Cinema Arts Center Re-Opens “Woke” with “Political Extremism” Program

By Chris O’Neill

After 2 ½ years closed due to the Covid pandemic - and then extended delays to re-open - the Cinema Arts Center in Huntington finally re-opened last month, with a notably leftist selection of films – including the widely-panned films “Bros” and “Battlefield” - and an upcoming two-day “woke” political program on “Right-wing Extremism” in America.

The Extremism program will be held on November 4th and 5th and will include films on “radicalization in America, hate speech in media…, bioethics, right-wing extremism, women’s rights….., vaccine misinformation, and Internet radicalization…,” according to a statement from the Center.

The Center's "Extremism" program will feature two films: “White Noise” (2020) and “Personhood” (2019), which “explore the topics of right-wing extremist influencers, and the policing of pregnant women in America,” according to the Center.

The Center will host several seminars around the films, including the producers and directors of the films, and left-wing authors and journalists from media groups such as the Huffington Post.

The Center’s Extremism Conference is being held, coincidentally, on the weekend right before the November elections.

“It is vital our community understands the implications of extremism and its destructive consequences,” stated Jacquelyn Strayer, a member of the Center’s Board of Trustees.

The Center is taxpayer supported, with a very below-market lease (approximately $3,300 per month) of Town of Huntington public facilities, and additional direct taxpayer subsidies to the facility. The Center has three theaters, a Lobby, and a 1,200 square foot restaurant and conference space where the Center serves food and alcoholic drinks.

Film critic, political pundit and author John Podhoretz once said, “I look at 'The New York Review of Books.' It's what it has been for 35 or 40 years, which is a highly sophisticated vehicle for anti-American self-hatred.”

One hopes that the Cinema Arts Center is not headed down that same path.