I saw Lost in Translation in a theater. Also, Trainspotting, Parasite and, more recently, The Sparks Brothers. These were not blockbuster films; they contained little or no CGI, had no after-credits scenes to tease the next installment, and Dwayne Johnson didn’t head-butt the story into their third acts. These were small, human stories, screened to a scale where their assorted minute details and nuances really mattered. When I watched Lost in Translation at home months after its theatrical release, I didn’t enjoy it as much. Its magic diminished in proportion to the size of screen it played on.

Las Vegas’ multiplexes don’t screen a large number of independent, foreign and revival cinema—all the forms that are generally grouped together under the “art house” banner. They pick up the occasional buzzy independent or import and stick it on one of their smallest screens for a week, or wait for those indies to win awards before they book them into longer, more prominent runs (see The Shape of Water, Nomadland and, yes, the 2020 Academy Award winner for Best Picture, Parasite).

Revival cinema is pretty much nonexistent here, outside of Library District or UNLV screenings, unless you count Fathom Events’ national “anniversary” bookings—rarely anything you don’t have easy access to, but hey, it’ll be fun to see Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory on the big screen again, with Oompa-Loompas the size of Tesla sedans. Generally speaking, this kind of cinema is a nonstarter in Las Vegas, because we don’t have movie theaters that specialize in it.

But that’s soon to change. A new Downtown cinema called Art Houz—located within the former Eclipse Cinemas complex, in the Arts District—has begun booking independent and local cinema alongside the newest blockbusters; the locally made Popovich: Road to Hollywood, starring performers from Spiegelworld and Cirque du Soleil shows, debuts at Art Houz on August 23. (Art Houz is currently operating at a reduced capacity due to the pandemic slowdown; it’s using only five of its eight screens and is closed Monday-Wednesday, but plans call for increased capacity as demand grows. Visit thearthouz.com to see what’s playing this week.)

And in a surprising turn, no less than two theaters fully dedicated to specialty cinema—the Beverly Cinema, in Downtown Las Vegas, and the 35 Cinema, in Commercial Center—have announced plans to open within the next year. The Beverly intends to program mostly first-run independent and international cinema, while the 35 Cinema will specialize in revival programming screened exclusively from rare 35-millimeter film prints.

It’s a small step for Southern Nevada’s cineastes—it seems like a Valley that has hosted hundreds of feature film shoots and several annual film festivals would have a couple of dedicated specialty cinemas already—but considered against the generally sad state of moviegoing right now, building a new movie theater from the ground up feels like a revolutionary act. Here’s what to expect when the curtain rises on these audacious new venues.

New Beverly thrills

“I tend to want to buy things people think are dead. Like, isn’t all the popular noise that bookstores are dying, especially independent bookstores? Well, apparently not,” Beverly Rogers says, chuckling. “Now, the noise is that cinema is dying. Since the pandemic, it’s like, ‘Well, you can watch films in your living room; who wants to go see a movie?’ Well, frankly, I think a lot of people want to go see a movie.”

Rogers, the local philanthropist whose largesse supports the Black Mountain Institute, Believer Fest, the Rogers Art Loft and—you guessed it—the Writer’s Block independent bookstore, intends to confirm her theory on the empty lot just north of the mixed-use Lucy complex at 6th Street and Bonneville Avenue. The soon-to-be-built Beverly Theater will be a two-story, 14,306 square-foot cinema and performance space, mere steps from Writer’s Block. (Rogers didn’t name it; she had to be talked into “the Beverly Theater,” which cheekily references both its founder and LA’s venerable New Beverly Cinema.)

The 150 person-capacity theater will feature a 360 square-foot screen designed to provide optimal viewing from any seat in the house. And that seating will be retractable, to accommodate different kinds of events. It will have an on-site box office and concession counter, a terrace and courtyard for special events, a catering kitchen, a “fully loaded” green room … every aspect of the Beverly has been carefully considered.

The possibilities of such a space are massive. Kip Kelly, The Beverly’s Founding Creative Director, describes its potential programming as falling into three “buckets,” which he’s succinctly dubbed “the film, the literary and the live.” Yes, the Beverly will host Believer Fest events, author readings and perhaps even live music and performance—but its main point and purpose will be to catch those films that might have flown right over Vegas, and create a culture around cinema similar to the one Writer’s Block has built around the printed word.

