The Dryden Theatre is located at the

George Eastman Museum The George Eastman Museum, also referred to as ''George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film'', the world's oldest museum dedicated to photography and one of the world's oldest film archives, opened to the public in 1949 in ...

, near

Rochester, New York Rochester () is a City (New York), city in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York, the county seat, seat of Monroe County, New York, Monroe County, and the fourth-most populous in the state after New York City, Buffalo, New York, Buffalo, ...

in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. The theater is the primary exhibition space for showcasing the museum's collection of motion pictures, recent restorations, as well as traveling exhibitions and premieres of new foreign and independent films. To date, more than 16,000 film titles have been screened at the theater. The Dryden Theatre was constructed in 1951 after a donation from George and Ellen Dryden, George Eastman's niece. The first film to be shown at the Dryden was

Jean Renoir Jean Renoir (; 15 September 1894 – 12 February 1979) was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent film, silent era to the end of the 1960s. ...

’s silent film ''

Nana Nana, Nanna, Na Na or NANA may refer to: People and fictional characters * Nana (given name), including a list of people and characters with the given name * Nana (surname), including a list of people and characters with the surname * Nana ( ...

'' (1924). The museum's founding film curator James Card (1915–2000) was a pioneer in the archival world and a close friend and confidant of

Henri Langlois Henri Langlois (; 13 November 1914 – 13 January 1977) was a French film archivist and cinephile. A pioneer of film preservation, Langlois was an influential figure in the history of cinema. His film screenings in Paris in the 1950s are often c ...

of the

Cinémathèque Française The Cinémathèque Française (), founded in 1936, is a French non-profit film organization that holds one of the largest archives of film documents and film-related objects in the world. Based in Paris's 12th arrondissement, the archive offers ...

in Paris. Together, they helped contribute to the appreciation of film as an art form. As of 2021, the Dryden Theatre is one of only a handful in the world certified to project

nitrate film Nitrocellulose (also known as cellulose nitrate, flash paper, flash cotton, guncotton, pyroxylin and flash string, depending on form) is a highly flammable compound formed by nitrating cellulose through exposure to a mixture of nitric acid and ...

and annually hosts the Nitrate Picture Show, a film festival devoted to screening original nitrate film prints. The George Eastman Museum's renovation projects will temporarily shut the Dryden Theatre by mid-October 2019.

References

External links

Official Website
Cinemas and movie theaters in New York (state) Tourist attractions in Monroe County, New York Culture of Rochester, New York Film archives in the United States {{US-theat-struct-stub