Collections/April 2025

Fun City: NYC Woos Hollywood, Flirts with Disaster

In the late ’60s and ’70s, New York City under Mayor John V. Lindsay was a turbulent yet vibrant cinematic landscape. With the city sliding toward bankruptcy and social collapse, the Mayor’s Office of Film was established in 1966 to help foster the local film industry, providing financial support to on-location productions in order to infuse the city with jobs and morale. Somewhat ironically, the films that resulted—from defining works of the New Hollywood like The Panic in Needle Park and Dog Day Afternoon to blaxploitation favorites like Cotton Comes to Harlem and Across 110th Street —formed a raw and often surreal portrait of a city in crisis, an urban powder keg roiling with social unrest and unpredictable danger. Capturing both…

17 films — 1 on the Channel, 16 unavailable