Our trip to the movies extends itself with a unique glimpse at the people who have made their lives synonymous with moviegoing, that elite tier of filmgoers known as “cinemaniacs.”

Angela Christlieb and Stephen Kijak’s Cinemania documents the obsessive lifestyle of five bespectacled moviegoers in New York: Jack, Bill, Eric, Harvey, and Roberta. Mordant and confounding, this one-of-a-kind portrait of five individuals who attend two-to-five film screenings per day has achieved cult success for its brazen exploration of cinephiles’ most compulsive tendencies.

While the subjects of Cinemania represent some of the most intense characters among the moviegoing public, their pet peeves and fixations are perhaps shared among audiences worldwide: obsessions over favorite seats, disdain for loud masticators, contempt for digital projection, and heightened FOMO over rare screenings. Yet Christlieb and Kijak are judicious in their filmmaking, attending to the fact that this group’s compulsive behavior and anxious state-of-mind often influences their extreme lifestyle.

“It’s that word obsession that drew me and Angela in. The film isn’t so much about film buffs because that covers such a huge range of people, including the retirees at the Museum of Modern Art. The degree that our five subjects approach cinema… It’s obsessional.” STEPHEN KIJAK

In addition to its colorful cast of characters, Cinemania doubles as a wonderful portrait of New York’s numerous repertory cinemas, many of which look the same despite the fact that this film is on the verge of its 25th anniversary. Scenes at Film Forum, French Institute Alliance Française (now known as L’Alliance New York), and Anthology Film Archives attest to the sure-footed culture of cinephilia that has kept so many of these landmarks alive. There’s even some interviews with then-curator at the Museum of the Moving Image David Schwartz, who is now curating his own tribute to New York’s most hallowed cinemas at The Museum of Modern Art.

An early film for Stephen Kijak and Angela Christlieb, both filmmakers have since developed distinct cinematic careers. After Cinemania, Kijak directed a documentary about the reclusive musician Scott Walker. This film was followed with documentaries about world-famous bands like The Rolling Stones, Backstreet Boys, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and more. Christlieb, who studied with Valie Export and Heinz Emigholz before her stint as Anthology Film Archives’ theater manager in the late ‘90s, returned to her native Germany in 2001. Back in Berlin, she edited films for directors like Andrew Horn and Monika Treut. Her own directorial efforts have premiered at prestigious European film festivals like the Berlinale and Diagonale.

Text written by Nicolas Pedrero-Setzer. Special thanks to Joshua Bogatin for recommending this film.