{"id":358255,"date":"2026-09-27T18:34:50","date_gmt":"2026-09-27T18:34:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/358255\/"},"modified":"2026-09-27T18:34:50","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T18:34:50","slug":"a-cinema-paradiso-in-queens-faces-an-uncertain-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/358255\/","title":{"rendered":"A Cinema Paradiso in Queens Faces an Uncertain Future"},"content":{"rendered":"

The whooshing of airplanes landing at Kennedy Airport. The thumping beat of a nearby house party. The rhythmic squawking of sea gulls. It may sound like an experimental John Cage composition<\/a>, but this strange urban symphony is just the built-in soundtrack at the Arverne Cinema\u2019s outdoor theater in the Rockaways.<\/p>\n

Since its founding in 2021, the cinema has evoked the fuzzy nostalgia of a drive-in theater, a rare kind of space in contemporary New York. While many go to the movies to escape, the Arverne is where one goes to enter the realm of a film without losing connection with the world outside.<\/p>\n

Just beyond the edges of the screen, one can see machinery from a concrete plant. Moviegoers can taste the sea-salted air. The ground beneath their chairs is gritty with sand. Bugs crawl across the screen \u2014 accidental extras adding tiny subplots to the film\u2019s narrative.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere have been raccoons,\u201d said Leah Giblin, one of the theater\u2019s regulars. She loves how \u201cthe natural and industrial environment\u201d interplays with whatever is screening, she said, and is especially enamored with the leafy tree that stands conspicuously to the right of the screen.<\/p>\n

\u201cHaving the willow tree just breathe into the whole night \u2014 I never get tired of it,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

Crystal Moselle<\/a>, an independent film director who has frequented the cinema, expressed a similar sentiment. \u201cThere\u2019s something about being in the heat, in the outdoors, with people,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s sad to think of that part being taken away.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true: The sand-swept cinema paradiso at the edge of New York is facing a hazy future.<\/p>\n

Its landlord, John Quadrozzi Jr., a third-generation Rockaway-ite who also owns the property that the concrete plant sits on, has let the cinema\u2019s operators use its current lot for half a decade.<\/p>\n

Sam Fleischner, who founded the Arverne Cinema, said, \u201cWe basically pay the property taxes and the water bills.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Mr. Quadrozzi now says he is \u201clooking to maybe do something else\u201d with the outdoor space, adding that he\u2019s open to possibly offering the theater a nearby temporary site. The Arverne also has an indoor cinema, which will remain operational for now. But Mr. Fleischner has decided that he will seek a new, more permanent home for the theater altogether.<\/p>\n

From the start, the beachy cinema was imbued with a D.I.Y. spirit, and a sense of ephemerality.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t imagine that it would last this long,\u201d said Courtney Muller, a co-founder, with Mr. Fleischner, of the annual Rockaway Film Festival<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mr. Fleischner built the Arverne\u2019s outdoor theater with the help of Rockaway residents, constructing a fence with boardwalk planks salvaged from Hurricane Sandy and covering much of the lot with sand from Breezy Point on the peninsula\u2019s western edge.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt became a local team effort on Rockaway,\u201d Mr. Fleischner said. \u201cLocal electricians, plumbers, builders \u2014 they all came out to help us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Approaching the outdoor theater, the first thing one sees is a shabby, small white building with two teal signs \u2014 one reads \u201cArverne\u201d and the other, \u201cCinema.\u201d The structure is a former funeral home, which Mr. Fleischner turned into a projection room.<\/p>\n

In the late 2010s, New York cinephiles weathered the losses<\/a> of institutional art-house and independent cinemas such as the Sunshine Cinema, Lincoln Plaza Cinemas and the Beekman Theater. But as a vanguard of young indie cinemas like Metrograph<\/a> and the Roxy<\/a> began to lead a renaissance in downtown Manhattan, the rise of the Arverne Cinema gave the Rockaway Peninsula its own taste of art house.<\/p>\n

The outdoor theater fits around 300 people, with tickets going for $10 each. The cinema\u2019s biggest annual event has been the Rockaway Film Festival, but it has also hosted other screenings, such as a selection of films for Earth Day and a local filmmaker series. Part of the mission has been to introduce people to new or experimental cinema while also luring them in with recognizable names, Ms. Muller said. In 2023, the theater paired Disney\u2019s \u201cFantasia\u201d with shorts by the abstract animator Oskar Fischinger<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The theater grew in 2024, when Mr. Fleischner took over the former taproom of a brewery just one lot over to build the indoor theater that will remain in use for a while longer, even as he plans to move out of the outdoor space in October.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, the festival returned with showings of Marnie Ellen Hertzler\u2019s \u201cEternity One\u201d and John Wilson\u2019s \u201cThe History of Concrete.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Wilson said that the venue\u2019s location, in the \u201cominous\u201d shadows of a concrete plant, made it the ideal setting to show his film.<\/p>\n

Ms. Moselle, who fondly recalled heading to a beach rave after one of her first cinema visits, mourned that the outdoor theater is about to fade to black.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now in New York, there\u2019s cinemas closing left and right, and Rockaway still has one of the few true open-air cinema spaces left, where it becomes a special moment every summer to go out there and watch movies outdoors with people,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s something that feels different about being under the stars instead of being confined in freezing air conditioning.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The whooshing of airplanes landing at Kennedy Airport. The thumping beat of a nearby house party. The rhythmic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":358256,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,56,63,122,124,123,133457,86658],"class_list":["post-358255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news","tag-rockaway-peninsula-queens","tag-theaters-buildings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358255\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/358256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}