Films this week 10/23/2026 to 10/29/2026
by Gary Palmucci | 23rd October 2026 | Gary's Corner
We’ve had to reconfigure our usual New Plaza Cinema schedule this week, to accommodate an annual student event at Macaulay Honors College. We’ll be screening films on Thursday from 4 pm, on Friday from 2:15 pm and on Sunday from 10:45 am.
There will be five shows of NAZA to accommodate continuing demand – five of last weekend’s seven shows were sold out. Our bi-monthly NYC Short Film Showcase overseen by curator Michael Jacobsohn will be back on Friday evening, and that always plays to a packed house. With these films and the rest of our programs, we as always recommend advance online purchase, arriving at least 20 minutes before showtime, and having your tickets ready to display to our hard-working staff!
Also onscreen this week:
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Yaniv – the latest from Menemsha Films, purveyors of Bad Shabbos, Shttl and Farewell Mr Haffmann among many others; this NYC indie follows a high school drama teacher attempting to fund his annual musical by hustling an underground card game run by the Hasidic community.
Check out the raucous online trailer for this one – director Amron Carmi and his co-writer Ben Ducoff will join us for Q&As on Thursday evening and at Sunday’s matinee. They both visited us earlier this fall for screenings of Shttl and NAZA; I can personally attest that these will be spirited after-discussions; also joining us on Thursday will be co-star Catherine Curtin, also seen in Bad Shabbos as the uproarious prospective midwestern mother-in-law….
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Dalai Lama – My Religion is Kindness – this new documentary observes the 14th Dalai Lama through his long-term engagement with the citizens of The Netherlands, including members of the royal family and leading artists and intellectuals. This special screening will be introduced by legendary composer/performer Meredith Monk (herself the subject of a rhapsodic doc portrait screened here last year), followed by Q&A with director Babeth Mondini VanLoo, moderated by poet Anne Waldman.
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Do the Right Thing – three years ago Parisian high school teacher Salah Chouli brought a class of immersive-English students to our cinema for a screening of Double Indemnity – the French, after all, having officially coined the term ‘film noir.’ This time he requested a classic on ‘American race relations;’ Spike Lee’s summer 1989 film seemed a perfect fit – now, perhaps, harrowingly so what with recent events in this year’s students’ homeland.
We’ll welcome them on Friday afternoon – a VERY limited number of tickets will be available if you’d like to join the class, who’ll be occupying much of our seating capacity.
Coming up next weekend:
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encores of The History of Concrete and You Had to Be There.
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Hal Ashby’s 1975 classic Shampoo, starring and co-written by Warren Beatty and featuring Julie Christie, Goldie Hawn and Jack Warden, which happens to take place on the eve of another momentous American election night….
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plus, stay tuned for updates on our first screening of the epic new documentary, My Undesirable Friends, Part 2: Exile.