Terminal Bar

I can't say enough about this fantastic and brilliant film and series. The original Terminal Bar film and the subsequent sequel films are some of the best examples of filmmaking I've ever seen.

The premise is simple, former bartender and manager of the infamous New York City Terminal Bar Sheldon Nadelman tellls stories about his collection of photographs he took of the denizens and derelict customers from his decade long stay at the Terminal Bar. Nadelman tells of how the Terminal Bar began as a primarily Irish American bar and later transformed into the toughest bar in New York.

Nadelman's son Stefan Nadelman directs and animates the photographs, telling the story of this long gone speakeasy with narration, pictures and pitch perfect music.

A book adaptation was later made of Nadelman's photographs. I'd love to see a feature length documentary of the film series with new material. The Terminal Bar was famously captured in a scene in the Martin Scorsese classic film Taxi Driver.

Terminal Bar is a film that's one for the ages.

I Just saw this film at the Hot Docs International Documentary Festival in Toronto - and it blew me away. I have never seen a film use black & white still photography in such a stylistic manner while weaving in color video clips to present such an incredible story. I can't wait to head back to New York to find this place (or its location anyway). Fascinating people, place, music and time period. This film packs a lot into 23 minutes.

The Terminal Bar was one of the toughest bars on Manhattan's 8th Street and for 10 years was owned by barman and manager Sheldon Nadelman, who took more than 2500 photos of his customers. This film looks back on the character and history of the bar through Nadelman's personal reflections and provides an interesting account of the changing culture of the city and the ultimate change in the area to be cleaner but perhaps lacking in the character of those times.

An interesting film this one more than a great one. Using the pictures taken by Nadelman down the years in combination with his memories and commentary this makes for an interesting look at New York when it was worthy of its tough and gritty reputation. This is not to suggest that New York has become a sanitised city in recent years but certainly the characters in this documentary are the tough wise-guys, "fairies", pimps and so on that one pictures when thinking of the city in the 1970's. As such it is interesting to hear these memories and see the images and watch the characters change over the decade in question.

But yet I found myself ending it with a couple of niggles about the delivery and tone of the film. Maybe I expected too much but I didn't think it did as good a job of connecting the memories with new York societal change as I would have liked – but this is perhaps a minor complaint. The bigger complaint was part of the delivery. I really enjoyed the energetic and stylish way that the film was delivered but was I the only one that struggled to hear what was being said? The music is so high compared to the narration that I found it difficult to concentrate on it – particularly when Clifford is narrating in his low, deep voice.

Not perfect then, but certainly worth a look for being an interesting collection of characters and memories.