Free Outdoor Cinema at Socrates Sculpture Park on Wednesday Nights

There may be endless choices for seeing free cinema outdoors during the summer in New York City, but there’s nothing quite like what they do at Socrates Sculpture Park.  For fourteen years Socrates, taking advantage of its open space on the waterfront and its residence in the City’s most diverse borough, has hosted the popular Outdoor Cinema, the Annual Festival of International Film, Music, Dance and Food.

Here you get a selection of films from all over the world – that even you, film buff, have probably never seen – chosen by the esteemed Museum of the Moving Image and Rooftop Films.  If that isn’t enough, Socrates brings in locally based food vendors and performers, further enhancing your experience of the myriad cultures making themselves at home in Queens.

Tonight, weather permitting, check out documentary Senna from Director Asif Kapadia (2010), the exciting story of Ayrton Senna, the enigmatic race car driver who was not afraid to live his convictions.  Next Wednesday Socrates features Mamoru Hosoda’s Summer Wars (2009), winner of the Japan Academy Prize for Animation, about what happens when a teenage math whiz discovers a virtual world of avatars.

The delicious food for sale is part of a larger project called Civic Action, which engages artists from a variety of disciplines to envision possibilities for the waterfront of Queens.  Rirkrit Tiravanija, a New York-based artist of Argentine descent widely known for staging events that bring together audiences in common activities, has created a structure providing a flexible space for food distribution and social interaction.  Tamales thoughtfully served.

The films are shown Wednesday nights at sundown through August 22, with a rain date of August 29.  Bring your blanket, towel, mat or chair and settle in for an evening of cinematic, culinary and musical stimulation.  The films are free and the food is affordable, usually $7 – $12.