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Photo from June]
As previously reported, the recently sold Webster Hall is expected to close in early August ... so that new owners Brooklyn Sports and Entertainment along with AEG-backed The Bowery Presents can begin renovations at the landmarked music venue on 11th Street between Third Avenue and Fourth Avenue.
Now, a group of filmmakers are hoping to make a documentary on the club's final month.
Here's their pitch via
Kickstarter:
Since 1886 Webster Hall has stood as a gathering place ... cultivating a welcoming environment that included anyone from the mainstream, fringe, underground, or anywhere in between to congregate in the same place at the same time.
On August 9th, 2017 Webster will be closing its doors for renovations. In 2018 it will reopen under corporate management. The Producers of this short wish to make a feature-length film documenting the last month of Webster’s current incarnation in an attempt to preserve its vibe.
You can read more about the project and it goals as well as watch a short at
Kickstarter.
The filmmakers have been working at Webster Hall as stage hands since early last year.
"When we discovered that one of the city's last original music venues would be shutting its doors for a corporate clean-up, we were shocked to learn how uninformed both the Webster Hall staff and its neighbors were about the transition," Sanford Jackson, one of the documentarians, said via an email. "After speaking intimately with the staff about the upcoming changeover, we felt it necessary to utilize our talents as filmmakers to document a piece that will genuinely capture what Webster Hall represents within the East Village community and the city's rich nightlife history entirely."
And what have they learned so far during filming?
"One of the more universal themes we've found when talking to staff at Webster Hall is its sheer diversity in both clientele and its staff. On a single night you might expect a children's story book play in the basement, a death metal band in the studio, and an LGBT club night in the ballroom. Thousands of people under the same roof at the same time for remarkably different reasons," said Jackson. "That said, the stories we've heard were really just snippets of a larger tale — a simple introduction to the menagerie of bacchanalia teeming in the memory banks of it's diverse neighborhood and it's employees. We're hoping to capture as much of that as possible with this doc."