Every year there are rumors that Coney Island as we know it is about to die, and every year the amusement park in Brooklyn gets a reprieve. This time, however, things do look grim: Astroland, which occupies three acres in the heart of Coney Island, closed for good earlier this month. It’s not all Coney Island, but it’s a good chunk of it. As is usually the case with New York, developers are involved and there’s talk of new condos (though in this climate, I’m not holding my breath as to how many people will want to fork out chunks of cash for “luxury” apartments at the far end of Brooklyn).

For now, Coney’s undomitable spirit lives on at the Coney Island Film Festival. The offerings at the eighth edition center on independent shorts that capture not so much Coney as a physical place (though there’s some of that, too) but as a mental one, from a documentary on carny women to a portrait of performance artist/rocker Kembra Pfahler.

The fest also includes a screening of Walter Hill’s 1979 movie The Warriors, in which the titular Coney gang (”Warriors? You guys are the big dudes, huh?”) spends a harrowing night trying to make it back to its home base after attending a gang meeting in the Bronx. The Warriors are trotted out every time people look for a movie about Coney Island, even though little of the movie actually takes place there. My two favorite films about Coney Island and what it once meant to the people of New York are Paul Fejos’s silent Lonesome (1928) and Ray Ashley, Morris Engel and Ruth Orkin’s Little Fugitive (1953). read more