“What movies have you seen lately?” The question hung in the air between sips of beer at that outdoor gathering of former colleagues. My friend stood there, expecting an answer that should have come easily. We always promised to meet more often when we did see each other, though life consistently intervened.
I hesitated, mentally flipping through the filing cabinets of my mind only to find empty folders. “I know I’ve seen several,” I finally admitted. “Some were quite good, but I can’t pull up their titles or even reconstruct them in my thoughts. That’s worrying.”
“Same here,” he responded, his expression shifting to recognition. “I remember going to the movies, but can’t recall what I saw—not even last week. This never used to happen.”
So it wasn’t just me. The relief was momentary, quickly replaced by that peculiar sense of betrayal when something you’re passionate about starts slipping through the cracks of memory. I remembered reading about Néstor Almendros, the cinematographer who claimed he could recall every shot he ever lit, describing it as having a Betamax in his head. Then there was film historian Charles Ford, that walking encyclopedia of French cinema who seemed to remember every film ever made in the country.
Even Hitchcock, I tried to reassure myself, had forgotten directing The Mountain Eagle until Truffaut brought it up during their famous interviews. The greats weren’t immune either.
Later, disconcerted, I turned to that unreliable collective bank of knowledge we all consult—the internet. It offered clinical explanations: normal memory processing where the brain prioritizes new information and discards unimportant details, lack of attention, distraction, poor sleep, stress. All technically accurate but cold comfort when the first film that surfaces in response to “what’s the best movie you’ve seen lately” is Never Let Me Go from 2010.
The search for reassurance led me to Werner Herzog’s remarkable journey. When he learned Lotte Eisner was ill and not expected to live much longer, he decided to walk from Munich to Paris using only a compass to guide him straight to her. He did this in winter, convinced that walking for her would keep her alive. She lived another nine years, reaching the enviable age of 87. Both Herzog and his friend Bruce Chatwin believed in the transformative power of walking, that “the world reveals itself to those who travel on foot.”
Perhaps that was the answer—not searching memory banks or internet forums, but simply putting one foot in front of the other through the city that had shaped so much of my film-watching life. If walking could keep someone alive across continents, maybe it could help resurrect memories closer to home.
Washington Heights: The Immigrant’s Cinephile Initiation
The Alpine Theater stood as a beacon on Broadway, its marquee a promise of escape for a young immigrant navigating the unfamiliar rhythms of New York. Stepping inside felt like crossing a threshold into a world where language barriers dissolved into universal imagery. The first Bond film I witnessed there, Diamonds Are Forever, wasn’t merely entertainment—it was a cultural orientation session. Those glamorous scenes of casinos and luxury cars contrasted sharply with my Eastern European upbringing, creating cognitive dissonance that would shape my understanding of American mythology.
What made the Alpine special wasn’t just the films but the ritual of attendance. The two-dollar admission purchased more than entertainment; it provided air-conditioned sanctuary from the city’s summer heat and psychological respite from the constant strain of adaptation. When the lights dimmed for The Godfather Part II, the darkness became a democratic space where my struggling English didn’t matter. The cold buttered popcorn scent mixed with the haunting score created sensory anchors that would outlast memory’s decay. Sitting through the credits, unwilling to let the experience end, I recognized cinema’s power to grant temporary citizenship in a world that still felt foreign outside those walls.
Several blocks downtown, the Coliseum Theater loomed as a monument to missed opportunities. Its immense facade hinted at wonders within, but I never passed through its doors. The incident on Broadway—that sudden punch in broad daylight—left me more cautious about exploration. The immediate thought that “it didn’t hurt that much” speaks volumes about the emotional calluses immigrants develop, but it also created boundaries. The Coliseum became symbolic of New York’s dual nature: cultural riches waiting behind barriers of urban apprehension.
