The Blue Balcony

The Blue Balcony The Blue Balcony is a ciné-sculpture built in Petit Versailles Community Garden by the artist consortium et al. of Parks,
Materials for the Arts; NYC Dept.

Guests are invited to enter during nightly film screenings and weekend matinees. The sculpture's interior references the atmospheric movie palaces of the 1920s' possessing a vaulted ceiling constellated with specks of light and walls doubling as façade scenery. The effect gives the impression of being in the open air of an unearthly place. Ambient colored cove lighting will be left on during the f

eature, as was often the practice in the atmospheric cinemas, and will change correspondingly with the tenor of the film. The three tiers of seats accommodate an audience of 14 who face two large panes of glass, and which look out onto the rippling leaves in the community garden below. Thematically the balcony is decorated with allusions to Maurice Maeterlinck's symbolist fairytale The Blue Bird, as well as to the no longer extant labyrinth of Louis XIV's Gardens of Versailles, and the 1924 silent cubist film L'Inhumaine. Featuring Georgette Leblanc as a vampish chanteuse at home in the geometric set designed by the modernist architect Robert Mallet-Stevens.

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In the same way that plot twists shake movie viewers out of a self-shrouding world* to reveal what was hitherto taken as natural is in fact constructed, The Blue Balcony undertakes with measured slowness to perform a similar sleight of hand! The projected image that audiences are accustomed to seeing on silver screens will be permanently deferred during the duration of a visit to the balcony. The audience will still be able to hear the now disembodied soundtrack, but instead of finding an image that matches there is only surface. Each film frame is mapped into sections and an algorithm is used to process the levels of luminosity. So as to disperse the approximate quantity of light over the walls for each instant of light a frame would naturally provoke in a normal movie theatre setting— what is left is then shadows which are an illusion for what is missing. This chiasmus turns the black box cinema on its head, thus extinguishing the delivery of attention en masse to a center. Untethering the audience's eyes from their service to the image to do little, perhaps, but tarry.

*Siegfried Kracauer's description of detective novels "The Hotel Lobby" in The Mass Ornament

LPV events are made possible by Allied Productions, Inc., Green Thumb/NYC Dept. of Cultural Affairs, NYC Dept. of Sanitation & NYC Board of Education. Film & Exhibition support from The New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

Here is an example of the lights while a film plays. This is the opening of James Bidgood's 'Pink Narcissus.'
11/19/2014

Here is an example of the lights while a film plays. This is the opening of James Bidgood's 'Pink Narcissus.'

11/15/2014
03/30/2013

ONE WEEK LEFT ! To catch one of our nightly sans-screenings at the Balcony before the wrecking ball strikes. Closing reception April 6th. More details to follow soon.

03/15/2013

Thank you everyone who attended last night's reception ! And there is more to come. Programing will continue until the 31st March (with a possible extension into April). More events will be posted soon.

03/11/2013

Located in Manhattan's East Village, the Blue Balcony Cinema is New York's latest art house cinema which opened in early-2013. It is a cine-sculpt...

03/10/2013
03/10/2013
03/10/2013

Address

247 E 2nd Street
New York, NY
10009

Opening Hours

Monday 7:45pm - 11:30pm
Tuesday 7:45pm - 11:30pm
Wednesday 7:45pm - 11:30pm
Thursday 7:45pm - 11:30pm
Friday 7:45pm - 11:30pm
Saturday 7:45pm - 11:30pm
Sunday 7:45pm - 11:30pm

Telephone

(315) 878-6034

Website

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