We lost another great film distributor yesterday, as New Yorker Films announced it is shutting down. A short statement on their website said, “After 43 years in business, New Yorker Films has ceased operations. We would like to thank the filmmakers and producers who trusted us with their work, as well as our customers, whose loyalty has sustained us through the years.”

indieWIRE, from whom I first heard the news, also got a hold of an email yesterday sent by co-president Jose Lopez to filmmakers, which read: “I have sad news. The parent company of New Yorker Films has defaulted on a loan. The assets of New Yorker were used as security on the loan. The lender has informed us that it intends to foreclose on these assets. New Yorker stopped doing business yesterday…We are in total shock that after forty three years this has happened.” The New York Times has more on the story, including word that New Yorker’s library will likely be auctioned off next week.

This is very sad. My first reaction was to think of all the films we might not have seen had it not been for Daniel Talbot and New Yorker. Would we have ever even been introduced to New German Cinema without them? Then, I thought I should concentrate on the future rather than the past. How will this further upset independent and foreign film distribution in the U.S.? Finally, I arrived back on New Yorker’s history. But instead of pessimistically wondering “what if?” situations, I would just like to pay my respects and, as a moviegoer, say “thank you.”

Here are some links to other blogs that have also said goodbye over the last 24 hours, some more favorably than others:

• Jon Popham at takepart: “Few film companies on the planet could boast such an impressive library as the New York City based house whose roster of film artists read like a who’s who of world cinema.”
• Also at takepart, Gina Telaroli shares her top 10 New Yorker releases, sighing all the way through. It’s a bit of a cheat, as #1 is collectively every Fassbinder title they ever distributed.
• Jeff Wells found out from Nick Dawson at FilmInFocus that his beloved Three Monkeys will fortunately still be released by New Yorker.
• From Notes from Underdog: “Not a huge surprise to me; I’d heard rumblings of this for awhile, noticed they hadn’t been able to upgrade their wonky web site for ages, and, well, given the economy who isn’t in danger these days?”
• Ted Hope offers a daunting perspective:
  

  Everyday the prospect of just getting a film made seems to slip farther and farther away. New York has its cost-of-living problems but it was always the consummate film town, both in terms of viewing and making. We lost New Yorker Films today and two weeks ago we lost our film credits, making it hard to say either statement today.

• John Vanco, formerly of New Yorker and presently at the IFC Center, on indieWIRE:
  

  Many people already realize how vital New Yorker Films has been to the development of film culture in the United States…. Less understood is the effect that New Yorker Films had, as a pioneering independent film company, on the the culture of the film business. Their idealistic, aesthetically-based, and quite moral ways of responding to the very challenging, competing pulls of art and commerce have shown the way to many others who aspire to follow their example.

• Also paying respects: Vulture; Filmmaker Magazine; The Onion’s A.V. Club; Ray Pride at Movie City Indie
• Phil Nugent at Screengrab points out some of the distributor’s negative qualities:
  

  New Yorker Films was a revered institution, and it sometimes behaved in a manner befitting a regal force that expected its full due of obeisance, in keeping with J. Hoberman’s description of the company as having long been “the only game in town.” They were notorious about charging excessive rental fees for their prints and not offering bulk discounts to the most faithful customers in their chains of poor starving classrooms and rep theaters. And the quality of both their prints and DVD releases could be erratic.

• Richard Brody at the New Yorker (magazine) addresses how the shocking news will affect exhibitors as well as us moviegoers (at least temporarily):
  

  It’s worth remembering that, unlike book publishers, whose wares are widely distributed to libraries (it’s bitterly sad when a publisher goes out of business, but the back catalogue is already out there), film distributors hold the prints of the movies they own rights to; those which are out on home video have a second life, but the 35mm prints are, as of now, locked up, and revival houses wanting to screen them are simply out of luck.

• Andrew O’Hehir at Salon.com, quoting admirers and former New Yorker employees, discusses the importance of the library being kept intact. Also, here’s some more favorable words:
  

  Sometimes Talbot and Lopez seemed to be running an educational foundation under the guise of a for-profit business. In bringing films by African cinema godfather Ousmane Sembène, Chinese rebel Jia Zhang-ke, obscure American auteur Lodge Kerrigan and legendary French documentarian Chris Marker to a handful of American viewers they were undeniably performing a public service, but they surely didn’t make any money in doing so.

• Chris Holland at Film Festival Secrets offers some lessons to filmmakers in response to New Yorker’s closure: “Even if you sell the rights to your film to someone you trust, those rights can then be resold, traded, used as collateral, and foreclosed upon just like any other property. Think twice before you sign those rights away for more than a few years.”
• Anthony Kaufman at indieWIRE also gives warning:
  

  Beware of being bought: That’s the message for small companies like the latest casualty New Yorker Films (and ThinkFilm, Wellspring and Shooting Gallery) when new media companies come in with fanfare, optimism, ambition, and seemingly endless capital, and plan to rescue an art-film mainstay.

• Of course, David Hudson at IFC Daily has plenty more quotes/links. As does Eugene Hernandez at indieWIRE.