Author: Ballantine, Frank

Publication Year: 1981

Media Type: Report

Summary:

History and development of the Astoria Motion Picture and Television Center located in Astoria, Queens. The Center is the only American facility outside the Los Angeles film complex which has both the capacity and the purpose of providing interior staging grounds for an entire feature film.

Abstract:

History and development of the Astoria Motion Picture and Television Center located in Astoria, Queens. The Center is the only American facility outside the Los Angeles film complex which has both the capacity and the purpose of providing interior staging grounds for an entire feature film.

Three subway stops from Manhattan, amid the low, densely built suburb of Astoria in Queens, a nonprofit foundation has been operating the East Coast's largest film studio. The Astoria Motion Picture and Television Center is the only American facility outside the Los Angeles film complex which has both the capacity and the purpose of providing interior staging grounds for an entire feature film.

Astoria's 26,000 square foot main stage, offering forty feet of air space, has regularly housed feature film production since 1978. Demand for the facility has often outstripped the studio's capacity. Four months of filming by The Wolfen forced Woody Allen to look elsewhere for interior space to film Stardust Memories. Milos Forman's Ragtime also tops a growing list of films which have been unable to use the studio. Paul Newman's controversial Fort Apache: The Bronx, and Eyewitness, starring William Hurt, coordinated their production schedules in order to use Astoria simultaneously.

In January of 1977, The Astoria Motion Picture and Television Foundation was created by New York film industry professionals. The Foundation's capital was approximately $60,000 collected from New York's film craft unions and supply houses at a meeting one month earlier. The Foundation's main asset was a short-term lease from New York City for fourteen empty, vandalized buildings which were knee-deep in rubble. The Astoria Studio's resurrection as the most popular studio for feature film makers working in New York exemplifies flexible use of nonprofit definition.

CONTENTS
Early history: 1920-1970.
Downtime and determination: Ad Hoc experiments 1970-1976.
Forming the nonprofit coalition.
Toward a full service studio.
Bibliography.

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