Summer 1974 brought a pilgrimage to Lowe’s State Theater in Times Square for Papillon. If the Alpine felt like a neighborhood haven, this was cathedral cinema. The palatial lobby with its soaring ceilings and ornate details transformed movie-going into ceremonial experience. Watching Steve McQueen’s escape attempts while surrounded by such opulence created layered irony—the film’s prison sequences unfolding within a temple of luxury. The experience left me humming the theme song through Times Square’s chaotic energy, the film’s yearning for freedom mirroring my own restlessness. That screening didn’t just tell a story; it amplified my growing determination to return to Europe, to bridge the Atlantic divide within myself.
These Washington Heights establishments formed more than entertainment venues—they were cultural processing centers. Each visit layered new understanding atop old perspectives, the films serving as textbooks in American studies and the theaters becoming classrooms without exams. The memory of these spaces remains sharper than many films themselves, proving that context shapes content in our mental archives. The neighborhood’s energy—captured years later in In the Heights—already pulsed through those streets, its rhythm felt in the walk from Sherman Avenue to Broadway, in the shared anticipation of strangers gathering in dark rooms to watch light dance on screens.
What emerges from these recollections isn’t just personal nostalgia but evidence of cinema’s social function. Before streaming algorithms personalized viewing experiences, we shared physical spaces that shaped collective memory. The Alpine’s worn seats held generations of viewers; the Coliseum’s unconquered lobby remains a reminder that urban life involves both connection and hesitation. These theaters weren’t merely buildings but psychological waystations in the immigrant’s journey—places where one could temporarily shed the weight of difference and participate in the common language of visual storytelling.
The Midtown Trifecta
Descending into Lincoln Plaza Cinemas felt like entering a spaceship designed specifically for cinephiles. The sleek stainless steel escalator carried you downward with a quiet hum, away from the honking cabs and bustling crowds of 63rd and Broadway. This was 1981, and everything felt new – the impeccable HVAC system that maintained perfect viewing temperature, the comfortable seats that didn’t squeak, the sense that art house cinema had finally found its proper home in Manhattan.
I remember the first time I saw Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise there. The black-and-white images flickered in the darkness while the climate control system maintained its steady whisper. There was something about the combination of physical comfort and artistic challenge that made Lincoln Plaza special. You could watch Victor Nunez’s A Flash of Green or Juzo Itami’s Tampopo without the distraction of sticky floors or malfunctioning projectors that plagued so many revival houses. The place understood that appreciating ambitious cinema required certain material conditions – proper sightlines, clear sound, and yes, reliable air conditioning.
Twenty minutes south stood the Paris Theater, an entirely different kind of cinematic sanctuary. Built by Pathé and nestled between Bergdorf’s and The Plaza hotel, it radiated old-world elegance. The well-appointed interior always made me straighten my posture unconsciously, as if the ghosts of French cinema required proper decorum. I saw Tarkovsky’s Sacrifice there, the solemn beauty of the images enhanced by the plush seats and perfect sightlines.
My most vivid memory involves Godard’s Hail Mary. Religious protesters lined the sidewalk, holding signs condemning the film’s blasphemy. Crossing that picket line felt like participating in some strange ritual – the defenders of tradition on one side, the seekers of artistic truth on the other. Inside, the film unspooled in that elegant space, the controversy outside making the images feel more urgent, more dangerous. The Paris Theater understood that art house cinema wasn’t just about entertainment; it was about engaging with difficult ideas in a space that respected both the art and the audience.
But nothing prepared me for the Ziegfeld Theater experience. When Apocalypse Now premiered in 70mm, they distributed brochures with the credits because the film itself had none – no opening titles, no closing crawl. You entered the theater and immediately found yourself in the jungle, the sound of helicopters moving around the room in a way I’d never experienced before.
That screening changed my understanding of what cinema could be. The absence of credits eliminated the usual distance between viewer and artwork. Instead of being told “this is a movie by Francis Ford Coppola,” you were simply in Vietnam, in the madness, in the heart of darkness. The magnificent theater itself – with its perfect acoustics and massive screen – became invisible, a window rather than a frame.
