Movies with a View: Waterfront Film Alfresco
One of these days I will use the word “summer” as a verb, and at the end of that sentence will be someplace–Shelter Island, the Catskills, Andalucia–that conjures up lazy afternoons and high-end seasonal foodstuffs, but until that day comes, I make it a point to compile a list of cool outdoor summer activities that take place in the city, which is where I’ll be summering this year.
Two of the season’s best outdoor events involve film and food, are both just a stone’s throw from the East River, and began last week: Socrates Sculpture Park’s Wednesday night Outdoor Cinema Series and The Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy’s Thursday night Movies with a View,a few miles downriver.
Each summer Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City, Queens, teams up with curators from the American Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, and a handful of local restaurants and musicians or DJs, to create internationally flavored theme nights. Each week, weather permitting, they’ll have music and dance from a specific locale, food from the same part of the world, and at sunset, a movie similarly themed. On my personal event docket are Albert Lamorisse’s 1956 classic The Red Balloon on August 6 (I don’t think I’m the only American with special memories of watching this film on 16mm in elementary school) and one of my favorite movies ever, Fellini’s 8 1/2, on August 13.
At Movies with a View at Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park, films are also preceded by music, and food is provided by Rice (a restaurant group with a branch in DUMBO that began back in the mid-1990s with a hip tapas bar called Ñ 33 Crosby which is still there). On August 21, I will be there for Hal Ashby’s Being There. Best known for having written and directed Harold and Maude, Ashby was also the director of the politically charged Coming Home, which has the crazy sad scene that still ranks as one the top marriages of music and cinema in film history: Bruce Dern’s beach dive and Tim Buckley’s “Once.”
But back to the East River: Check out Dr. Vino’s NYC wineshop map to find a wine shop nearby to find a bottle to accompany your meal; just be discreet. As Dr. Vino mentions in his latest post, it’s not technically legal to crack wine at public parks, but the consensus is that as long as you are not obvious about it, the authorities are inclined to look the other way.
