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DC art house Dupont 5 is closing on January 13

Read the Washington Post article about the closing of another art house in DC, after a 20 year long run.

The last movie I saw there was Mutual Appreciation a few months ago (or maybe late '06?), with director Andrew Bujalski present for a Q & A afterwards.

Here is a little bit from the article, summing up other DC art house closings:

" In June 1996, the Biograph in Georgetown closed after a nearly 30-year run as an independently owned, single-screen art house that was "the closest thing to a true underground cinema the D.C. area has ever seen," according to an article in The Post.

The next year, Palisades residents protested the closing of a theater by the predecessor to AMC Loews, Cineplex Odeon. It became a CVS Pharmacy.

In June 2002, the Janus 3 in Dupont Circle, which once had its own film club and midnight showings of experimental films, closed.

In May 2000, the Embassy was resurrected as Visions Bar Noir, a two-screen venue at the crossroads of the Dupont Circle, Kalorama and Adams Morgan neighborhoods, in an attempt to reclaim the small art-house style. Encumbered by debt, it closed in 2004."

Read the rest of the Post article here.

One less place to watch art/indie/foreign movies in the DC area, sad :( Even though the facilities were not the best, it was nice to have the Dupont 5 option. I've seen many art/indie/foreign movies there over the years; including the Dogme 95 movie Italian for Beginners. And I went there for movies on quite a few memorable dates in the last ten plus years or so.

I think one of the only art house options left in DC is Landmark's E Street cinema. The coming of the Landmark theaters (one to DC/E Street, one to Bethesda) was cited as a reason for the closing of Visions theater in DC back in '04. Almost forgot, the Avalon is another DC art/indie/foreign movie house. And a little bit outside of DC we have AFI Silver in Silver Spring, MD. On the bright side, the multi-screen "mall" theater in Wheaton/at Westfield Shopping complex, was showing a relatively little publicized French movie on one of their smaller theaters this summer; so perhaps more area theaters will start programming art/indie/foreign stuff in addition to their regular Hollywood fare.

Goodbye Dupont 5.

- Sujewa

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