These three theaters represented different approaches to the art house experience. Lincoln Plaza offered modern comfort for new cinematic visions. The Paris provided old-world elegance for European masterpieces. The Ziegfeld demonstrated how technical innovation could serve artistic immersion. Each understood that watching films wasn’t just about the images on screen, but about the entire environment – the temperature, the sound, the seats, even the way light fell in the lobby before the show began.
Walking between them felt like moving through different chapters of film history, each theater offering its own philosophy of what cinema should be. The stainless steel escalator at Lincoln Plaza, the ornate fixtures at the Paris, the revolutionary sound system at the Ziegfeld – these weren’t just amenities. They were arguments about how we should experience art, each making its case through architecture, technology, and atmosphere.
Sometimes I wonder if we’ve lost something in the age of streaming. Not just the communal experience of watching together in the dark, but the specific intelligence of these spaces – the way each theater was designed to support a particular kind of viewing. The air conditioning at Lincoln Plaza wasn’t just about comfort; it was about creating the optimal conditions for concentration. The lack of credits at the Ziegfeld wasn’t just a gimmick; it was a philosophical statement about immersion. These places understood that how we watch shapes what we see, and they built their spaces accordingly.
The Greenwich Village Cinematic Laboratory
Moving downtown meant entering a different dimension of film culture altogether. Greenwich Village in the 1980s wasn’t just a location—it was a state of mind, a cinematic laboratory where films weren’t merely watched but dissected, discussed, and absorbed into one’s very consciousness. The theaters here felt less like entertainment venues and more like educational institutions, each with its own curriculum and pedagogical approach.
Cinema Village survives to this day, a miracle in itself considering how many of its contemporaries have vanished. This place became my second university, offering double features for what I recall was a three-dollar ticket. The programming possessed a peculiar genius—pairing The Three Stooges Spooks with Dial M for Murder, both in 3D, created unexpected connections between slapstick and suspense. But the truly strange couplings revealed deeper truths about cinematic language: Tarkovsky’s Solaris followed by the obscure audience participation film Something for Everyone. Watching Michael York, typically the picture of virtue, play an amoral character wreaking havoc on an aristocratic family felt like witnessing some precursor to Down and Out in Beverly Hills. The audience participation element transformed the screening into a collective ritual, everyone knowing exactly when to shout responses with split-second timing. It wasn’t just watching a movie; it was joining a secret society.
The true magic of Cinema Village lay in its repertory programming—a comprehensive education in film history compressed into weekend marathons. Seeing A Touch of Evil paired with The Trial confirmed Welles’ genius in a way no single film could. The theater offered journeys through national cinemas: Herzog’s Aguirre and Fitzcarraldo, Lang’s Metropolis and M, Godard’s Breathless and Band of Outsiders, the entire French New Wave from The 400 Blows to Jules and Jim, Ozu’s Late Spring and Early Summer, Bergman’s Persona. Each screening felt like uncovering another layer of some vast, interconnected cinematic universe.
Just a short walk away, Theater 80 St. Marks offered a completely different energy. Located in the heart of punk-era St. Mark’s Place, the theater felt like a hidden speakeasy for film lovers. You entered through a dark corridor to find a small space using 16mm rear screen projection—no light beam to duck under if you arrived late. I’ve never encountered another venue like it in New York. Watching Fritz Lang’s Ministry of Fear there, with the palpable energy of the punk movement just outside, created a peculiar tension between the classic noir and the contemporary rebellion happening on the streets. The neighborhood itself—Little Ukraine with its fogged-up windows from boiling pierogies at Veselka—provided the perfect backdrop for these cinematic explorations.
The area offered culinary adventures that matched the cinematic ones. If I had spare dollars, the Second Avenue Deli provided pastrami sandwiches nearly as good as Carnegie’s but more affordable. I happened to be there on Black Monday, October 19, 1987, when the stock market ticker running through the deli showed the crash unfolding in real time. Spoons clattered down as the place emptied immediately—a surreal moment where economic reality intruded on cinematic escape.
