Yesterday I received an email update from the good folks at AIVF, who are in the process of moving out of the offices on Hudson Street they have colorfully occupied for years and years. While there were valient efforts to keep hold of the Independent, they ultimately have failed, and AIVF managment states:

Instead we are focusing on transitioning the Independent to new management and securing benefits for AIVF members through sister organizations. In order to keep the Independent as an information resource and voice for the independent community, AIVF has approached potential successor organizations to take over publication—including a combination of print and expanded online resources. The AIVF will be reviewing proposals over the next month and we hope to have a concrete plan for transitioning the Independent in the fall.

Let’s hope that some well-endowed (in the financial sense, of course!) savior will step and save this fine publication. I had a conversation recently with someone (I honestly cannot remember whom) about possible organizations that might want to step in and do this. This person, no doubt a seasoned player in the film world (because these are the only people with whom I deign to associate with ) said that perhaps it would be a good move for the BAM Cinemas to do this. Lincoln Center already has Film Comment and Brooklyn, being the home to many artists and bohemians, would be a perfect home for this important, established publication.

Speaking of Film Comment, I met the lovely Alice Lovejoy, a former editor of the magazine, last Friday night. She happens to be the girlfriend of my pal Noah Shencker, who I met at the life-changing Flaherty Seminar last summer. Anyway, I just wanted to give these two brilliant, funny cinephiles a shout-out. Noah is getting his Ph.D. at USC, focusing on Holocaust testimonies and Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah . He is also assisting one of my favorite documentary scholars, Michael Renov , in putting together a book about my documentary hero, Peter Forgacs , on whom I wrote a Master’s thesis. Alice is working on her Ph.D. in Cinema Studies at Yale, writing a dissertation on Czech cinema. One of her many Film Comment articles can be read here .