The Climate of New York
A Tribute to Anthology Film Archives

Anthology Film Archives (AFA), founded in 1969 by Jonas Mekas, Jerome Hill, P. Adams Sitney, Peter Kubelka and Stan Brakhage, has done more than any other institution in the U.S. to shape the perception of film as an autonomous, non-industrial art form. This museum of film (as a projected medium) quickly made a name for itself with a permanent film historical cycle entitled “Essential Cinema,” and in recent years, a young generation of curators has re-activated the unique “Anthology spirit”. AFA’s current preservation and programming work is full of passion and wit, anti-dogmatic, highly inventive, and socially conscious.

 

The Austrian Film Museum is pleased to welcome its New York colleagues to Vienna, where they will present eight programmes – the tip of an iceberg which can be enjoyed on a daily basis at AFA’s homestead in Lower Manhattan. The programmes will focus on new restorations and rediscoveries from the rich history of American independent film, with individual topics such as music, artists communities, New York Pulp and The Best (?) of Unessential Cinema.

 

“The Climate of New York” – to which AFA has contributed so much – is already named in the title of the earliest film on show here (Rudy Burkhardt, 1948). Along with Ed Bland's The Cry of Jazz (1953) and Lionel Rogosin's On the Bowery (1956) it is one of those recently restored icons of independent cinema which represent the birth of a New American Cinema, arising from the spirit of Beat and Bebop. AFA has also been invaluable for the following generations of American independent filmmakers – from experimentalists such as Harry Smith, Carolee Schneemann, or Paul Sharits to the subversive comedies of Robert Downey Sr. and the Kuchar Brothers and the still-to-be-discovered oeuvres of great U.S. filmmakers in the essayistic tradition, such as Danny Lyon and Tony Buba.