Purple Night
[10/26/2026]
Recap of The Downtown Festival 2026
The Downtown Festival returned to Lower Manhattan for its third edition this October, bringing together independent film, art, and music across generations of New York’s downtown scene. Founded by filmmaker Rebekah Sherman-Myntti and programmed with Briana Burston, the artistled festival has emerged as an alternative forum for a cultural community whose boundaries have always been porous.
At Roxy Cinema, the program ranged from Paul Schrader’s The Basics of Philosophy, a meditation on guilt and the past, and Ethan Hawke’s Chelsea Walls, a portrait of artistic lives at the legendary hotel, to Alexandra Cabral’s The Story of Eve, following an aging film star’s retreat into isolation. Archival works by Michel Auder and Paul Tschinkel revisited an earlier downtown New York.
Elsewhere in the program, Michael M. Bilandic’s Cabaret Boys, shot by Sean Price Williams and featuring Owen Kline, Abel Ferrara, and Larry Clark, made its world premiere, while a selection of music videos curated by Rebekah Campbell considered the form as cinema in its own right. At James Fuentes Gallery, new works by Andrew Norman Wilson and Jonah Freeman were accompanied by a conversation with critic Carlos Valladares. The festival also paid tribute to the late No Wave filmmaker Amos Poe with the world premiere of Amos Poe: Unmade.
Beyond the film screenings, a series of conversations, performances, and parties extended the festival well into the night, tracing the less visible intersections of the city’s art, film, and music scenes. From opening parties at 100 Feast & Lounge, Bayard Country Club, and The River to a kinetic closing party presented by The Hancock in a Chinatown loft, the festival offered a paean to the irreverent underground that continues to animate New York.
Text by Anfisa Vrubel
Photos by Matt Weinberger, Sean Rozario, and Sam Carrey