Nearby, The Public Theater offered another dimension of film culture. Besides being a lighthouse for theatergoers, it hosted film retrospectives in the majestic old Astor Library building. There was an air of sophistication upon entering, a feeling of involuntary reverence. I attended a Sam Fuller retrospective there and absolutely loved Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street—how could one resist a title like that? The space itself seemed to elevate whatever was shown within it.
Heading west toward Sixth Avenue, the Waverly Theater (now IFC Center) became famous for its midnight screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. But I remember it for other reasons—seeing Dick Maas’s The Lift paired with Paul Verhoeven’s The 4th Man created a double dose of Dutch surrealism that lingered for days. The theater also witnessed personal history: my separation from the woman who had accompanied me to New York in the late 1970s happened right outside its doors. I watched her walk away and descend into the subway under the darkened marquee lights, the last time I would see her. Certain theaters become repositories not just of film memories but of life itself.
Then there was 144 Bleecker Street, whose columns still mark the entrance though it’s now a retail store. Bleecker Street Cinema served as the cultural twin to Cinema Village, radiating the same intellectual energy but with a more confrontational attitude. The neighborhood seemed to demand answers to questions I was barely formulating: what do you value, who are your friends, what are your passions, how authentic is your effort? One needed a conscience to walk these streets comfortably.
The interior details escape me now, but the educational impact remains indelible. It was here that various cinematic movements finally clicked into place: Surrealism, the French New Wave, British New Wave, No Wave, Expressionism, Verité, Neorealism, Poetic Realism, New German Cinema. The films themselves blend together in memory—Andrei Rublev, I Vitelloni, L’Avventura, Grand Illusion, Dr. Strangelove, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie—but their collective effect shaped my understanding of what cinema could be beyond mere entertainment.
These Village theaters formed a cinematic ecosystem that encouraged not just viewing but thinking. Between screenings, we’d debate in coffee shops, browse bookstores for theoretical texts, and walk the streets seeing them through whatever cinematic lens we’d just experienced. The films didn’t end when the credits rolled; they continued in conversations and altered perceptions of reality itself. This was where cinema stopped being something I watched and became something that watched back, asking questions about identity, values, and the very nature of representation.
The density of venues created a unique cultural geography—one could literally walk from one cinematic worldview to another within blocks. From the punk energy of Theater 80 to the intellectual rigor of Bleecker Street Cinema to the joyful experimentation of Cinema Village, each space offered not just films but entire philosophies of seeing. They collectively argued that cinema wasn’t an escape from reality but a means of engaging with it more deeply, more critically, more passionately.
What made these spaces special wasn’t just their programming but their refusal to treat films as disposable content. In an age before streaming, each screening felt like an event—a temporary congregation of like-minded seekers gathering in the dark to experience something together that would then be discussed in the light. The physicality of these spaces—the specific seats, the particular quality of darkness, the way sound traveled—became part of the experience itself. You didn’t just remember the films; you remembered where you saw them, who you were with, how the room felt.
This geographic concentration of cinematic intelligence created something rare: a true film culture where discoveries happened collectively rather than individually. Someone would emerge from one theater and recommend something playing at another; conversations started in one lobby would continue in the next. The entire neighborhood functioned as an extended campus for cinematic education, with each theater offering different courses in the same overarching curriculum of visual literacy.
Walking these streets today, the ghosts of these spaces remain palpable. The storefronts may have changed, but the intellectual energy they generated still lingers in the air, a permanent imprint on the neighborhood’s character. These theaters taught me that cinema isn’t just about remembering individual films but about understanding how they connect to each other, to the spaces they’re shown in, and to the lives of those who watch them. The memories might be imperfect, but the education was permanent.
Walking Through Memory
The invitation came unexpectedly, as the best ones often do. My son suggested we see a double feature at the Metrograph on the Lower East Side—The Shooting with a young Jack Nicholson and Howard Hawks’ timeless Rio Bravo. We sat together in the darkness, two generations sharing the same flickering light, and when the credits rolled, neither of us spoke immediately. There was something sacred in that silence, a recognition that we had participated in something more than mere entertainment.
