Kinder Kino

Who could have guessed that microcinema was the intersection of the NYRA–New York Post Venn diagram? In an all-caps “EXCLUSIVE” pegged to the soft launch of Low Cinema, the tabloid paid tender ode to Ridgewood’s first new movie theater in nearly a century. The forty-four-seat screening room was founded by John Wilson, Cosmo Bjorkenheim, and Davis Fowlkes, who kicked things off with a double bill co-presented with Urban Omnibus and Romantic Urbanism: the silent short Rube and Mandy at Coney Island (1903) and the Bullock-buttressed, Grant-guaranteed rom-com Two Weeks Notice (2002).

The thematic parallels with the underdog, punching-above-its-weight kino hall were particularly pointed in the latter movie. Sandra Bullock’s lefty legal activist blocks a wrecking ball to save a beloved movie palace, only to become romantically entangled with Hugh Grant’s billionaire developer, who wants to replace a Coney Island community center with condos. A jump-scare cameo from The Donald—directly followed by a Norah Jones Seaport concert— primed the postscreening panel to indulge in some Y2K nostalgia before debating the latest billionaire-backed casino bid for the People’s Playground.

Housing researcher Oksana Mironova, who grew up on the peninsula, invoked the bushy Marxist Marshall Berman in her critique of the proposed plan. Comedian/rom-com scholar Lily Marotta was more Marx Brother than Marx, declaring themself to be “pro-casino”—a Trump-tinged retort that got the biggest laugh of the evening, teasing the panel’s progressive leanings.

Low Cinema presents an unassuming façade to 60th Street, complete with blank white brick, a deli door, and a jerry-rigged wood-and-cinder-block bench—one that Wilson cheerfully admits isn’t technically up to code, though he’s proudly observed neighbors and passersby using it. The inside has a blockbuster bent: Reclaimed relics include commemorative plaques of 1990s A-listers salvaged from a dismantled Hollywood-themed Burger King in Bushwick (RIP) and secondhand auditorium seating sourced from John Wilson–endorsed purveyor SeatsAndChairs.com.

It’s hard not to fall in love with the theater or its bespectacled brigade of developer-defying DIYers, Post-approved accidental urbanists, and code-flouting cinephiles. Even so, a water dispenser labeled “free” water in the lobby stood as a playful reminder that even press privilege has its price.