Goodbye, New Yorker Films

I am saddened by today's news, as reported by IndieWIRE, that the decades-old distributor of European and arthouse cinema in North America, New Yorker Films, has announced it is shutting down. As a film student in the 1970s, thanks to New Yorker Films, I was able to see the work of a great many filmmakers that I would not have been able to see otherwise. I can’t begin to count the number of times I sat in a darkening theater when the “New Yorker Films” logo would appear on the screen; I saw it so often, it was like a fact of nature. For me the logo was synonymous with European arthouse films, films that for me formed my cinematic consciousness. I am very saddened by this news. According to the report, among the filmmakers whose films were distributed in this country were: Ackerman, Bertolucci, Bresson, Chabrol, Fassbinder, Fellini, Godard, Herzog, Kieslowski, Malle, Rohmer, Rossellini, Sembene, Wenders, Schlondorff, and many others. The full story can be found here. It is a sad day indeed.