really is a creature of recursion. Memories never remain too far behind, or rather, too far ahead, before they’re back again wearing a familiar form. One of the city’s finest resurrections in recent memory is moviegoing in
Park Theater had a reputation for its controversial programming, with local churches showing up to picket and protest what they considered unsuitable films.
-rival Rockaways’ Playland that formerly occupied this area of coastal Queens, it’s a stretch of the imagination to conjure up the
. Their near-absence on the peninsula today obscures the foreign era they once thrived in, a few golden decades that spanned from the 1920s to ‘50s earmarked by 25-cent tickets to double features, smoking-friendly cinemas, and faux tuxedoed attendants. A combination of factors ranging from demographic shifts following the Second World War to devastating building fires to general neighborhood decline led to the gradual
. The last gasp came when Jerry Lewis Cinema closed its doors in 1996, and the Rockaways went without a commercial indoor theater for the next 25 years. The dry spell was finally broken in 2021 by the nonprofit
organization, when it led the effort of building Arverne Cinema, now the only one of its kind. Ever since the festival itself started nine years ago—popping up screens in venues from Fort Tilden to Jacob Riis Park—hope for the return of moviegoing as a neighborhood pastime has abounded, as one might expect following any reported sighting post-extinction.
Arverne Cinema of the present-day is located about an eight-minute walk away from the Beach 67 station.
Sursă: https://www.cntraveler.com/story/what-rockaway-film-festival-can-teach-us-about-going-to-the-movies