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COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY professor Ralph Rosenblum, an ex-film director and editor of six Woody Allen movies, vividly recalls the closings of dozens of independent theaters on Manhattan's Upper West Side over the years. "At one time, in the Fifties and Sixties, there must have been twenty-five theaters," he said, remembering the stretch of cinemas on Broadway between 59th and 110th Streets. "Now, with the exception of a couple of multiscreen theaters, there are only about three theaters left."
Rosenblum's personal favorites - the Riverside-Riviera theater complex along Broadway from 96th to 97th Streets - were replaced by a vegetable store and luxury apartment house. The two movie houses reflected the earliest and grandest of motion picture-vaudeville palaces. But real estate deals made in the 1970s brought the demise of these theaters.
Through the 1980s and into the 1990s, Manhattan's movie houses have continued to close, or change ownership until few are still run by small operators who tend to promote film for art, rather than commercial appeal. That disturbs movie lovers such as Rosenblum, who worry about small film operators in a city that historically has honored these keepers of culture. Says Rosenblum, "There's no sentiment in capitalism."
Where will films considered avant-garde and noncommercial, like many of those shown at the recent New York Film Festival, end up? Since public outcry in the past has failed to prevent the closings of many movie houses that catered to a specialized audience - most recently, the Bleecker Street Cinema and the Paris Theater on 58th Street - film lovers are now focusing on what remains of New York's alternative cinema scene.
"Everyone has been painting the scene as such a bleak picture, but I don't think it's like that," said Steve Grenyo, a publicist for the Film Society of Lincoln Center, which presented the New York Film Festival. "It's just that the places to go to are changing."
Of about 300 movie screens in the five boroughs, including 130 in Manhattan, it is estimated there are no more than 25 screens devoted to independent, foreign and revival films. Of those, only three are revival screens. Five years ago, there were 11 revival screens,...