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Anthology Film Archives The home of experimental cinema in NYC. Anthology is a center for the exhibition, preservation, and study of independent and artist-made film and video.

Anthology Film Archives is an international center for the preservation, study, and exhibition of film and video, with a particular focus on independent, experimental, and avant-garde cinema. Founded in 1969 by Jonas Mekas, Jerome Hill, P. Adams Sitney, Peter Kubelka, and Stan Brakhage, Anthology in its original conception was a showcase for the Essential Cinema Repertory collection. An ambitious attempt to define the art of cinema by means of a selection of films which would screen continuously, the Essential Cinema collection was intended to encourage the study of the medium’s masterworks as works of art rather than disposable entertainment, making Anthology the first museum devoted to film as an art form. The project was never completed, but even in its unfinished state it represented an uncompromising critical overview of cinema’s history, and remains a crucial part of Anthology’s exhibition program. In the decades since its founding, Anthology has grown far beyond its original concept to encompass film preservation; the formation of a reference library containing the world’s largest collection of books, periodicals, stills, and other paper materials related to avant-garde cinema; and a remarkably innovative and eclectic film exhibition program. Anthology screens more than 900 programs annually, preserves an average of 25 films per year (with 800 works preserved to date), publishes books and DVDs, and hosts numerous scholars and researchers. Fueled by the conviction that the index of a culture’s health and vibrancy lies largely in its margins, in those works of art that are created outside the commercial mainstream, Anthology strives to advance the cause and protect the heritage of a kind of cinema that is in particular danger of being lost, overlooked, or ignored

ROSALYN DREXLER: WHO DOES SHE THINK SHE IS?October 22 at 7:00Rosalyn Drexler (1926-2025) was a category-defying creative...
10/13/2026

ROSALYN DREXLER: WHO DOES SHE THINK SHE IS?
October 22 at 7:00

Rosalyn Drexler (1926-2025) was a category-defying creative force. Over the course of her multidecade career, she worked as a painter (creating some of the first examples of Pop art), a novelist, an Obie-award-winning playwright, a film critic, an occasional nightclub singer, and briefly, a professional wrestler.

The documentary WHO DOES SHE THINK SHE IS? (1975) provides a window into Drexler’s extraordinary creative universe. Set against the backdrop of the lost artistic demimonde of 20th-century New York, the film – directed by Patricia Lewis Jaffe and Gaby Rodgers – shows the artist rehearsing her madcap cabaret performances, cooking for her family in her art-strewn Manhattan apartment, and speaking candidly about her art, writing, and life. As Newsweek critic Jack Kroll remarks in the film, “[Drexler’s] essential insight is that people and things are completely insane, and she speaks from inside the whale.”

The documentary will be accompanied by never-before-seen home movies shot by Drexler and her husband Sherman in the 1940-50s, as well as a panel discussion. The screening coincides with a major exhibition of her work from the 1960s at Garth Greenan Gallery at 25 Greene Street; for more info about the exhibition visit: https://www.garthgreenan.com/

Patricia Lewis Jaffe & Gaby Rodgers
WHO DOES SHE THINK SHE IS?
1975, 60 min, 16mm. Print courtesy of Garth Greenan Gallery.

SEXUAL CINÉMA VÉRITÉ: THE MULTI-MEDIA RESOURCE CENTER IN CONTEXTOctober 16-20In 1968, a coalition of s*x-positive, polit...
10/05/2026

SEXUAL CINÉMA VÉRITÉ: THE MULTI-MEDIA RESOURCE CENTER IN CONTEXT
October 16-20

In 1968, a coalition of s*x-positive, politically progressive San Francisco religious leaders and homophile activists founded the National S*x Forum (NSF). Led by the Methodist Reverend Dr. Ted McIlvenna, the NSF began producing films the following year, and was soon supplemented by a distribution arm called the Multi-Media Resource Center (MMRC). The MMRC distributed both NSF films – most of them directed by McIlvenna’s friend and fellow minister Laird Sutton – and erotic avant-garde cinema by a host of filmmakers from the Bay Area and beyond, among them James Broughton, Gunvor Nelson, Barbara Hammer, Jerry Abrams, Jan Oxenberg, and Honey Lee Cottrell.

