Yesterday, the Village Voice reported that NYC’s Millennium Film Workshop has been handed eviction papers by its landlord, La Mama (E.T.C.), a non-profit experimental theater located on the same block as Millennium. Reason for the eviction is failure of Millennium to pay rent for the past several months.

A decline in funding grants, particularly from the New York State Council for the Arts, has contributed to Millennium’s recent rent woes. Although the organization was planning a fire sale fundraiser this weekend to help with their financial setbacks, La Mama went ahead and had Millennium served just last night.

The Millennium Film Workshop was founded in 1966 by filmmaker Ken Jacobs and the organization moved into its current headquarters at 66 East 4th Street in 1975. The Voice article describes in detail the historical relationship between La Mama and Millennium. The article also quotes Jacobs as saying, “The people at La Mama are great people, so I’m not sure what happened.”

Millennium should be talking with their lawyers and around 100 members to discuss the next step in trying to resolve this situation.

While the Underground Film Journal isn’t sure what efforts from the underground film community could help at this point, it is worth noting that Millennium does have a donation page.

Millennium also has not posted anything about the eviction notice on its Facebook page, although the information for their fire sale on film equipment, presumably still to be held this Saturday Jan. 28, can be found there.