Founded in community
The Cinema Arts Centre was founded by Vic Skolnick and Charlotte Sky in 1973 as a grassroots effort to bring independent, international, classic, and challenging films to Long Island. Over more than fifty years, it has grown into one of the region’s most important cultural institutions—a place defined not just by what appeared on its screens, but by the community, conversations, relationships, and ideas that surrounded them.
Stewarded with Integrity
Dylan Skolnick has been central to building and sustaining that identity. Over decades at the Cinema, he has developed an extraordinary network of relationships across the film industry and the wider cultural community—with filmmakers, distributors, programmers, artists, critics, educators, advocates, and community leaders. Those relationships brought remarkable films, guests, conversations, collaborations, and opportunities to Huntington, while establishing the Cinema Arts Centre as a respected and deeply connected institution far beyond Long Island.
evolved with purpose
Just as importantly, Dylan has been a steward of the Cinema’s mission: championing independent voices, taking chances on films and filmmakers, creating space for discussion and discovery, and understanding that the Cinema is not simply a venue—it is a cultural community.
Removing Dylan means losing more than a longtime director. It breaks a direct line of leadership, relationships, institutional knowledge, and purpose that stretches back to the Cinema’s founding. For many of us, his dismissal feels like the end of an extraordinary era—and raises profound concerns about whether the mission and community that made the Cinema Arts Centre what it is will continue without him.
Dylan Skolnick
Dylan Skolnick was Co-Director at the Cinema Arts Centre, Long Island’s leading venue for alternative film. There he programs and supervises the Cinema’s monthly film programs and acclaimed series, including “Cinema Showcase,” “Anything But Silent,” and “Real-to-Reel Documentaries.” These groundbreaking series have given the Centre its reputation for quality, artistic integrity, and ingenuity in presenting independent film to the public. He maintains the Centre’s fifty-plus year focus on using film to expand the awareness and understanding of Long Islanders to the vital local and global issues facing our society. The Cinema Arts Centre Co-Directors have received honors for community impact from many organizations, including the Long Island Progressive Coalition, PAX Christi, Planned Parenthood, NYCLU, and the NOW Alliance PAC of Long Island.
Dylan is a Programmer for the Lake Placid Film Festival in Lake Placid, NY.
He is a Consultant and Film Buyer for a number of Cinemas across the USA, including the Circle Cinema in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the Barrymore Film Center in Fort Lee, New Jersey, the Appell Center for the Performing Arts in York, Pennsylvania, the Greenbelt Cinema in Greenbelt, Maryland, and the Plaza Theatre in Palm Springs, California. He is Curator of the East Meadow Public Library’s acclaimed Independent Film Series, which is funded by the New York State Council on the Arts. Dylan also currently presents films at the Northport Public Library.
He is a longtime member of the Art House Convergence, an association dedicated to advancing excellence and sustainability in community-based, mission-driven media exhibition. Dylan has been a juror for the Student Academy Awards and New Zealand’s famed 48 Hours Filmmaking Contest, and a grant panelist for the New York State Council on the Arts. Dylan is in demand as a lecturer on film. He has spoken at numerous venues, including C.W. Post College.
He is a member of the Suffolk County Film Commission and a member of the Energia Partnership at Molloy College, a diverse group of ethical leaders from Long Island's public, private and not-for-profit sectors. Dylan is a graduate of New York’s School of Visual Arts. In 2013, he was presented with an "Outstanding Advocate for the Arts Award" by the LI Arts Council at Freeport. In 2007, Mr. Skolnick graduated from the Columbia Business School’s Institute for Non-Profit Management Executive Level Program. He was Film Consultant on the PBS documentary “Farming the Future: Farm Life on Long Island” He has written for numerous film journals including: Long Island Pulse, Films in Review, Long Island Nightlife, Long Island Free Press, and Film Folio.