Coming Soon
FRIDAY, MARCH 28th, 5:30 pm
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947)
1h 44m | NR
No composer brought more innovation to film music than Bernard Herrmann (1911-1975). From his first movie, 1941’s Citizen Kane, to his last, 1976’s Taxi Driver, the Oscar winner was a master at evoking psychology and dramatic tension through music. Today he is best known for his work with Welles, Scorsese and Hitchcock. But among Herrmann’s favorites of his scores were two cinematic gems that showcase his romanticism, and his sensitivity in depicting outsiders.
Join New Plaza Cinema, as award-winning Herrmann biographer Steven C. Smith introduces those two films: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), starring Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison, and On Dangerous Ground (1951), starring Robert Ryan and Ida Lupino. The films will be preceded by a visual presentation on Herrmann that includes rare video and audio clips.
In The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Gene Tierney plays a young widow in Edwardian England who forms a surprising connection with the ghost of a sea captain, her home’s former occupant (Rex Harrison). Directed by Joseph Mankiewicz and written by Philip Dunne, the film’s delicate blend of romance, humor and drama is enhanced by Herrmann’s passionate score, his favorite of his film works.
Lyricism and grit are deftly balanced in director Nicholas Ray’s noir classic On Dangerous Ground (1951). Robert Ryan plays a violent city cop, on the edge of breakdown, who finds a chance for redemption as he investigates a murder in a small town. There, he meets a blind woman (Ida Lupino) who may hold the key to the missing killer. Herrmann’s climactic music, “The Death Hunt,” was his single favorite piece among his film scores.
Steven C. Smith is a four-time Emmy nominated producer and author who has created over 200 documentaries. A former supervising producer of the TV series A&E Biography and AMC Backstory, his project collaborators include Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Julie Andrews, Sidney Poitier, John Williams, and Stephen Sondheim.
He is the author of A Heart at Fire’s Center: The Life and Music of Bernard Herrmann, and Music by Max Steiner: The Epic Life of Hollywood’s Most Influential Composer. Both books received the ASCAP Foundation Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award for excellence. In October 2025, Oxford University Press will publish his third book, Hitchcock & Herrmann: The Friendship and Film Scores that Changed Cinema.
Friday, March 28th, 8:00pm
Two Year anniversary of short films by New York filmmakers
1h 40m | NR
I, puppet, by Pan Hsuan-Yu: The street is my stage! Taiwanese puppeteer Tsai Yi Wei’s experiential Potehi (Taiwanese glove puppetry) improvisation in NYC’s landscapes.
Blue, by John Maslowski: A jogger in Central Park makes a new friend.
November With Wawel, by Coren Helene-Gitomer and Kathryn Helene: A Polish-American woman living in New York City takes care of her neighbor’s enigmatic bird for the month of November.
The Harlem Tailor, by Tina Trinh: Sewing classes — and a stranger’s kindness — save a New York man’s life.
The Face Of The State, by The Media Team of the New York State Poor People’s
Campaign: A film cantata portraying the plight, fight and insight of poor New Yorkers.
Leylak, written by Mustafa Kaymak and directed by Scott Aharoni and Dennis Latos: A Turkish gravedigger is unable to face a shattering truth, and risks losing the dearest connection left in his life.
Stephen Harmon, by Christopher Ming Ryan: He has a talent for not allowing bygones be bygone.
Ayşegül, on Tuesdays by Amy Omar: Deceived by the promise of happiness and fulfillment in America, a Turkish immigrant housewife engages in a one-sided telephone conversation with a mysterious Turkish man, as she attempts to rediscover her identity.
My Mom Gussie Zinner Berger, by Eileen Roth Flink: An 80-year-old artist reflects on memories of childhood, her love of family, and her lifelong effort to convey through art the ineffable beauty she sees all around her.
Alphabet City, by Tom Block: Two little girls, a few hypodermic needles and a couple overmatched parents: NY City’s East Village will never be the same.
I- DO, Episode three by Nathalie Schmid: I DO is a comedy about Zoe, a French woman immigrating in Brooklyn, who’s desperately trying to find a husband so she can get a visa and work as a Cabaret Singer in New York. Each episode explores a new screwball attempt of her trying to get married to an American citizen, as we explore the diversity of Brooklyn, through her naïve battle against the US immigration Process.
