Dec. 4
8:00 p.m.
Millennium Film Workshop
66 East 4th St.
New York, New York 10003

Hosted by: Film-Makers’ Cooperative

Once again, the Millennium Film Workshop is hosting its annual December benefit screening and party to help benefit its fellow cinema institution, the Film-Makers’ Cooperative.

The Coop had a rough 2009 after being kicked out of its longtime home at the Clocktower Gallery, but soon settled nicely into its new location at 475 Park Ave. thanks solely to the generosity of real estate maven Charles S. Cohen.

While hopefully serious disastrous situations like that aren’t regular occurances, small cultural organizations these days need as much help as they can get, so if you’re in NYC think about going to support this phenomenal, scrappy and important institution.

I don’t have specific titles of films that will be screening at this event, there will be a program of recent films and videos deposited into the Coop’s distribution vault. Some of the films that will be showing are by: Jonas Mekas, Jackie Raynal, Mike Kuchar, Jennifer Reeves, Louise Bourque, Oona Mekas, Sabrina Gschwandtner, Patrick McElnea, Dominic Angerame and more.

The Film-makers’ Cooperative was founded in 1962 by the New American Cinema Group, a collection of underground filmmakers who issued a manifesto on Sept. 30 of that year that included several alternatives to traditional mainstream film practices.

One of those alternatives was a new distribution model, i.e. the Coop, but other suggestions included a rejection of censorship, new methods of investment and deals with unions for low-budget productions. You can read the entire manifesto here.