The Downtown Community Television Center, a nonprofit organization devoted to documentary film education, will begin construction in March on a $3.2 million documentary-only movie theater, center officials said. The new theater, in the center's Chinatown home, will show first-run nonfiction films throughout the year, providing a meeting place for established and emerging filmmakers and their audiences.
The 3,500-square-foot, 73-seat state-of-the-art theater, which will include 4K digital cinema technology, will take about a year to complete and represents a new step for a center that has long provided low-cost equipment, editing facilities and other resources to filmmakers and students. It was started, in 1972, by the husband-and-wife filmmakers Jon Alpert and Keiko Tsuno.
“We haven't found another theater like this one yet and there is a need for what we're doing,†Mr. Alpert said in an interview. He noted th e growth in the number and prominence of documentary films and added, “This has the capacity to connect with documentary lovers anywhere.â€
Financing for the new theater is in place and has been provided by a combination of public and private sources, among them the Office of the Mayor of New York City, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the Office of the New York City Council; and the Rockefeller Foundation.
The official announcement of the theater is to come at a 40th-anniversary celebration on Thursday at the center's home, a landmark firehouse at 87 Lafayette Street. The party is open to the public and tickets can be purchased at www.dctvny.org. Thursday's program will honor Sheila Nevins, the president of HBO Documentary Films, and her team, along with the DCTV board chairwoman, Cora Weiss. James Gandolfini will serve as the honorary chair for the evening.
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