Films this week 10/30/2026 to 11/5/2026
by Gary Palmucci | 30th October 2026 | Gary's Corner
New Plaza Cinema returns to its regular schedule this weekend, with one exception : Sunday Nov 1 – Marathon Day. Regular patrons may recall that last year we did just two screenings, starting at 5 pm; NYPD officers staffing our W 67 St block near the marathon finish line were very helpful directing ticket holders to the cinema.
The same scenario will be in effect this year, with one difference-our two shows will be at the beginning of the day: at 1215 pm, Warren Beatty, Julie Christie and Goldie Hawn in Hal Ashby’s 1975 classic Shampoo, screenplay by Beatty and Robert Towne, which coincidentally happens to be set on the eve of another consequential national election, in 1968. My colleagues, film historian Dan Cahill and assistant film programmer Abbe Harris will be on hand both before and after the screening to discuss.
At 330 pm there’ll be a screening of NAZA. As always – and especially this Sunday – we urge advance, online ticket purchase and arrival at the cinema with tickets handy, at least 20 minutes in advance. No tickets will be available for sale that afternoon on our premises.
There’ll be additional screenings of NAZA on Friday and Saturday, as well as encores of some requested titles: The Invite, You Had to Be There and The History of Concrete.
Two other films will feature filmmaker Q&As – the raucous Orthodox card.game comedy Yaniv, with its ebullient writer-director duo of Amnon Carmi and Ben Ducoff; and a newcomer to this weekend’s lineup, The Scout, fresh from its droll downtown premiere, in which an NYC film location scout, assigned to photograph the homes of strangers for a TV pilot, has to juggle stepping into their private lives with the demands of her producer-employers.
Writer-director Paula Gonzalez-Nasser and producer Ryan Brown will join us after Saturday’s matinee.
And, coming up next weekend:
My Undesirable Friends- Part 2: Exile – our ‘full house’ who attended Part One of this epic documentary last winter has not, I suspect, forgotten the chronicle of a courageous band of Russian journalists who ultimately had to flee their country after unsparingly reporting on the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Part Two, in a pair of three-hour episodes, tells us what happened after their ‘diaspora;’ they scattered to various locales to find safety and work, including here in NYC, in an inspiring saga of pungent humor, courage and survival. The first installment, screening on Saturday Nov 7 at 12 Noon, will feature a Q&A with director Julia Loktev; the second one will screen on Sunday Nov 8 at 530 pm. Check our website next week for possible special guests. Separate admission tickets will be sold for each of the two parts.
Paris Was a Woman – this 1996 documentary on the many writers, artists and other unforgettable ladies who populated Paris in the 1920s was an art house hit on its original release. It has had a recent digital restoration, which will be presented on Sunday Nov 8 at 315 pm by director Greta Schiller and producer Andrea Weiss, longtime friends of New Plaza Cinema.
Filipinana – another surprising downtown art house (and Sundance) revelation, this Filipino drama of dark secrets and injustice is representing that nation in this year’s Academy Awards competition for Best International Feature. Director Rafael Manuel will host a special screening on Friday Nov 6 at 6 pm.