The MMRC was radical not only in its ethos of s*xual freedom and openness as compatible with Christian doctrine, but also in its framing of experimental film as a form of s*x education. While some films produced by the NSF consist primarily of structured group conversations on topics of s*x and s*xuality, many depict real couples and friends engaging in unsimulated and unscripted s*x. Termed “pattern films” or “s*xual cinéma vérité,” they reflect McIlvenna’s belief that “almost all s*x problems have been directly related to either a lack of information or else a religiously reinforced s*x-negative attitude.”

The films of the MMRC concern various aspects of human s*xuality and s*x education. Many address q***r s*xuality, women’s s*xual autonomy and pleasure, the s*x lives of people with physical disabilities, and the intersection of s*xuality and aging. Produced in San Francisco beginning in the late 1960s, in the midst of the free love, women’s liberation, gay liberation, and disability rights movements, these films shed light on the historical context from which they emerged. They also played a key role in the development and composition of S*xual Attitude Reassessment, or SAR, a technique originated by McIlvenna and his collaborators that involved multi-day intensive sessions of s*xually explicit motion picture and slide film and accompanying discussion. Crucial to the practice of humanistic s*xology embodied by McIlvenna’s later venture, the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human S*xuality, SAR is used to this day – albeit in a modified form – in the training and certification of s*x educators and therapists.

Despite its contacts with legendary avant-garde filmmakers like Broughton and Hammer, and its long afterlife in the form of McIlvenna’s Institute (which only ceased operations in the mid-2010s, shortly before his death), the MMRC is little-known today. This series will introduce a modern audience to a host of works that have never (or very rarely) been shown theatrically. In the following programs, films that were distributed by the MMRC are paired with those that could have been: erotic avant-garde, educational, and agitprop films from the 1960s and ’70s that share an ethos of free s*xual expression.

Guest-curated by Lucy Talbot Allen, who wrote the introduction above.

WOMEN IN ANIMATIONOctober 11-15By no means an exhaustive history, this series attempts to chronicle the many talents of ...
10/02/2026

WOMEN IN ANIMATION
October 11-15

By no means an exhaustive history, this series attempts to chronicle the many talents of women working in animation. Lost to time until recently, FLOWER FAIRIES by Bessie Mae Kelley is the earliest-known hand-drawn animated film directed by a woman. Other women artists who worked within the animation studio system were largely uncredited for their contributions, while still others collaborated with male colleagues to create their own studios, such as Joy Batchelor & John Halas (represented here by THE OWL AND THE PUSSYCAT) and Morton & Millie Goldsholl (INTERGALACTIC ZOO).

Program 1 of the series focuses on family-friendly animations depicting the animal kingdom. Program 2 features animations that reflect on a diversity of experiences of womanhood, from being idolized (THE FIGUREHEAD) to being a mother (BIRTH and PETIT BONHEUR) to being a woman of the world (W.O.W). Program 3, co-presented with the animation collective Sunflower Lane, encompasses personal stories of reproductive health (CYCLES), meditations on existence (MY UNIVERSE INSIDE AND OUT), and an animated interview about female friendship (INTERVIEW).

Guest-programmed by Rachael Guma. The series is co-presented by WIA (https://wearewia.org/).

VACANCESby Victoria Hely-Hutchinson2025, 82 min, DCPOctober 9 – 13FILMMAKER IN PERSON!A strange and unusual mixture of w...
09/30/2026

VACANCES
by Victoria Hely-Hutchinson
2025, 82 min, DCP

October 9 – 13

FILMMAKER IN PERSON!

A strange and unusual mixture of warts-and-all family portraiture, subtle exposé of class and privilege, and minimalist depiction of a particular setting that’s rendered with an almost miraculously tactile sense of presence, photographer and filmmaker Victoria Hely-Hutchinson’s VACANCES is a deceptively unassuming film. Filmed over the course of a decade at the property in Provence inhabited by Hely-Hutchinson’s outrageously uninhibited grandmother, a bohemian Austro-Hungarian countess and family matriarch, VACANCES grew out of Hely-Hutchinson’s 2016 short film of the same name, and is something of a filmic complement to her autobiographical 2023 book, “I Left My Grandmother’s House”. The documentary delves, with a grace and open-endedness that belies its analytical bite, into both the bigger-than-life personality of “granny” as well as the sometimes strained dynamics among the rest of the family, including Hely-Hutchinson’s grandfather, mother, and siblings. Unique in suggesting by turns cinema vérité, reality TV, chamber theater, and the minimalism of landscape cinema, VACANCES is a profoundly singular work – a film whose technique is nearly invisible, but which sneaks up on you with its trenchant perceptions, layered meanings, and emotional and filmic complexity.

