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:
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By all accounts, Douglas Sirk’s 1950s melodramas rocked Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s world when he first saw them in the early 70s. In “Imitation of Life: On The Films of Douglas Sirk,” a 1971 essay on Sirk included in the Criterion edition of Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows, Fassbinder presages his own late-career turn towards films centered around female protagonists by marveling at Sirk’s unique way with women. “In Douglas Sirk movies the women think,” Fassbinder writes, as if this plain realization has knocked the wind out of him. “I haven’t noticed that with any other director. With any.” He also marvels at the Hollywood director’s ability to subvert dominant society via low art, sneaking radical critique into “films that people in Germany with his level of education would have smirked at.”
What Fassbinder must have seen that those academic stiffs would have missed, was that Sirk needed the smirk in order to mask what he was “really” up to. When Fassbinder reworked Heaven’s basic plot and ideas into his own Ali: Fear Eats the Soul 18 years later, he dispensed with the beard. Refusing to allow the audience the option of wallowing in redemptive fantasy and ignoring the subtext, he brought the tragedy up to the surface where it couldn’t be missed.
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Interview with Christopher Smith director of Severance, a fall-down-funny-then-cover-your-eyes slasher flick opening in theaters tonight. The FilmCouch group reloads discussion on what makes a villain from FilmCouch 18, and somehow draws a connection between American Beauty and Star Wars. A 33 year old German film is more relevant today than ever–Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974), by New German Cinema pioneer Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
Download FilmCouch #20 or subscribe in the iTunes store (search for “filmcouch” or click here to launch iTunes) and a new free episode will download every Friday.
Films under discussion:
Severance
Star Wars
American Beauty
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
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