Walking out into the evening air, the city felt different. The streets of New York have always been my preferred method of memory consolidation, each block containing layers of personal history. My son fell into step beside me, and we began discussing the films—not just what happened on screen, but how they made us feel, what they reminded us of, why they mattered. This wasn’t the anxious rifling through mental file cabinets I had experienced at that party months earlier. This was memory as living conversation, as shared experience, as something that grows richer through retelling.
I realized during that walk that my anxiety about forgetting films had been misplaced. The titles might fade, the plots might blur, but the essence remains—the way a particular scene made you catch your breath, the shared laughter in a dark theater, the conversations that continue long after the projector stops. What I had mistaken for memory failure was actually memory doing its essential work: distilling experience into meaning, stripping away the unnecessary details to preserve the emotional truth.
This understanding didn’t come from any internet search or psychological study. It emerged from the simple act of walking and talking, of allowing thoughts to unfold at the pace of footsteps on pavement. There’s a rhythm to walking that seems to organize thinking, a kinetic quality that helps ideas find their proper shape and sequence. The city becomes both stimulus and container—the passing storefronts, the overheard conversations, the changing light all contribute to the process without overwhelming it.
Bruce Chatwin understood this when he documented the songlines of Aboriginal Australians—how walking and memory and storytelling were inextricably linked. He quotes Kierkegaard’s letter to his cousin: “Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Every day, I walk myself into a state of well-being & walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts.”
That evening with my son, walking through the Lower East Side, I understood this viscerally. Our conversation moved from the films we’d just seen to others we loved, to movie-going experiences we’d each had in different eras, to how the city had changed and how it hadn’t. Memory became less about retrieval and more about connection—finding the patterns and continuities that give life coherence.
I thought about all the hours I’d spent in dark theaters, all the films that had shaped my understanding of the world, all the walks home afterward when the movie seemed to continue in my mind, blending with the sights and sounds of the city. The value wasn’t in being able to catalog every title, but in recognizing how these experiences had accumulated into a way of seeing, a sensibility that could be passed along and built upon.
My son and I stopped for coffee, still talking. He mentioned films I’d introduced him to years earlier that had stayed with him, scenes he remembered watching together on the couch at home, questions about movies that had led to larger conversations about life. I realized that movie memory isn’t just personal—it’s relational, intergenerational. The films we share become part of our shared language, our way of understanding each other.
Walking back toward the subway, I felt the anxiety that had prompted this entire journey finally lift. The need to remember every title, every director, every detail—it missed the point. What matters is how films live on in us, how they become part of our emotional landscape, how they provide touchstones for connection across years and generations.
The Metrograph itself represents a beautiful continuity—a new theater that understands old values, a place that celebrates film history while creating new memories. In that double feature, they had paired a relatively obscure Western with a beloved classic, suggesting conversations across genres, eras, and styles. This thoughtful programming creates exactly the kind of memory-rich experiences that stay with you not as isolated facts, but as integrated understanding.
I may not always remember what I’ve seen lately, but I’m learning to trust that the important things endure. The films that matter find ways of staying with us—in references that pop up unexpectedly, in scenes that come to mind at relevant moments, in the pleasure of introducing them to someone new. Memory isn’t about perfect recall; it’s about meaning-making, and meaning often reveals itself gradually, through reflection and conversation and yes, through walking.
My son and I parted ways with promises to do this again soon—and unlike those empty promises at parties, I suspect we’ll keep this one. There are too many films to see, too many conversations to have, too many walks through the city that await us. The memory continues.
Kierkegaard was right about walking—it does help you walk away from illness, both physical and spiritual. But he might have added that it also helps you walk toward understanding, toward connection, toward the realization that some things are better remembered imperfectly, through the gentle filter of time and the shared construction of meaning. The films we forget were perhaps never meant to be remembered; the ones that matter have ways of staying with us, emerging when we need them most, often during walks through familiar streets with people we love.