“This time-lapse film, shot over a period of ten years, follows members of several generations of a wealthy aristocratic family with Austro-Hungarian roots. The entire film is set in a Provençal villa, whose social heart is the swimming pool, around which the women gather to exchange various observations and, surreptitiously, gossip. The center of the family is the aging matriarch, who likes to talk about her extravagant, promiscuous life, but at the same time commands all the attention and authority of those around her. However, her influence gradually weakens with each passing generation.” –JI.HLAVA INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTARY FILM FESTIVAL

AFA MEMBERS ONLY – FREE SCREENING!TWILIGHT ZONE ON 16MMOctober 5 at 7:00Anthology’s Members-Only screenings feature snea...
09/28/2026

AFA MEMBERS ONLY – FREE SCREENING!
TWILIGHT ZONE ON 16MM
October 5 at 7:00

Anthology’s Members-Only screenings feature sneak-previews of upcoming features, programs of rare materials from Anthology’s collections, in-person filmmaker presentations, and more! The benefits of an Anthology membership have always been plentiful: free admission to over 100 Essential Cinema programs, reduced admission to all other shows, and discounted AFA publications. But with these screenings – free, open only to members, and including special receptions – we sweeten the pot even further.

For the next Members-Only event, we’ll present two episodes of THE TWILIGHT ZONE – the classic TIME ENOUGH AT LAST and the timely, extreme-heat-themed THE MIDNIGHT SUN – screening from 16mm prints that reside in Anthology’s collection (thanks to a donation by David Mulkins). The screening will culminate with a special, unannounced film!

Become a member at our box office, or at anthologyfilmarchives.org/support/membership

John Brahm
TIME ENOUGH AT LAST
1959, 27 min, 16mm. Written by Rod Serling. With Burgess Meredith.

Anton Leader
THE MIDNIGHT SUN
1961, 27 min, 16mm. Written by Rod Serling. With Lois Nettleton.

Plus, a special surprise!

COMBAT BREATHINGOctober 1-8“Combat Breathing Vol. II: A Symposium on Aesthetics and Politics” is a multisite platform, s...
09/23/2026

COMBAT BREATHING
October 1-8

“Combat Breathing Vol. II: A Symposium on Aesthetics and Politics” is a multisite platform, spanning film screenings, critical discussions, and focused workshops that unfolds throughout October 2026 at Anthology Film Archives, New York University, and Wendy’s Subway. Responding to the current geopolitical juncture, it asks what roles artistic and intellectual production, circulation, and collective study might assume amid intensifying imperial violence and renewed global mobilizations. In an era when audiovisual technologies are increasingly deployed to discipline collective imagination and stabilize statist and capitalist power, the symposium responds by foregrounding insurgent poetics, militant pedagogy, and autonomous infrastructures of media production, distribution, and reception.

Drawing on the histories of Third Cinema and other anti-colonial and anti-imperial cultural movements, the film program at Anthology Film Archives considers how these traditions persist, mutate, and reemerge in the present. Organized into six chapters comprising twenty-seven films, “Combat Breathing” explores the convergences of aesthetics and politics: how they take form on screen; where the militant image resides today; how images index and reveal infrastructures of labor; the pervasiveness of and resistance to carceral logics; the strategic reappropriations of imaging technologies; and film’s capacity to institute and reorganize desire.

Curated by KJ Abudu and Adam HajYahia.

BO HARWOOD — RECORD RELEASE EVENT!JOHN CASSAVETES’S THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE ON 35MMSeptember 27 at 3:45This scre...
09/18/2026

BO HARWOOD — RECORD RELEASE EVENT!
JOHN CASSAVETES’S THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE ON 35MM
September 27 at 3:45

This screening is presented on the occasion of the launch of a new LP devoted to the work of Bo Harwood (1946-2022), the composer whose music appears throughout John Cassavetes’s films and whose songs and compositions were often made with Cassavetes’s participation. The record brings together eleven recordings straight from the master tapes held by Bo during his lifetime, including music from THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE, A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE, OPENING NIGHT, and LOVE STREAMS, as well as “Bach Train” and other compositions. The LP will be available for purchase at the screening (with a discounted price for ticket-holders).

The event is organized by Yana Foqué, who initiated the project, with the support of the estate of Bo Harwood. It is hosted by Anthology Film Archives, with support from Grazer Kunstverein, where the LP will also be presented.

John Cassavetes
THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE
1976, 108 min (1978 re-release version), 35mm

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