Long Island's Cinematic Moment
Come talk movies with us this Sunday at Arts Below Sunrise — April 26, 10am to 5pm in the Hewlett-Woodmere Public Library parking lot.
Come Find Us at Arts Below Sunrise
Arts Below Sunrise is back this Sunday, April 26. The Cognitive Film Society will be there — folding table, all day, 10am to 5pm, in the Woomdere Education Center parking lot at 1125 Broadway. We have a lot to celebrate, and a lot to be grateful for.
On the Front Page
Earlier this month, the Long Island Herald put the Cognitive Film Society on the front page. We are grateful for Melissa Berman’s wonderful article about our screenings and partnership with the Hewlett-Woodmere Public Library.
In an era when most of what any of us reads is filtered through algorithms that couldn’t tell Hewlett from Hempstead, local news is a critical lifeline to what really matters. After all, local community is the only kind there is.
The Five Towns is parents coaching Little League. Neighbors in line at the deli. Commuters on the LIRR platform in the morning. The faces you see at the school play, then later that week reaching for the same bag of dumplings at Trader Joe's.
And more of them are telling us they’re excited about the movies!
Independent film societies, independent newspapers and local arts festivals are all in the same business — we’re all seeking to bring people together through common interests and good neighborliness.
At the Folding Table
Sunday is our way of saying thank you in person. We want to continue our conversation with our neighbors about the movies.
Last year you told us your Four Favorites:
This year we want to hear about your guilty pleasures. Your favorite directors. The best film you have seen this year — new or old. The one you can’t stop thinking about. The one you want everyone else to see.
Come find us. Tell us what you want on the big screen. Tell us what we should be doing next.
There is a lot to talk about. On Sunday, June 28th we will screen Richard Linklater’s 1993 classic Dazed and Confused at the Gold Theater — a film that looks back at the class of ‘76, just as the class of ‘26 gets set to graduate.
This classic film launched the careers of Matthew McConaughey, Ben Affleck, Parker Posey, Joey Lauren Adams and has one of the best soundtracks of all time.
We hope you can join us for the party! It be a lot cooler if you did…
Fall 2026
We’ve also begun planning our Fall Season!
On Sunday, September 27 we open at the Gold Theater with Sydney Pollack’s The Way We Were — Streisand and Redford at their peak.
We hope you’ll join us for all those misty, watercolored memories.
And later this fall, in partnership with the Metropolitan Opera, and the Hewlett-Woodmere Public Library we are planning to screen the Met’s production of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay at the Gold Theater — the first opera in our history
Based on Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, the opera tells the story of two cousins who create the comic book industry, while living through the horrors of WWII. In our review of the Met’s production of Kavalier & Clay last year we found it to be “the most powerful new American stage production since Hamilton”
We are so excited to bring the Metropolitan Opera to the Five Towns, and are already planning a special event with our partners at the library this Fall to properly celebrate.
Our Friends in Malverne
Our friends at the Malverne Cinema & Art Center are getting close. Nick Hudson and Maria Dente’s nonprofit restoration of the 1947 theater on Hempstead Avenue continues, and we have been reporting on it since last summer. The wall between theaters three and four came down in January. The original cement stage, hidden behind movie screens for decades, is exposed for the first time since Harry Truman was in the White House.
When the Malverne opens, we will be there. We will help program the repertory side. We will show up for the ribbon cutting. Nick and Maria are building a home — not just for Malverne, but for every moviegoer on the South Shore who has been waiting for a theater like this.
This is the best moment for cinema on Long Island in a generation, and our neighbors keep proving it.
Come find us Sunday at Arts Below! We can’t wait to talk about the movies!