Saturday, MARCH 29th, 2:45 pm
On Dangerous Ground
1h 22m | NR
No composer brought more innovation to film music than Bernard Herrmann (1911-1975). From his first movie, 1941’s Citizen Kane, to his last, 1976’s Taxi Driver, the Oscar winner was a master at evoking psychology and dramatic tension through music. Today he is best known for his work with Welles, Scorsese and Hitchcock. But among Herrmann’s favorites of his scores were two cinematic gems that showcase his romanticism, and his sensitivity in depicting outsiders.
Join New Plaza Cinema, as award-winning Herrmann biographer Steven C. Smith introduces those two films: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), starring Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison, and On Dangerous Ground (1951), starring Robert Ryan and Ida Lupino. The films will be preceded by a visual presentation on Herrmann that includes rare video and audio clips.
In The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Gene Tierney plays a young widow in Edwardian England who forms a surprising connection with the ghost of a sea captain, her home’s former occupant (Rex Harrison). Directed by Joseph Mankiewicz and written by Philip Dunne, the film’s delicate blend of romance, humor and drama is enhanced by Herrmann’s passionate score, his favorite of his film works.
Lyricism and grit are deftly balanced in director Nicholas Ray’s noir classic On Dangerous Ground (1951). Robert Ryan plays a violent city cop, on the edge of breakdown, who finds a chance for redemption as he investigates a murder in a small town. There, he meets a blind woman (Ida Lupino) who may hold the key to the missing killer. Herrmann’s climactic music, “The Death Hunt,” was his single favorite piece among his film scores.
Steven C. Smith is a four-time Emmy nominated producer and author who has created over 200 documentaries. A former supervising producer of the TV series A&E Biography and AMC Backstory, his project collaborators include Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Julie Andrews, Sidney Poitier, John Williams, and Stephen Sondheim.
He is the author of A Heart at Fire’s Center: The Life and Music of Bernard Herrmann, and Music by Max Steiner: The Epic Life of Hollywood’s Most Influential Composer. Both books received the ASCAP Foundation Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award for excellence. In October 2025, Oxford University Press will publish his third book, Hitchcock & Herrmann: The Friendship and Film Scores that Changed Cinema.
saturday, March 29th, 12:15pm
sunday, March 30th, 2:30pm
Janis Ian: Breaking Silence
1h 54m | NR
Janis Ian: Breaking Silence chronicles the life, music, and times of maverick singer-songwriter Janis Ian, beginning with her teen years as a precocious member of the vibrant Greenwich Village folk scene, jamming with such legends as Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, to her megahit “At Seventeen,” a masterful take on adolescent pain and alienation, which cemented her place as a voice for outsiders everywhere. Throughout her life, Ian overcame significant obstacles–embezzlement, record industry misogyny, and heartbreak–to find love and produce an indelible body of searingly honest songs that earned her a devoted following and critical acclaim.
Q&A with Janis Ian and Director Varda Bar-Kar
Friday, April 4th, 6:00 PM
MLK/FBI (2021)
1h 44m | NR
Join us at 6:00 pm on Friday, April 4th for this month’s Revolutionary Reels selection, MLK/FBI, presented in partnership with The Gathering For Justice. Based on newly declassified files, Sam Pollard’s resonant film, MLK/FBI, explores the US government’s surveillance and harassment of Martin Luther King, Jr.
The Gathering for Justice (The Gathering) is a social justice organization founded in 2005, by the late great activist and entertainer Harry Belafonte. The Gathering utilizes Kingian nonviolence as a social application for change and civic engagement.
Revolutionary Reels is a film series created by The Gathering for Justice, curating films at the intersection of art and social justice. It is designed to spark conversation and action around these issues.
We’re excited that Rev. Mark Thompson, radio host, minister and Civil Rights activist and organizer, will be leading the post-screening Q&A of MLK/FBI.
saturday, april 5th, 5:00pm
sunday, april 6th, 2:30pm
The Cornelia Street Café’ in Exile (2025)
1h 20m | NR
Join us for the premier of The Cornelia Street Café in Exile a documentary by Michael Jacobsohn.
