Film Forum

The Film Forum is a nonprofit movie theater at 209 West Houston Street in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City. Founded in 1970, it screens first-run independent and foreign films alongside a repertory program of revivals, retrospectives and restorations, and is the only autonomous nonprofit cinema in New York City. It operates four screens seating close to 500, is open every day of the year, and shows as many as 400 to 500 films annually. The theater began as a weekend screening room on West 88th Street with 50 folding chairs and a single projector. Karen Cooper took charge in 1972 and led it for 51 years, moving it to Vandam Street in 1975, to a twin cinema on Watts Street in 1980, and to its present Houston Street building in 1990 after a developer bought the Watts Street site and paid the theater to leave. A $5 million renovation completed in 2018 added a fourth screen and rebuilt the existing three. Cooper retired in 2023 and was succeeded by Sonya Chung, who left in December 2025; Tabitha Jackson, formerly director of the Sundance Film Festival, became director in February 2026. Cooper selected the theater's premieres for most of her tenure, giving American commercial releases to films including Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles and Hoop Dreams, the latter booked before it had a distributor. Bruce Goldstein has programmed repertory since 1986, a period during which the format was contracting elsewhere in New York. Filmmakers including Agnès Varda, Christopher Nolan and Kelly Reichardt have praised the theater and its programming.

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