LOS ANGELES: Daniel Talbot, a force in the independent film world who distributed art house movies and co-founded New York City’s influential Lincoln Plaza Cinema, has died.
Talbot’s death was announced on Friday in a post on the movie theater’s Facebook page. He was in his 90s and had been in declining health in recent months, according to trade publication Variety.
Two weeks ago, it was reported that the theater’s lease was up and it could close in January after operating for nearly four decades. Talbot and his wife and business partner, Toby Talbot, started and ran the six-screen theater tucked into a basement in Manhattan’s Upper West Side neighborhood. The couple would determine which films passed muster, flagging them for wider attention, Toby Talbot said in a recent interview with the website Deadline.
“We acted as kind of first readers. If a film opened at Lincoln Plaza, it had to be worthwhile,” she said.
Daniel Talbot ran the New Yorker Theater in the early 1960s and started the distribution company New Yorker Films in 1965 with “Before the Revolution,” among Bernardo Bertolucci’s earliest films.
“I had no interest in distribution,” Talbot told Variety in 2009. “I made him a very small offer and I got the film, and that was the beginning of New Yorker Films.”
Other releases included Louis Malle’s “My Dinner With Andre" and films by Jean-Luc Godard, Werner Herzog and Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
A memorial service was scheduled Sunday at New York City’s Riverside Memorial Chapel, the chapel said Saturday.
Talbot’s survivors include his wife and three daughters, according to Variety.
Daniel Talbot, influential indie film figure, dies in NYC
Daniel Talbot, influential indie film figure, dies in NYC
Arts festival’s decision to exclude Palestinian author spurs boycott
- A Macquarie University academic who researches Islamophobia and Palestine, Abdel-Fattah responded saying it was “a blatant and shameless act of anti-Palestinian racism and censorship,” with her lawyers issuing a letter to the festival
SYDENY: A top Australian arts festival has seen the withdrawal of dozens of writers in a backlash against its decision to bar an Australian Palestinian author after the Bondi Beach mass shooting, as moves to curb antisemitism spur free speech concerns.
The shooting which killed 15 people at a Jewish Hanukkah celebration at Sydney’s Bondi Beach on Dec. 14 sparked nationwide calls to tackle antisemitism. Police say the alleged gunmen were inspired by Daesh.
The Adelaide Festival board said last Thursday it would disinvite Randa Abdel-Fattah from February’s Writers Week in the state of South Australia because “it would not be culturally sensitive to continue to program her at this unprecedented time so soon after Bondi.”
FASTFACTS
• Abdel-Fattah responded, saying it was ‘a blatant and shameless act of anti-Palestinian racism and censorship.’
• Around 50 authors have since withdrawn from the festival in protest, leaving it in doubt, local media reported.
A Macquarie University academic who researches Islamophobia and Palestine, Abdel-Fattah responded saying it was “a blatant and shameless act of anti-Palestinian racism and censorship,” with her lawyers issuing a letter to the festival.
Around 50 authors have since withdrawn from the festival in protest, leaving it in doubt, local media reported.
Among the boycotting authors, Kathy Lette wrote on social media the decision to bar Abdel-Fattah “sends a divisive and plainly discriminatory message that platforming Australian Palestinians is ‘culturally insensitive.'”
The Adelaide Festival said in a statement on Monday that three board members and the chairperson had resigned. The festival’s executive director, Julian Hobba, said the arts body was “navigating a complex moment.”
a complex and unprecedented moment” after the “significant community response” to the board decision.
In the days after the Bondi Beach attack, Jewish community groups and the Israeli government criticized Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for failing to act on a rise in antisemitic attacks and criticized protest marches against Israel’s war in Gaza held since 2023.
Albanese said last week a Royal Commission will consider the events of the shooting as well as antisemitism and social cohesion in Australia. Albanese said on Monday he would recall parliament next week to pass tougher hate speech laws.
On Monday, New South Wales state premier Chris Minns announced new rules that would allow local councils to cut off power and water to illegally operating prayer halls.
Minns said the new rules were prompted by the difficulty in closing a prayer hall in Sydney linked to a cleric found by a court to have made statements intimidating Jewish Australians.
The mayor of the western Sydney suburb of Fairfield said the rules were ill-considered and councils should not be responsible for determining hate speech.
“Freedom of speech is something that should always be allowed, as long as it is done in a peaceful way,” Mayor Frank Carbone told Reuters.