The Cornelia Street Café in Exile is a heartfelt tribute to the legendary Cornelia Street Café and its 41-year legacy as an artistic haven in Greenwich Village.
The Cornelia Street Café was more than a restaurant; it was a cultural landmark that nurtured countless artists, writers, and performers. From its humble beginnings in 1977 as a one-room café with a toaster oven, founder Robin Hirsch turned it into a beacon for creativity, hosting luminaries like Eve Ensler (The Vagina Monologues), Suzanne Vega, David Amram, Arturo O’Farrill, and Nobel Laureate Roald Hoffmann. The café became synonymous with artistic innovation and community until its tragic closure in 2018 due to rising rents.
Q&A following the screening with Robin Hirsch and Michael Jacobsohn. Sharing Memories of The Cornelia Street Cafe is encouraged.
Sunday, April 12th, 4:45 pm
Make Me Famous
1h 33m | NR
A madcap romp through the 1980s NYC art-scene amid the colorful career of painter Edward Brezinski, hell-bent on making it. What begins as an investigation into Brezinski’s legacy and mysterious disappearance becomes a sharp, witty portrait of the NYC 1980s downtown art scene resulting in an irresistible snapshot of an unknown artist that captures the spirit of an iconic era. Make Me Famous is an insider’s look at the art world’s attitude toward success and failure, fame and fortune, notoriety and erasure.
Filmmaker Q&A with Director Brian Vincent and Producer Heather Spore following the screening.
Rated 100% on Rotten Tomatoes
“Everyone See This Movie” ARTFORUM
“A touching look at that halcyon period in new York history, before the last shabby corners of Manhattan were gentrified beyond all recognition.” The Guardian
Saturday, April 26th, 2:00 pm
Paris Blues
1h 38m | NR
Despite being far from home, American jazz musicians Ram Bowen (Paul Newman) and Eddie Cook (Sidney Poitier) are content living and working in Paris. Ram knows it’s the best place for him to develop his musical reputation, and Eddie is far away from the racism that once greeted him on a regular basis. But after meeting and falling in love with American tourists Lillian (Joanne Woodward) and Connie (Diahann Carroll), the pair must decide whether their artistic integrity is worth abandoning.
Talk Back/Q&A:
Join us for a contextualizing discussion before the screening of the movie Paris Blues. Apart from the obvious love story at the center of the film, Paris Blues touches on numerous topics that remain relevant today. We’ll explore the various ways in which it succeeds or fails in representing jazz music and musicians, the complexity of the post-WWll black artistic experience in both the US and Europe, some of the important ways the movie varies from the original novel, and what those variations suggest. Expect a freewheeling discussion that will veer into a range of ancillary topics.
We will also open an after talk for those who are interested in expanding on some of the ideas discussed before the film and for those who had not viewed it previously.
Guests:
Melissa Newman is a vocalist, teacher, writer and artist who works primarily in porcelain and stoneware. She has shown work in galleries around the northeast. She still performs frequently with her jazz trio and quartet. Melissa spent almost 20 years volunteering and working with the inspiring women at Bedford Hills correctional facility, teaching art there and in other communities. She recently designed and co-edited and designed a coffee table book about her parents, Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman, Head Over Heels, a Love Affair in Words and Pictures published by Little Brown
Instagram: melissamudandmusic
Website: melartstudio
Youtube: Melissa Newman Music
Wayne Winborne is executive director of the Institute of Jazz Studies (IJS) at Rutgers
University-Newark, the largest and most comprehensive archive and library of jazz and jazz-
related materials in the world.
Winborne is also an assistant professor in the Arts, Culture, and Media department and is a
frequent presenter on jazz, art and culture, democracy, civic engagement, racial reckoning, non-
profit management, and race and intergroup relations. He has numerous publications and is
editor of a three- book series: Intergroup Relations in the United States: Research Perspectives;
Programs & Organizations; and Seven Promising Practices.
He is a consultant to corporate, small business, and non-profit clients on strategic planning, fund
development, DEI, multicultural marketing, and dialogue facilitation. Winborne has produced
several recordings for the MaxJazz, HighNote, Satchmo, and Savant labels. He has also written
and produced short documentaries and has won a Cine Golden Eagle award and two Telly
awards for Insider Game and Insider Game 2, which focused on Hispanic Americans in
corporate board rooms. The short documentary Stepping Up examined caregiving among jazz
musicians was an official selection of DOCNYC 2016, the nation’s largest documentary film
festival.
