Cultural enrichment opportunities in the city of Boston abound. Some of the historical city’s artistic venues include the Institute of Contemporary Art, the Charles Playhouse and the Orpheum Theatre. Art, especially that of the non-traditional persuasion, is abundant in the Hub.
Movies, on the other hand, are a different story. Sure, you could shell out more than $10 to see Domino at Loews Boston Common, but if you wanted to see a limited-release indie film, you’d have to leave the confines of the city center.
Sure, LBC plays a few indies now and then, but to go to a real, non-corporate sponsored art house theater, you’ve got to prepare yourself for a public transportation journey before you can actually hike to the theater itself.
The Museum of Fine Arts plays foreign and independent films, but a high school-style auditorium with one screen hardly counts as a real movie theater. The only films actually screened in the city during this year’s Independent Film Festival of Boston were at the MFA.
The Coolidge Corner Theatre is a true non-profit independent movie theater, but it only has three screens and it’s not even in Boston, it’s in Brookline.
The area’s other art house theaters, The Brattle Theatre and Kendall Square Cinema, both boast sophisticated programming and a wide variety of non-blockbuster film options, but they’re located off the red line in Cambridge. Again: Boston area, not technically Boston.
Boston Herald movie critic Jim Verniere laments the lack of a proper venue to display non-mainstream cinema.
“It’s a complete disgrace that in a city with these intellectual resources, that we don’t have a place where you can see art, foreign and American independent films without getting on two trains and walking half a mile,” he said.
The last art house theater located in the city of Boston was the Nickelodeon Theatre, which closed in 2001 and Boston University demolished in 2003. Even the Loews theater at Copley closed earlier this year, leaving Boston moviegoers with only two options: LBC and AMC Fenway, neither of which could be considered an art house theater in any regard.
College students are one of Boston’s largest populations and frequent the city’s artistic venues. Both BU and Emerson College boast strong communication programs. But College of Communication film students at BU don’t even have a proper screening room to show their films.
Since students are notorious filmgoers and the city is certainly not lacking in the student population, Verniere suggests the schools themselves fill the city’s art house void.
“I wish a university would step up to the plate,” Verniere says, “especially since they all seem to have such extensive film programs and film is such a part of the cultural landscape. If BU or Emerson had a screening room, they would make a lot of money renting it out for press screenings.”
Many of the country’s most creative college students flock to Boston’s universities. The arts scene in the city is booming. With the continued success of the MFA film program and the Coolidge, Brattle and Kendall theaters, it’s obvious that the audience for an art house theater exists. It just has nowhere to go. m
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