Jack Goelman

The name of Jack Goelman calls in mind immediately Cinema 16, the organization that promoted in New York the experimental films of Maya Deren, Stan Brakhage and all the other enthusiasts of the 40's and 50's. Jack worked closely with Marcia and Amos Vogel, the founders of Cinema 16.

Provincetown Playhouse, the first place with Cinema 16 screenings
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIlzxTewRuo)

And it was not only about the New York school of experimental movie: Cinema 16 has actually been the promoter of hundreds of independent filmmakers of all sorts from Germany and Soviet Union, France and Great Britain, from all over Europe, South America, Middle East. Cinema 16 has set the standard for what is called an arthouse and a film club.

The Central Needle Trades Auditorium, one of the Cinema 16 venues
(http://books.google.com/books?id=Ivmisn4Rm_8C&pg=PA71&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=3#v=onepage&q&f=false)

There were presentations each Wednesday, and the rest of the week was devoted to reviewing and selecting the movies. It was not easy task to decide on five or six movies, each one of ten or twenty minutes, because they had to fit somehow together.

A certificate of quality was attached to each selected movie
(http://books.google.com/books?id=Ivmisn4Rm_8C&pg=PA71&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=3#v=onepage&q&f=false)

Jack Goelman had joined Amos Vogel after the war. He was by that time a youngster, crazy about indie movies. Cinema 16 was fighting with the lack of money, and Jack started without payment. However, as a demobilized GI he got the financial support to work there and to study also cinematography.

But this had been long, long time ago. I met Jack first time in December 1999. I had just arrived at New York the previous day. I was naturally tired with the jet-lag and all that stuff, but I had to go to the Museum of Natural History. There was an exhibition of butterflies there, in a pavilion that was recreating their natural habitat, and all people I knew were very excited. No possibility of refusal from my part: I was told that I would meet there with family and some new friends. The new friends were Jack and Ellen, his wife, along with Ellen's mother. I enjoyed immediately his ways. Jack was a witty guy, with quick responses and a good humor, seemingly having an European kind of being interested in the world. And Ellen was an extremely gentle lady.

Jack had a superb command of French, which was fortunate, as my command of English was far from satisfactory those times (not that now it would be perfect, but anyway), so mixing the two languages was fine for me.

We met in several occasions, then I moved to DC area. I was not coming to New York very often, and every visit had a pretty tight schedule. We were talking by phone now and then.

Once I came especially for him. There was an event organized at the Gramercy Theater, with the Vogel husbands and Jack presenting some short movies from the 40s.

Gramercy Theater, 127 East 23rd St. at Lexington Ave.
(http://twi-ny.com/twiny.02.28.07.html)

I knew somehow the neighborhood, with the Gramercy Park, small, with a Victorian demeanor, hidden behind closed fences, and with the theater on the 23rd Street, only the theater was always closed, except for rare occasions. Now it was one of these occasions.

I was together with my sister Pola and Wolfgang, her husband. We entered the main floor area. There was a numerous attendance. It was a wonderful applause as Amos Vogel and wife Marcia, together with Jack came in front of us. The event's host presented them briefly, then Amos and Jack talked about the documentaries that were selected for screening. There was a French one, then two American. All of them were from the second half of the 40's.

It was the French documentary that impressed me the most: Le Sang des Bêtes, made by Georges Franju in 1949. Very strong, almost unbearable... but it deserves a special post here in the blog. I will talk about it very soon, as I found it also on youTube.

Gramercy Theater, socializing area downstairs
(http://www.rugrag.com/post/Gramercy-Theater2c-NYC.aspx)

After the screening we went downstairs and stood a bit at the bar there, talking about the movies we had seen. Jack was making a parallel between the subject of the French movie (about the abattoirs on the outskirts of Paris) and a feeling he had experienced once in Chicago, as it happened to pass by the big slaughterhouse there and the memory of the documentary of Franju became overwhelming.

We kept contact after that memorable event, especially by phone. His wife Ellen passed away in 2009 and this was hard. He is very sad with this loss, but anytime when it happens to come to indie movies he has again the huge enthusiasm that I know.

• Film as a Subversive Art
• Dušan Makavejev
• La Croisière Jaune, 1933
• La Croisière Noire, 1926
• Le Sang des Bêtes, 1949
• Kevin Brownlow
• Grass: A Nation's Battle for Life (1925)
• Mahler auf der Couch (Germany, 2010)

(Filmofilia)