound: Dolby Digital Accessibility
Theater 1 is wheelchair accessible.
Listening Devices Listening devices may be provided upon request
i know. Once in awhile this theater shows crappy movies….
This theater was featured in a story on “Last week Tonight” due to the fact that this theater was the only one in the NYC area to show the Fifa funded United Passions which bombed at the box office due to the scandal surrounding the soccer federation and it’s outgoing leader Sepp Blatter.
Built 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.
Hello-
I always thought the Cinema Village which has been a beacon for film goers for at 50? years was built from the ground up as a movie theater. but I read it was actually built within the gutted skeletal structure of an 1890s firehouse. how much of the firehouse actually exists?
This theater was featured in an episode of Mad About You
After DEEP THROAT opened in 1972 the market changed drastically for art houses and direction the theatre operator took was more distinct between those who programmed European art films and those who programmed sexploitation or hard core and advertised it as art product.
Hello- as always i thank my fellow posters for replying to my inquiries. so Al A. if i understand you reply correctly the 55th St. Playhouse went from being a top art house to a gay porn house in short order? i suppose anything is possible in the big wide world of Manhattan real estate even the fall of 1971. its just i can’t picture the theater going from being a top art house than say two or weeks later becoming the top hard-core gay porn house in Manhattan. i naturally assumed there had to have been a significant closed up period.
Bigjoe, the SOBO only operated in 1971 and I believe some of the shows were live/film combo nude performance art pieces that would not be considered porn today.
The 55th St Playhouse descent into hard core porn was gradual but there was no closing period. After “THE BOYS IN THE SAND” there was a fine line between gay art films and gay sex films.
Hello Again To Ed S.– i figured considering the building’s locale the original firehouse would have
been build around 1890. so i wasn’t to far off.
two new notes. 1.i guess my memory is only 99% perfect. this theater’s sister theater on 3rd Ave. was for many years the Bijou one of the leading gay porn houses in the city. i was quite familar with the Bijou. yet a stone’s throw away on 11th St. the Evergreen for a few years was known as the Sobo a leading gay porn house. now i was in college during the period the Evergreen operated as the Sobo and was frequently in the Union Square Easy Village area yet never remember the Evergreen as the Sobo. even if it was a leading gay porn house it had to have been so
for a short period. plus i’m guessing there was no marquee to speak of which could be why i didn’t take note of its gay porn period.
2.a question about the 55th St. Playhouse i ask you here since that theater’s page hasn’t been updated in a while. the theater opened in the early 30s and for almost 40 years was a leading venue for foreign and independent films. now it started its almost 20 year career as one of Manhattan’s top gay porn houses when Wakefield Poole’s BOYS IN THE SAND opened i believe the first week of Dec. 1971 and therein lies my question. i doubt one week it was a top art house for foreign and independent film than the next week it switches to gay porn. therefore i’m guessing it must have been vacant, un-used whichever the correct term is for a certain period of time before it became a top gay porn house. am i
correct?
Good question. A cursory review of NYC records doesn’t reveal much. The oldest viewable document online is a temporary C of O issued in October of 1964, not too long after the building was converted into a cinema. A list of prior actions on the property show a variety of building notices that reach all the way back to some “unsafe building” notices in 1905 and 1909. There’s another notice dated in 1915 and then activity picks up once again in the late 1920’s and throughout the following decades. But nothing prior to the 1964 C of O’s is viewable, so its impossible to know what those documents might reveal.
Assuming the comments near the “top” of this listing are correct that the cinema was previously a turn-of-the-century firehouse, it’s interesting that it would have been labeled as unsafe as early as 1905! Of course, one must keep in mind that the NYC DOB records from that period are very sketchy, and it is not uncommon to find documents filed under the wrong property binder.