Located just north of Manhattan in Pleasantville, New York, the Jacob Burns Film Center has been bringing vital independent, documentary, and world cinema to Hudson Valley audiences for nearly two decades. Central to the revitalization of downtown Pleasantville, the Film Center has become an integral part of the community through its Media Arts Lab, which trains students in the art of visual literacy, and through the over 150 special events it hosts annually with visiting artists. The theater’s independent spirit—nourished by supporters like Jonathan Demme, who called it “a force for social change disguised as a movie theater”—is reflected in this documentary profile, the latest entry in our Art-House America series. It’s accompanied by an eclectic lineup of specially selected films, which includes a landmark concert documentary, a pair of German New Wave masterpieces, and twenty-first-century art-house gems from Argentina and Romania.
Up Next in Jacob Burns Film Center
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The Great Dictator
Directed by Charles Chaplin • 1940 • United States
Starring Charles Chaplin, Jack Oakie, Paulette GoddardIn his controversial masterpiece THE GREAT DICTATOR, Charlie Chaplin offers both a cutting caricature of Adolf Hitler and a sly tweaking of his own comic persona. Chaplin, in his first pure ...
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Brief Encounter
Directed by David Lean • 1945 • United Kingdom
Starring Celia Johnson, Trevor HowardAfter a chance meeting on a train platform, a married doctor (Trevor Howard) and a suburban housewife (Celia Johnson) begin a muted but passionate, and ultimately doomed, love affair. With its evocatively fog-en...
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Daybreak Express
Directed by D. A. Pennebaker • 1953 • United States
Shot in 1953, though not completed until 1957, DAYBREAK EXPRESS was the first film D. A. Pennebaker made, a mad rush of images of New York City captured from a train and edited to the rhythm of Duke Ellington’s song of the same name. A jazz afi...
