Theater Profile

This repertory movie house specializes in rare, forgotten, hard-to-categorize, and sometimes hard-to-understand films. Housed in the former Second Avenue Courthouse, Anthology Film Archives has two screening rooms: the intimate, 72-seat Maya Deren (beware the less-than-comfortable seats), and the majestic, 187-seat Courthouse Theater. Cineastes trust AFA for high-quality prints, avant-garde narratives, rarely-seen director’s cuts, and intriguing documentaries from auteurs like Hollis Frampton, Stan Brakhage, and Jean Vigo. The theater also houses a print preservation center, and while the 20,000 films therein aren’t available for check out, the reference library—containing the world’s largest collection of reference materials on experimental film—is worth a rainy day’s visit. — Charles Curtis

Special Offerings

Tickets are discounted for students, seniors with ID, and members of the Archives.