Free Time

You can order a virtual screening of Free Time for just $12, after which you’ll have three days to watch the film, all in an online screening room created just for patrons of the JBFC.

With each screening of Free Time purchased during this period, you’ll provide much-needed support to both the JBFC and Grasshopper Films—who will evenly split the revenue—as we work together to continue bringing our audience exciting new and repertory releases.

Any questions? Check out our Virtual Screening Room FAQ.

About Free Time:

2019. 61 m. Manfred Kirchheimer. Grasshopper Films. US. English. NR.

Manfred Kirchheimer is one of the great masters of the American city symphony, as is clear from films like Stations of the Elevated (1981) and Dream of a City (2018). For his latest work, the 88-year-old Kirchheimer meticulously restored and constructed 16mm black-and-white footage that he and Walter Hess shot in New York between 1958 and 1960. This lustrous evocation of a different rhythm of life captures the in-between moments—kids playing stickball, window washers, folks reading newspapers on their stoops—and the architectural beauty of urban spaces, set to the stirring sounds of Ravel, Bach, Eisler, and Count Basie. The breathtaking footage was shot in several distinct New York neighborhoods including Washington Heights, the Upper West Side, and Hell’s Kitchen, and features impressionistic stops throughout the city, making time for an auto junkyard in Inwood, a cemetery in Queens, and the elegant buildings of the financial district.