“We’re not trying to be a million different things, but what we are trying to do is create a theater that’s warm and social, and puts an emphasis on a really good kind of cinematic experience,” Kelly says.

Rogers has a warm place in her heart for film. Her late husband was a serious film buff—“particularly Westerns, which is not my favorite genre,” she says—and she has a friendly relationship with New York-based Killer Films, the woman-owned production company responsible for such acclaimed indies as Velvet Goldmine, Kill Your Darlings and Hedwig and the Angry Inch. “I gradually got this interest in bringing something a little bit new and different to Las Vegas, something that would fit in with what we’re already doing through the [Rogers] Foundation, in terms of arts and literature,” Rogers says. “It’s all about storytelling. It’s just a different form.”

Kelly is fully on board with the idea, though he knows the theater, scheduled for a mid-to-late-2022 opening, faces an uphill battle in these unpredictable times. “Indie [film houses] is a dying business model, and it was even pre-pandemic,” he says. “They all operate as nonprofits now. I’m not blowing the lid off of anything; it’s just the reality of the world.

“And that’s OK,” he continues. “We’ll operate as a nonprofit as well, but … I want us to have an aggressive film program that gets people down here to throw their money at us—and the message will be, ‘Oh, by the way, it was a tax write-off,’ rather than ‘We’re a nonprofit, come support us.’ We’ll have memberships and things like that, but indie film will anchor it all.”

35 mm magic

In a strangely appropriate bit of coincidence, the 35 Cinema’s founder John Lohmann checks in for our phone interview during a family trip to Six Flags Magic Mountain. Every few seconds, the roller coaster cars of Superman: Escape from Krypton scream by and drown out our conversation, and Lohmann apologizes for them: “Sorry, there goes Superman again.”

Like Superman, Lohmann’s passion project belongs to a golden era. Not the era of Man of Steel, a wearying CGI slog projected digitally on six multiplex screens at once, but the era of 1978’s Superman, which screened in neighborhood movie houses from 35-millimeter projectors whose motors could be faintly heard during the quiet scenes. One is science; the other, magic.

During its brief run inside Downtown video game bar and bowling center the Nerd, the 35 Cinema screened an outstanding run of pre-2004 film classics—The Shining, Casablanca, Enter the Dragon, Beetlejuice, Alien and more—all from 35-millimeter film prints. It’s a revival theater in the fullest sense of the word: Both the stories, and the method by which they’re told, are of a sentimental vintage.

“We are one of only two theaters on the West Coast that are actually running film. … Digital has a different look than film. Digital is missing the flicker,” Lohmann says. (In another coincidence, the other theater he’s referencing is the Quentin Tarantino-owned New Beverly Cinema.)

And if you wonder why “the flicker” matters, just watch a recent blockbuster on a digital TV with the motion smoothing turned off. When projected correctly, watching movies on film is simply easier on the eyes.

Lohmann’s ideas quickly outgrew the limited space he had at the Nerd, and the bar’s 21-and-over door policy froze out families, so he made the decision to move. His friend Nick Benson at the Cineloggia movie museum suggested a former nightclub space in New Orleans Square, a retail, gallery and dining center inside the Commercial Center complex. When it opens, the new 35 Cinema—currently holding a fundraising campaign at bit.ly/3ltEyEU—will house three auditoriums with silver screens, as opposed to flat white. (“It actually brings out a lot more color,” Lohmann says. Silver screens also amplify light, which is necessary for 3D film, which loses much of its luminosity from the projector to the screen.) It will have a projector capable of running 70 mm film—another West Coast rarity—and, more importantly, a crew that knows how to run it.

“It’s a moviegoing experience versus, you know, going to go see a video; that’s how I look at it,” Lohmann says. “Movie theaters now aren’t really movie theaters; it’s more of a giant video projector.”

The programming of the 35 Cinema will be dizzyingly ambitious. January will be devoted to musicals and classic cinema; black stars will be spotlighted during Black History Month; March is for Academy Award winners; summertime is all about classic blockbusters; wintertime will be a feast of holiday movies.

It’ll be a must-visit during Halloween, when Lohmann intends to bring in horror film stars for special events. (In fact, he’s already found one: One of the 35’s managers is Lisa Wilcox, who starred alongside Robert Englund in A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 and 5.) And Lohmann says he’s really looking forward to hosting school field trips, encouraging kids to get close to the analog machines that built Hollywood.

“It’s worth it, to see somebody’s face when these projectors light up,” Lohmann says.

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