He has been honored by the Feminist Press, the Brooklyn Club of the National Association of
Negro Business and Professional Women’s Clubs, Inc., the Asian American Federation of NY,
by FraserNet with its Corporate Professional of the Year award, and by the National Council for
Research on Women.
Winborne holds degrees from Stanford and New York University.
Sunday, April 27th, 2:00 PM
Bananas/Did You Know My Husband?
2h 32m | NR
Talk Back/Q&A with Louise Lasser
Bananas:
In his second feature as writer/director, Woody Allen stars as Fielding Melish, a hapless product-testing New Yorker desperately attempting to impress a young and attractive social activist named Nancy (Louise Lasser). When Melish travels to the turbulent country of San Marcos, he falls in with resistance fighters and, before long, becomes drafted as their leader. While Melish’s position of authority wins Nancy over, he has to deal with the many burdens of being a revolutionary leader.
Did You Know My Husband?
Two women (Louise Lasser and Carole Shelley) find themselves together after they have just finished a Thanksgiving dinner. It seems as if they have met before. But where and how is only revealed at the end, as both women, caught in an emotional labyrinth, try to find their way out. Heartfelt drama and suspense build throughout, highlighted by a haunting, original score (Billy Goldenberg). Written by Susan Charlotte and directed by Antony Marsellis, this film was originally broadcast on PBS.
Sunday, April 27th, 5:00 PM & 7:10 pm
Four Winters
1h 30m | NR
Q&A with Director Julia Mintz
Torn from their families by the ravages of Hitler’s armies, men and women, many barely out of their teens, escaped into the forests, banding together in partisan brigades; engaging in treacherous acts of sabotage, blowing up trains, burning electric stations and attacking enemy headquarters. Against extraordinary odds, over 25,000 Jewish partisans courageously fought back against the Nazis and their collaborators from deep with the forest of WWII’s Belarus, Ukraine and Eastern Europe, drawing parallels to the current resistance in Ukraine. The last surviving partisans, in their 80s and 90s, relive their journey in Four Winters, a story of enduring hope, grit and humanity.
Nicolas Rapold in his New York Times review said: “The men and women in this harrowing but spirited film took up arms in the forests of Eastern Europe to fight Nazis and their collaborators, living to tell tales that could be fodder for movie plots.” Tablet Magazine called it “A Must-See Holocaust Documentary (No, Really),” and Ms. Magazine’s Carrie Baker wrote: “from empathy to awe…poignant, shocking, deeply reflective and sometimes even funny.”
Sunday, May 4th, 5:45 PM
Enough Said (2013)
1h 33m | PG-13
Wryly charming, impeccably acted, and ultimately quite bittersweet, Enough Said is a grown-up movie in the best possible way.
Q&A and book signing following the screening with Jason Bailey, film critic and historian whose essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Bloomberg, Vulture, Rolling Stone, The Playlist, Slate, and more. Jason is a member of the New York Film Critics Circle and the Critics Choice Association, the editor-in-chief of Crooked Marquee, and co-host of the podcasts “A Very Good Year,” “Fun City Cinema,” and his latest, “Guide For The Film Fanatic,” all of which are essential listening for cinephiles.
He’s also written six books, including “Fun City Cinema: New York City and the Movies That Made It,” “Richard Pryor: American Id,” “Pulp Fiction: The Complete Story of Quentin Tarantino’s Masterpiece,” and his latest, “Gandolfini.”
A deeply reported, perceptive, and celebratory biography of beloved actor James Gandolfini from a prominent critic and film historian.
More than a decade after his sudden passing, James Gandolfini still exerts a powerful pull on television and film enthusiasts around the world. His charismatic portrayal of complex, flawed, but always human men illuminated the contradictions in all of us, as well as our potential for grace, and the power of love and family. Based on extensive research and original reporting, including interviews with friends and collaborators, Gandolfini is a detailed and nuanced appraisal of an enduring artist.
