The District’s Avalon Theatre is celebrating its 100th anniversary this weekend in Chevy Chase.
The nonprofit movie theater will host a special Centennial Gala on Saturday.
“The gala event raises funds that literally keep this theater operating year over year,” Programming Director Andrew Mencher told WTOP. “It’s a crucial part of this theater being a part of this community for so long.”
The theatre tries to organize a gala ever spring, he said.
“We’ve done it for about 10 to 15 years now,” Mencher said. “This year let’s call it a gala on steroids.”
It kicks off with a 5:30 p.m. screening of Buster Keaton’s “Sherlock Jr.” (1924) about a projectionist who climbs up onto the movie screen to enter the film (think of it as a reverse “Purple Rose of Cairo”). This will be followed by a 7 p.m. gala at Chevy Chase Village Hall, roughly a seven-minute walk from the theater. Bus transportation is also available.
“This movie actually played at The Avalon in 1924,” Mencher said. “We have invited a local composer, Andrew Simpson, who’s a professor at Catholic University, but as his very serious side hobby, as a composer he has gotten involved with scoring silent film. He’s performed all over the world. He’s written dozens of scores that are now featured on DVD and Blu-ray rereleases. He has written a brand new score for the Buster Keaton classic.”
May’s celebration of the 1920s with Keaton’s “Sherlock Jr.” continues a special monthly series of screening different movies from every decade of The Avalon’s existence. February celebrated the 1960s with Sidney Poitier’s “In the Heat of the Night” (1967), March celebrated the 1940s with Charlie Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator” (1940) and April celebrated the 2010s with Barry Jenkins’ “Moonlight” (2016).
June celebrates the 1980s with “Moonstruck” (1987). The Avalon is still deciding on the films for July, August, September, October and November, but they will celebrate the 1930s, 1950s, 1970s, 1990s and 2000s.
Not only does this year mark 100 years of The Avalon, it’s the 20th anniversary of it becoming a nonprofit in 2003.
“It had to very quickly go through significant changes from being built in 1923 as a silent film theater to being wired for sound in 1929, then you had to retrofit air conditioning,” Mencher said. “Many other theaters closed (but) this neighborhood said, ‘Not this one.’ It had this remarkable ability to negotiate it staying a movie theater, then raising an enormous amount of money and the restoration work that went to reopen the theater in 2003.”
Tickets to the Buster Keaton screening are $75. The party is $325 per person.
Listen to our full conversation here.
