Art-house theaters in your area?

[pmw]

3/2/2004
Wanted to revive this thread. It'd be nice to have a working directory of art house theaters (on the to-do list).
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Just curious what kind of access people have to art house theaters and in which cities.
NY:
Lincoln Plaza
Lincoln Center (Walter Reader)
MOMA
The Quad
Cinema Village
Anjelicka
Sunshine
Film Forum
The Screening Room

some others but they arent coming to mind....

[Russ]

I'm from Canberra (Australia) and we have (arguably) 2 arthouse cinemas

Electric Shadows (I always thought that was a cool name)
and
Centre Cinema

There was the Valhalla in Sydney, but I think it's closed - multiplexes probably killed it. I feel abit ashamed that I don't know more arthouse cinemas in Australia

Of course, it all begs the question "What is an arthouse cinema?" The answer is simple: "One in which arthouse films are shown."

Catchya

[tabuno]

The Tower management just this month bought into a multi-plex (five threatres) in downtown Salt Lake City which had been competing with the one theater art house located in a residential area on the outskirts of downtown. Finally, The Tower and its sister theaters are on the map to bring many more independent movies to Salt Lake City, the Capitol of Utah, the state where the Sundance Film Festival is put on in Park City, Utah only 45 minutes from Salt Lake.

[docraven]

FilmWurld and other internet sites are valuable resources for me. I live on the Oregon coast--a really beautiful area--but there are no art houses in this community. Portland is a hundred miles away. We do have a small neighborhood theatre called the Bijou, and the owners try to bring in “art house” films, but to survive in a small community with a competing six-plex they must show commercial flix. They do try to be discerning in their selection (to the extent that they can when competing with AMC for bookings). The Bijou also runs a six film (each twice in one week) “International Film Fest” three times a year. I’m recently retired from the Kansas City area where there were two film houses that showed “art films,” so I have gotten to the point where I have to rely on DVDs of new releases. By the time I can get them, they’ve been around for awhile.

[Johann]

Well we've got three: The Globe (named after Shakespeare's theatre), the Uptown (the best one of all. Very old & very cozy) and the Plaza. These valuable buildings regularly screen classics and standard/current art house.

I just saw the sing-along Sound of Music- I'd never seen it. Admission was $20- at first i thought it was too much, but after seeing this crazy musical with a house full of 40-something women shouting "now your seventeen" I have a strange affection for Maria & the kids....

[tabuno]

I don't know about other art house movie theaters, but the one is Salt Lake City charges five dollars per ticket and the popcorn and Italian Soda are cheaper than most other theaters. Is this normal? I mean what a deal, a great movie and food for cheap, why go anywhere else?

[oscar jubis]

The multiplex on South Beach devotes 2-3 screens to foreign film. Two cozy, little one-screeners: Absinthe and Soyka. My treasure is the Cosford Cinema, run by U. of Miami's film school and named after a beloved Herald film critic who passed in his 40s. Sound and projection are excellent and no food or drink are sold, just film. What we have plenty of here are film fests: Miami Intern. FF, Fort Lauderdale FF, Hispanic, Jewish, Gay and Lesbian, Brazilian, Argentinian, etc. What I don't get to see much are retrospectives, East European, and Asian Cinema. I buy a lot of Asian DVD on internet to compensate. The secret is out: South Korea has produced as many memorable films over the last few years as the rest of Asia combined.

[docraven]

As I mentioned, in this small community on the Oregon coast the movie opportunities available to most people in larger cities just aren’t there. However, it is amazing what we do have in this community of about 15,000 people. The owners of the Bijou in Lincoln City bought a duel manual theatre organ and for the past three and a half years have run a series called “Silents at the Shore.” Dave Parks, a theatre organist who plays for the Elsinore Theatre in Salem (75 miles away), and several other guest organists have accompanied a standard repertoire of silent films, including “The General,” “Steamboat Bill,” “Wings,” “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,” and “Faust.” They have also included some more rare fare, such as “The Red Lily” (1924) with Romon Novarro and Wallace Beery, and “Forbidden Hours” (1928) with Novarro and Renée Adorée.

The silents series is currently on hold as the driving force behind it moved away. However, silents accompanied by theatre organ continue to screen monthly at the Elsinore in Salem.

[Meejoir]

We have the home of cinema in Newcastle in the Tyneside Cinema. If it wasn't there I would have missed some of the best films I have ever seen.

There is so much more to cinema than multiplex fodder. I mean why do multiplexes show rubbish like Boat Trip for example when they could have been showing Donnie Darko?

Anyway the Tyneside Cinema rules and it is the centre of my cultural world, check it out at www.tynecine.org to see what there's on this month!

