At 11:30 tonight Cinema Nolita will screen Milos Forman's 1971 comedy Taking Off, the Czech wildman's first American feature, in its semi-regular screening series, as the store's future hangs in doubt. Its a crowded marketplace for specialty film this weekend in Manhattan (Sophie Barthes' pedigreed Cold Souls, Louie Psihoyos' astoundingly financed and all too relevant The Cove, Anthology Film Archives' sure to please, William Lustig curated "Buried Treasures" of 70s B cinema, and Andrew Bujalski's pleasing mumbler Beeswax), but I doubt any of the venues playing the films I just mentioned craves your support as much as the ailing video store at the northern end of Little Italy will late tonight.

Rarely have the winds of economic and technological change that threaten to sweep what remains of lower Manhattan Film Culture away seemed more insurmountable then one recent afternoon when I received notice from our friends at Cinema Nolita that the rumored closing of the store was in fact inevitable unless some new sources of revenue arose. With Kim's Video's demise, along with the shuttering of Two Boot's Pioneer Theatre and recently its adjacent video store, Nolita had remained perhaps the sole auteur cinema minded video store in the city. As the recession nears its second year, independent video stores seem to have had a worse fate than equally endangered independent book and record stores, at least thus far. The future doesn't appear to be on their side as netflix and VOD gobble up their market share.

There is hope however. A pair of fundraisers have been scheduled in hopes of raising enough money (approximately $8,000) in order to keep Cinema Nolita open, perhaps as a reorganized, non profit institution of some kind. Abel Ferrara will be on hand to present a pair of soon to be announced benefit screenings at Anthology Film Archives on the evenings of August 15th and 16th (his memorable appearance at Anthology last summer at a screening of Ms. 45 is still fresh in memory) and Indie rock sensation The Virgins have agreed to play a benefit show at Chinatown's Santos Party House later this month. Perhaps the most direct way to support the cause is to trot down to 178 Mulberry Street and rent one of the nearly 11,000 titles, many of which are extremely rare, that would go out of circulation should Cinema Nolita go under.

# posted by Brandon Harris @ 8/08/2009 03:07:00 PM

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