After a 21-year run, the curtain soon will close on the indie movie theater Landmark E Street Cinema.
“Landmark Theatres is constantly evaluating its business strategy and will be closing the theatre given its inability to recover in the post-pandemic environment,” Mark Mulcahy, the head of brand and marketing with Landmark, said in a statement.
WTOP spoke to some movie fans as they took one of their last trips to the theater inside the Lincoln Square Building on E Street in Northwest D.C.
“We’ve been coming here since it opened,” said moviegoer Tony Maneechai. “We’ve come to the midnight shows, we’ve come to openings and we come for a lot of the other offerings.”
Maneechai admits that he is sad about the theater that has brought him so many wonderful memories, even including a movie his companion said is known to be the worst movie in the history of cinema, “The Room.”
She told WTOP that “The Room” makes “Plan 9 from Outer Space” look like “Citizen Kane.”
Maneechai explained what made the E Street Cinema so special was the ambience, their employees and something that is important when you’re at the movies: “The popcorn was the best in D.C.”
Not only are longtime customers of the E Street Cinema feeling bad about their soon to be closing, but so are people who’ve never been to the theater.
Three students from George Washington University who were all born after the theater opened in 2004 spoke to WTOP about the employees of indie theaters.
“The people that I’ve met who do work at independent movie theaters, they’re so knowledgeable in all of the films that they show,” Mia Bedenko said.
“To think of them working at, like, the AMC, where it’s kind of just like, swipe your card and go, right. That’s really sad.”
Bedenko described her and her two friends, Jai Gough and Ben Valleau, as theater kids.
Gough is from a small town in Pennsylvania and said she usually had to travel 50 miles to see an independent film.
Valleau believes this is not a good time for a theater like E Street Cinema to close.
“I don’t know if anybody watching knows what it’s like to be in Downtown D.C. right now, but the vibes are not great, and people are not very happy,” Valleau said.
“People need to have an escape from reality, especially people who find so much passion in movies.”
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