55 years ago today, the “Film Society of Lincoln Center” was officially born! Happy birthday to us! 🎂🎉🥳
Martin E. Segal was selected as President of the organization and Richard Roud was chosen to continue as the Program Director of the @TheNYFF (then in its sixth year).
Prior to this, with no actual brick-and-mortar location, the film department had been something of a peripatetic entity, organizing events, screenings, lectures, symposia, and educational programs, in addition to the annual @TheNYFF, with its annual costs covered by the Lincoln Center Fund.
“I convinced Schuman that what we really needed, as an initial step toward the integration of film into the Center, was a film department,” Vogel recalls telling @LincolnCenter's then president William Schuman, “[and then] a film department was established, of which I was the head. This film department, it was understood, would begin to develop programs or plans for other things in terms of film at [Lincoln] Center. Now, that means that even at this early stage I already began to [say] to Schuman: ‘Listen. You’ve got these other art forms here—opera, theater, music, whatever—why not film?’ In fact, frankly, speaking for myself, I felt the absence of film from [Lincoln] Center was sort of an example of the kind of cultural conservatism that I really wanted to help change.”
By 1967, as LCPA assessed its finances, Schuman began planning for the department to become something larger that could stand alone.
Thus, two years later, on May 9, 1969 the Film Society of Lincoln Center was officially born.
Our legacy continues to this very day, thanks to every audience member who has visited Film at Lincoln Center over the last 55 years, partaking in our shared sense of collective movie love.
We’ll see you soon today, tomorrow, and over the next 55 years.
filmlinc.org
