The closure of Magic Lantern Theatre might affect upcoming Spokane International Film Festival

Organizers of the Spokane International Film Festival (SpIFF) are worried one of the primary venues – the beleaguered Magic Lantern Theatre – may not be open for showings amid financing struggles.

Last week, the theater, which has a history of shutting its doors for months and even years at a time, announced on its website that “The Magic Lantern is currently closed.”

For the past month and a half the theater had indicated its closure was temporary, and cited a specific date when it would reopen.

Jim Sheehan, owner of the Saranac Building where the theater is located, said the closure is temporary, as he said in the past, and that Saranac LLC, which he manages, has plans to reopen.

“We’re doing a little reorganizing and we will be opening soon,” he said. “I’m not sure exactly when, but it will be soon.”

Several people with knowledge of the situation say the theater could no longer afford its rent payments. Adam Boyd, who sits on the board of Contemporary Arts Alliance, which has organized SpIFF since 1999, said the theater probably hadn’t turned a profit for “many years.”

“We’ve used the Magic Lantern as one of our main venues for the last 10 years now,” he said. “It’s a difficult thing for us.

“The one hitch we’re running into right now is we don’t have anything set with the Magic Lantern, which typically takes up to 75 percent of our screenings at the festival.”

SpIFF, Spokane’s largest film festival, shows dozens of films each year during the week-long festival in late January and early February.

“The Magic Lantern was this wonderful sweet spot in terms of the size of the venue and location,” Boyd said. “If we don’t have that, we’d have to look at renting larger venues.”

Boyd said the Magic Lantern’s closure during the festival could lead to showing smaller movies at the higher-capacity venues, such as the Bing Crosby Theater and Fox Theater. And with that larger space being used more frequently means increased costs to the festival, which could get passed along to moviegoers.

Or, the festival would absorb the cost, and make up the difference elsewhere.

“Either way, SpIFF is going to move forward,” Boyd said. “It might affect the size and scale, and it might affect us down the road. It won’t mean SpIFF is going to disappear, but it might mean reshaping the festival.”

Asked if the theater is expected to be open by the time SpIFF starts, Sheehan said: “We’ll be open by then for sure. That’s not a problem.”