[docraven]

While there are not the resources of a larger city, I have developed a film group within a local pan arts organization. At 7:00 p.m. on the second Friday of each month I show a film using a video projector in the fellowship room of a local church (Congregational if you’re in the Lincoln City area). This is a free program, and it gives me something to do. I have an e-mail list of seventy plus, and we usually have between twenty and thirty people on hand. Several months ago there were about thirty on hand for Seven Samurai, which most had never seen. I prepare a four page illustrated passout (I’m a retired academic.). Before the film I show extracts from other films to illustrate relative points. Afterwards we have a good interchange about the film. Send me your address and I’ll send you a copy of the passout.

Tonight our film is BUTTERFLY from Spain. I’ll post my passout essay in the General Film Forum.

[Chris Knipp]

Oscar Jubis wrote:

The secret is out: South Korea has produced as many memorable films over the last few years as the rest of Asia combined.

Can you recommend some? Are there some that are more subtle than “Attack the Gas Station” and “Shiri”?

I probably won’t have to buy them because Berkeley has two great video stores, Reel Video and Movie Image, the latter truly independent, the former pseudo-independent.

The SF Bay Area has a lot of Landmark cinemas, which have helped the cineplexes wipe out the small art houses. They show good movies, but aren’t truly independent or offbeat in their selections. This remains an excellent area for movies, if less first-run than LA and NYC.

[oscar jubis]

Thanks for the interest, Chris. These are easier to find North American releases:the period romance CHUNHYANG; Noir-meets-Art-School manhunt NOWHERE TO HIDE; Freudian,pomo, serial killer mystery TELL ME SOMETHING, and LIES, a mellower In the Realm of the Senses.
These are imports well worth seeking out:
Two "refined, exquisite, Renoir-Ozu-Rhomer melodramas" from Jin-ho Hur: CHRISTMAS IN AUGUST and ONE FINE SPRING DAY.
The anime MY BEAUTIFUL GIRL, MARI about 2 men reminiscing of their last summer together in a fishing village when 12y.o. and the alternative world they find inside an old lighthouse.
MY SASSY GIRL: a "low comedy of humiliation, with a whiplash romance bet. a schlub and a sadistic waif, that turns into an investigation of the suffering beneath the surface of all screwball".
The existentialist psychosexual horror of THE ISLE aka SEOM.
MEMENTO MORI: a ghost story/mystery/lesbian romance.
Others of note:the period epic MUSA,THE WARRIOR, political thriller JOINT SECURITY AREA, crime film FRIEND, and these dramas: HOLIDAY IN SEOUL(has been compared to Chungking Express), FAILAN(about a chinese immigrant), the Dogme 95 film INTERVIEW; HARMONIUM IN MY MEMORY; and LOVE WIND LOVE SONG.
If anyone has seen any of these, please comment.

[Chris Knipp]

Thanks a lot for these Korean titles. I've got a list now to take to the video stores and see what I can find.

[docraven]

Oscar jubis, you are a wonder. Thanks for this list. I know nothing about Korean film, so I’ll look for these titles. In case anyone else is interested, I cross-checked them with imdb, and here is more information on them. About half of them were available on DVD on Netflix. Thanks again.

CHUNHYANG (2000)
Directed by Kwon-taek Im

NOWHERE TO HIDE [Injong sajong polkot opta] (1999)
Directed by Myung-se Lee (I)

TELL ME SOMETHING (1999)
Directed by Yoon-Hyun Chang

LIES [Gojitmal] (1999)
Directed by Sun-Woo Jang

CHRISTMAS IN AUGUST [Palwol ui Christmas] (1998)
Directed by Jin-ho Hur

ONE FINE SPRING DAY [Bomnaleun ganda] (2001)
Directed by Jin-ho Hur

THE ISLE [Seom] (2000)
Directed by Ki-duk Kim

MEMENTO MORI [Yeogo goedam II] (1999)
Directed by Tae-Yong Kim & Kyu-Dong Min

MUSA, THE WARRIOR [Musa] (2001)
Directed by Sung-su Kim (II)

JOINT SECURITY AREA [Gongdong gyeongbi guyeok JSA] (2000)
Directed by Chan-wook Park

FRIEND [Chin goo] (2001)
Directed by Kyung-Taek Kwak

FAILAN (2001)
Directed by Hae-sung Song

INTERVIEW [...aka Dogme # 7] (2000)
Directed by Daniel H. Byun

HARMONIUM IN MY MEMORY [Nae maeumui punggeum] (1998)
Written by Young-Jae Lee

LOVE WIND LOVE SONG [Yeonpung yeonga] (1999)
Directed by Dae-yeong Park

[tabuno]

The Tower Management that owns the The Tower theater in a small residential niche of Salt Lake City has bought a former Odeon Cineplex multi-plex theater in downtown Salt Lake City on a street aptly named Broadway (Third South). It has five movie screens, which dramatically expands the number of independent art films that can be shown! It was used recently earlier this month (January 2003) for showing some of the films from the Sundance Film Festival during the Festival.