Via Suns Cinema.

As cherished arthouse theater West End Cinema’s life comes to an end, a new indie theater’s life is just beginning. Or so they hope.

Today, Suns Cinema—an in-the-works arthouse movie theater in Mt. Pleasant—launched an ambitious Kickstarter to help fund the costs of opening. Express first reported about the new one-screen movie theater that’s the brainchild of Mt. Pleasant residents David Cabrera and Ryan Hunter Mitchell. According to the duo’s Kickstarter page, their dream of opening a small repertory cinema in D.C. stemmed from film nights they hosted “where locals would gather in a strange home to eat, drink, and sit on couches or floors to watch strange movies. After months of searching, the duo finally found a permanent spot in their neighborhood to make the dream a reality.

Cabrera and Hunter signed the lease to a property that was formerly a cell phone store, and now they need help raising the funds—$12,500 to be exact—to transform it into a tiny cinema. Among the many costs to get the theater up and running: repurposing the space, which was previously set up for retail; installing projection equipment, seating, and lighting; soundproofing the walls for neighbors; paying whatever legal fees needed to get the proper license; and, of course, the cost to secure the rights to screen old movies, which can be pricey.

Anyway, for District cinephiles, the sample calendar of the kind of stuff Suns Cinema wants to program is very exciting:

Via Suns Cinema.

Cabrera and Hunter add that, in addition to movies, the theater plans to screen “vintage television, animated shorts, and classic sportscasts while collaborating with local chefs and bartenders to bring creative food and beverage pairings to these features.”