What’s Happening? Film Series: Fanfare for the Common Man

To mark the semiquincentennial celebration of the United States, the What’s Happening? film series will be exploring that essential statement of our Constitution: We the People.  What is our national identity today, and how did we get here? 

To answer that question, the first program in the series will look at a group of remarkable Americans through the lens of the library’s historic 16mm film collection.  We will screen a rare print of Holy Outlaw, Lee Lockwood and Don Lenzer’s 1970 profile of Daniel Berrigan, the poet-priest arrested in 1968 for burning draft cards.  Also in this program: Marva (1979), on educator Marva Collins who reimagined what was possible for Chicago school children; An Interview with Bruce Gordon (1963), with a 22-year-old organizer for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee; and Crystal Lee Jordan (1975), a documentary featuring the infamous union organizer who inspired the feature film Norma Rae.

What's Happening is a film series dating back to 1972 that centers on new and historic films in the Reserve Film and Video Collection at the Library for the Performing Arts. Screening a selection of curated titles from the collection—including documentaries, animations, and even films never commercially released—the series provides information on timely and public topics, in order to spark conversation with the audience and with special guest panelists.

Photo Credit: NYPL Videotape Workshop Circa 1971; taken by NYPL staff

SEATING POLICY | Programs are free and open to all, but registration is requested. Check-in line forms 45 minutes before the advertised start time. Registered guests are given priority check-in 15 to 30 minutes before start time. Five minutes before the advertised start time, all seats are released, regardless of registration, to our patrons in the stand-by line. If you arrive after the program starts, you will be seated at the discretion of our front-of-house staff.

STANDBY LINE | If registration is sold out or has ended, do not fret! We welcome you to come to the Library regardless of registration status and wait in our standby line, which forms 45 minutes before the advertised start time. Five minutes before the program starts, all remaining seats are released. While this is not guaranteed, we will do our best to get you into any of our programs.

ASSISTIVE LISTENING AND ASL | ASL interpretation and real-time (CART) captioning available upon request. Please submit your request at least two weeks in advance by emailing accessibility@nypl.org.

BRUNO WALTER POLICY | Please note that any unoccupied seat will be released five minutes before the show begins and holding seats for anyone beyond that is prohibited. There is no food or drink allowed inside the venue.

AUDIO/VIDEO RECORDING | Programs may be photographed and recorded by and at the discretion of the Library for the Performing Arts and will post signs indicating as such. If you would prefer your image not be captured, please let us know and we can seat you accordingly. Attending any program indicates your consent to being filmed/photographed and your consent to the use of your recorded image for any and all purposes of the New York Public Library.

PRESS | Please send all press inquiries to Alex Teplitzky at alexteplitzky@nypl.org. Please note that all recording, including professional video recordings, are prohibited without expressed consent from the Library.