Museum of the Moving Image

"The Museum Of The Moving Image in Astoria will be screening 2001: A Space Odyssey on Sunday, July 25th at 12:30pm. Your $25 ticket gets you access to the full museum as well (which is an essential NYC museum bucket list activity). Plus, there are discounts for seniors, students, and kids. Christopher Nolan thinks you should bring your kids." - hannah albertine

"The Jim Henson Exhibition is an ongoing tribute to its namesake’s work on shows like The Muppets, Sesame Street, The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, and more. Be sure to say hello to Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Elmo, Big Bird, and all of their friends (47 puppets are included in a collection of some 300 total artifacts). David Levine's Dissolution, meanwhile, is a new and immersive “jewel-box” sculpture, a “digital zoetrope” displaying a hologram visible from any angle. It's the past—contextualized by MoMI's fabulous permanent exhibit about the history of the moving image—as well as the future, a 20-minute film contrasting analog with digital that's worth seeing for yourself."

"There's so much to do in Astoria that, should you venture out there, it may be difficult to convince you that seeing a movie is one of the essentials. But that's exactly how you'll feel after poking your head into the Museum of the Moving Image, a celebration of cinema so joyfully educational that this writer copped a ticket to a film he'd already seen (the fabulous Passages, for they play new releases in addition to a robust schedule of repertory screenings) just to marvel for a little while longer in the illusion of an image that moves. The space allows for two rotating exhibits to coexist alongside the permanent installations about the art of filmmaking, which not only breaks down the invention of the medium but also allows the visitor to make their way through the postproduction process themselves by playing with scoring and sound editing." - Andrea Whittle, Charlie Hobbs

"Between 1920 and 1933, some of the most successful films of the early 20th century were shot at the Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens, including The Sheik , starring Rudolph Valentino; several Marx Brothers movies; and the first Sherlock Holmes film with sound, The Return of Sherlock Holmes . The concentration of the movie industry in Hollywood, however, led to the decline of the facility. It would later be used mostly for the production of U.S. Army training films. A portion of the old complex has been home to the Museum of the Moving Image since 1988 (from 2008 to 2011 it was closed for a renovation and expansion). The museum keeps alive the legacy of the Astoria Studios with exhibits that reveal the secrets behind the magic of the movies, from the science that makes motion pictures and television possible to the latest developments in makeup, special effects, and computer-generated imagery. More than 400 films are shown in the museum's theater and its smaller screening room each year, including Hollywood classics, foreign films, and new releases."