The Criterion Channel’s “Art-House America” series profiles art house theaters across the country, producing short documentaries than run on the FilmStruck streaming service. Its latest features Oak Cliff’s very own Texas Theatre.
It’s a neat little doc. Nothing new for those who have been following along—Howard Hughes investment, Lee Harvey Oswald arrest, fall into disrepair, revival as repertory theater and cultural hub. But it’s nice to see it all in one place, and the interviews are enlightening.
Criterion also asks each theater featured in this series to program its own series of films for the channel. The Texas Theatre’s first pick was Chris Marker’s La Jetée. The French still-framed sci-fi head trip played at the theater in March, when it screened with a performance by the Dallas Neo-Classical Ballet. That show, which we documented at the time, is representative of the kind of fare you’ll find at the Texas Theatre, and nowhere else in Dallas. Or anywhere else, really. The Texas Theatre, as classic as it gets, more than belongs in this art house theater equivalent of the Criterion Collection.
You can watch the documentary below. And listen to the EarBurner boys talk to the Texas Theatre’s Barak Epstein and Jason Reimer, now also the Texas Fine Arts Theatre of Denton’s Barak Epstein and Jason Reimer, in this podcast from May.
