The feature documentary Searching for Mr. Rugoff is the story of Donald Rugoff, who was the crazy genius behind Cinema 5, the mid-century theater chain and film distribution company. Rugoff was a difficult (some would say impossible) person but was also the man who kicked art films into the mainstream with outrageous marketing schemes and pure bluster. Rugoff’s impact on cinema culture in the United States is inestimable, and his influence on the art film business—from the studio classics divisions to the independent film movement to the rise of the Weinsteins—is undeniable. Yet, mysteriously, Rugoff has become a virtually forgotten figure. The story is told through the eyes of former employee Ira Deutchman, who sets out to find the truth about the man who had such a major impact on his life, and to understand how such an important figure could have disappeared so completely.
Searching for Mr. Rugoff
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OCOpen Caption screening
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35mm
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Searching for Mr. Rugoff
Q&A with Director Ira Deutchman moderated by JBFC Board President Janet Maslin
Tickets: $11 (members), $16 (nonmembers)
"Deutchman has turned out a beautifully structured tale of movie love that's also a fine tribute to his maddening, mercurial, mustard-stained mentor."
"Don Rugoff was one of those film-business visionaries who turned passion into compulsion; he succeeded, and failed, as a result. Yet he had a dream, and Searching for Mr. Rugoff is an infectious salute to what that dream was: a place where cinema could live."
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Q&A with Director Ira Deutchman moderated by JBFC Board President Janet Maslin
Friday, Jul. 25 2025, 7:00
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- Ira Deutchman has been making, marketing and distributing films since 1975, having worked on more than 150 films, including some of the most successful independent films of all time. He was one of the founders of Cinecom and later created Fine Line Features—two companies that were created from scratch and, in their respective times, helped define the independent film business. Among the more than 60 films he acquired and released at Fine Line were Jane Campion’s An Angel at My Table, Gus van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho, Jim Jarmusch’s Night on Earth, Robert Altman’s The Player and Short Cuts, Roman Polanski’s Bitter Moon and Death and the Maiden, Alan Rudolph’s Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, Mike Leigh’s Naked, and the award-winning Hoop Dreams, which in its time was the highest grossing non-music documentary in history. Currently, Deutchman is an independent producer, and a consultant in marketing and distribution of independent films. He is also Professor Emeritus in the School of the Arts at Columbia University, where he has taught since 1987 and was the Chair of the Film Program from 2011-2015.
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