Lost Bohemia
Jun 22 - Jun 28, 2012
(Josef Birdman Astor, USA, 2011, 35mm, 77 min)
A quarter century ago, photographer Josef Birdman Astor took up residence in a living museum. The studio apartments above Carnegie Hall housed artists and teachers of all degrees of fame, from an 85-year-old ballerina who practiced in the stairwell, to Norman Mailer to Marilyn Monroe. Shortly after Astor moved in, though, the Carnegie Hall Corporation announced its intention to turn the apartments into offices, and began evicting its elderly tenants. Astor’s artful protest was to film his neighbors and collect vintage footage of the space he called home. Eight years later, his memories—both personal and handed down—are laid out in this tribute to a hall which had no equal, and to the lifestyles of the artists who lived there.
