Some anonymous filmmakers have created Save Coney Island: The Movie. From their YouTube page, where they posted a trailer this week, they describe it as follows: "When Thor Equities, an infamous real-estate company, threatens to build condominiums on Coney Island's core amusements, Amos Wengler, the troubadour, must keep the spirit of Coney Island alive with a song before all the memories fade forever. The life, spirit and essence of Coney Island explode on the screen......

The pigeon keepers of New York have been in the spotlight recently, and now a new JL Aronson documentary, Up on the Roof, looks at the gentrification of Williamsburg through their experiences.Up on the Roof follows several devoted pigeon breeders in one predominantly Latino section of Brooklyn through the rigors and rewards of a quintessential New York tradition. All along the waterfront, and throughout blue collar Brooklyn, pigeon fancying has been an active pastime for......

Richard Sandler, a New York documentarian, has sent along some photographs from his decade-spanning collection. Sandler will also be screening two of his documentaries about the city later this month. The first, Brave New York (watch online), "is a free form documentary that loosely chronicles the last 12 years of intense change in the East Village. From the reopening of a newly curfewed Tompkins Square Park to the destruction of the cherished Loisaida Community Gardens,......

In August of 1974, a 24-year-old Frenchman named Philippe Petit snuck into the World Trade Center, reached the top, and walked across a wire cable that was strung between the Twin Towers. New York watched captivated below. Some fun facts: it took 6 years to plan the stunt, the gap between the towers was 140 feet, and even though it was illegal, charges were dropped and Petit was merely sentenced to entertaining kids in Central......

Tonight Billy Joel performs at Shea Stadium, as part of his "Last Play at Shea" shows (the other is on Friday). Details recently talked to the Piano Man about the stadium, and he told them: "I think it’s kind of strange that in my lifetime I’ve seen a stadium come and go. I remember when Shea was built—it was state-of-the-art, like a big Roman edifice. Now they’re taking it down because it’s out of date.......

The hearing held to Save Coney Island on June 24th was well attended, but lacked some of the area's supportive characters. Rosie Perez, Murray Hill, Dreena De Niro and others were all showing their support in a different way at the (poorly scheduled) premiere of a Lola Starr's short documentary. Starr is currently trying to make her Dreamland Roller Rink a permanent fixture on the island. Below is a video of testimonials by those who......

Born in Munich in 1942, Werner Herzog grew up in a remote mountain village in Bavaria, where he never saw any films, television, or telephones until he was 17. The effects of this isolated childhood can be seen in many of his films, which often focus on the struggles of independent dreamers who deliberately square off against impossible circumstances. Herzog has directed more than 40 films over the course of his career, and although the......

D.W. Young's A Hole in a Fence, the documentary which focuses on Red Hook, has been floating around for a while and is coming back to town this week -- just before the new IKEA opens its doors in the 'nabe. In 46 minutes Young explores the hurdles the neighborhood is facing and "the complicated issues of development, class and identity facing the city's most populous borough." Young urban farmers and graffiti writers are followed......

Last year, after Stanley Bard was ousted by the board as manager of the Hotel Chelsea and replaced with BD Hotels -- who just got ousted themselves, filmmaker Abel Ferrara moved back in to his old digs. The NY Post reports that the move was to help in the making his documentary, Chelsea on the Rocks"I lived on the floor with the ghosts," Ferrara tells Page Six. "I didn't come in with a point to......

Coan Nichols (aka "Buddy") and Rick Charnoski have been making movies together on 8mm film since the late 90s; their main focus being skateboarding. At some point they abandoned their New York City stomping grounds for the warmer weather of the West Coast, but the city is still the inspiration for their latest release. Deathbowl to Downtown chronicles the origin of skating in NYC and is "the first to explore skateboarding’s urban history in-depth." (View......

Deathbowl to Downtown – The Evolution of Skateboarding in New York City will be seeping into theaters starting this summer (with a national release this fall); the film is the first to explore skateboarding’s urban history in Manhattan. Tracing "skating's epochal shift from the parks and pools of the 70's, to ramp skating in the 80's, to the street ascendancy of the 1990's as seen from a New York-centric perspective," it includes footage and interviews......

In 2006, Lou Reed revived his album Berlin by performing it in its entirety with a small orchestra for five sold-out shows at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn. The 1973 album, which riffs on themes of drugs, love and suicide, was a commercial failure when it came out; Lester Bangs described it as “the bastard progeny of a drunken flaccid tumble between Tennessee Williams and Hubert (Last Exit From Brooklyn) Selby, Jr.” But in......

Using a Leica M2 with a 90mm lens, Cuban photographer Alberto “Korda” Díaz snapped the iconic photograph of Ernesto “Che” Guevara during a mass funeral for the victims of a mysterious series of explosions in Havana harbor that killed at least 75 people 1960. The service was held the day after the tragedy, and Korda, who was Castro’s official photographer at the time, managed two photos of Guevara as he briefly stepped onstage to......

Errol Morris in a conversation with Anthony Swofford after the screening of Standard Operating Procedure at the Tribeca Film Festival. Academy Award-winning director Errol Morris was on hand last night for a Tribeca Film Festival screening of his new documentary Standard Operating Procedure, a nuanced exploration of the detainee abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Those familiar with Morris’s innovative oeuvre won’t be surprised to hear that, far from a tendentious indictment of......

Wetlands Preserve, the beloved neo-hippy jam band club down by the Holland Tunnel, has been given a funny film tribute by Dean Budnick, senior editor of Relix magazine. His film Wetlands Preserved features ample archival footage and interviews with artist ranging from Bob Weir to Dave Matthews. The documentary was actually completed two years ago, but it took Budnick forever to find his keys and get out of the apartment. From its opening in 1989......

For two weeks in the winter of 2005, Central Park was filled with 7,500 saffron-paneled gates. The project was a gift from the artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude, who had been trying for four decades to launch the project. Their struggle - and success - comes to the the small screen with tonight's premiere of The Gates on HBO. You can remember those weeks through the second part of the documentary, with almost all New Yorkers......

Director of the legendary hip-hop documentary Style Wars, Tony Silver, died last weekend after battling an irreversible brain condition for several years. Shot in New York City in the early '80s and originally airing on PBS in 1983, his documentary is considered to be the first film about hip-hop culture. While the 70 minutes covers rap and breakdancing, its main focus is on graffiti, which at the time was viewed by some as a groundbreaking......

Shine a Light, the film documenting The Rolling Stones show at Beacon Theater in 2006, is about to hit the big screen. And the really, really big screen. The Martin Scorsese-directed rockumentary will be in both regular and IMAX theaters this April, and it won't be the first time Mick Jagger's lips have reached epic proportions; the band recorded their first IMAX concert in the early '90s. Check out the trailer for the latest one,......

Documentary filmmaker Donny Moss has produced a movie about the carriage-horse trade in New York City called Blinders. It looks to be a revealing take on an iconic feature of the city, and includes original footage as well as documentation of well-publicized accidents and interviews with carriage owners, veterinarians, witnesses to accidents, and anti-carriage activists. Moss is engaged in the film festival application process right now, but has placed a trailer for the movie on......