Free Time

In the tradition of New York’s greatest street photographers, Manny Kirchheimer’s FREE TIME is a new film based on lustrous B&W footage he and Walter Hess shot throughout the city from 1958-1960. New York’s stately architectural beauty contrasts with rough and raw scenes of kids playing stickball, window washers balancing precariously, and stoop-sitters reading the paper or daydreaming. The ways in which life in Washington Heights differs from Hell’s Kitchen, the Upper West Side, or the Financial District are captured with a sensitive, loving eye and an ear for the musical rhythms of city life. Complementing FREE TIME is Rudy Burckhardt’s classic UNDER THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE: Early 1950s Brooklyn is both majestic and grubby, dangerous and exhilarating – but never more so than when a gaggle of boys strip off their clothes and dive into the East River for a swim.