The archive · Content & Film · Product decision · 2024
Metrograph cinema launches The Metrograph, a biannual print magazine for film culture
The iconic Chinatown, New York cinema extends its curation into print: long-form interviews, visual portfolios, essays and technician portraits twice a year.
Metrograph
What it had to solve
The Metrograph, an iconic independent cinema in Chinatown, New York, had built its name on a distinctive curated program. Rather than leave long-form film culture to a shrinking print-magazine field, the cinema decided to publish its own print magazine under its own name, a physical extension of its curatorial taste.
How it works
The Metrograph is an iconic independent cinema in Chinatown, New York, whose brand is built on what it programs and publishes around film. In late 2024 it went further and became a publisher itself, announcing The Metrograph, a biannual print magazine produced by the cinema.
The magazine's content mirrors the cinema's curatorial mix: long-form interviews with cinematic icons, visual portfolios, essays from leading figures in the art and literary worlds, and intimate portraits of film technicians at work. Issue one launched in December 2024 as a print object under the cinema's own name.
The move turned the cinema's taste into a product that exists off-screen, a title to subscribe to, collect and keep, at a moment when film magazines were closing. The D&AD awards archive keeps a case page for The Metrograph in its Magazine & Newspaper Design category; it publishes no response figures, so the case rests on the idea of the venue as publisher.
Why it lands
- The cinema's real asset was never just its screens but its judgment, and a magazine let that judgment travel beyond the box office.
- The editorial mix pairs icons with technicians, glamour with craft, the same two registers as the cinema's programming, so the magazine reads as the venue itself.
- Print made the offering scarce and physical at a moment when film magazines were shutting down, giving loyal audiences something to own.
- Producing the magazine in-house kept the editorial voice continuous with the cinema rather than licensing the brand to an outside publisher.
What it did
The magazine gave the cinema a second venue for its taste: the curation audiences trusted on screen became a physical print object to buy, keep and read. The D&AD awards archive keeps the publication's case page in its Magazine & Newspaper Design category; no sales or readership figures are published there, so the documented result is the product itself.
What you can take
A venue's taste can be its product line: when curation is the brand, print gives the audience a physical object that carries the institution beyond its walls.
Since then
Issue one of The Metrograph arrived in December 2024 and the publication continued as a biannual title from the New York cinema. The D&AD awards archive keeps the case page under Magazine & Newspaper Design and publishes no sales or readership figures, so the documented outcome is the product: an independent cinema whose curation became a print publication of its own.
Sources
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