founder and executive director; Vivek Bahl, board vice president; and Sandhya Nathan, board president. Photo by Tayyab Mahmud
(This piece was originally published online in the South Seattle Emerald on March 27, and is republished here with permission.)
After shutting down last month following years of tumult, the building that used to house Ark Lodge Cinemas in Columbia City finally has a new owner.
Tasveer — a nonprofit arts organization dedicated to celebrating South Asian culture — acquired the building and announced plans to renovate the space, transforming it into the Tasveer Film Arts Center, a global hub of South Asian and world cinema. It intends to have the space fully open and functional by the 2028 Tasveer Film Festival and Market.
Instead of first-run screenings of Hollywood films, the new Tasveer Film Arts Center will focus on bringing independent and international films from all over the world, with an emphasis on South Asian cinema, including its annual film festival and market. Additionally, the center will serve as a place for gatherings, post-film Q&As, film panels, and workshops, and the new owners hope to host other film festivals. Tasveer — which means “picture” in Hindi and Urdu — plans on turning the four-screen cinema into two screens, with one dedicated solely to South Asian movies.
“We couldn’t have asked for a better space or location than where we are at right now. South Seattle is so diverse, and working with our community shows that an organization of color could also own a space, which is unprecedented for a film arts organization,” said Rita Meher, co-founder of Tasveer. “We will serve the community and really make the Columbia City neighborhood vibrant.”
The deal officially closed on Wednesday, March 26, for $2.85 million, with $2.19 million coming from King County’s Doors Open grant, a new program overseen by 4Culture that takes money from a sales tax increase and disburses it to organizations in the county’s cultural sector. Meher said that Tasveer has always dreamed of owning its own cinema, and plans to acquire the building began in September. Over the next few years, Tasveer will launch a capital campaign to renovate the theater with cosmetic and accessibility upgrades, new projectors, and converting a theater into a community multi-use space.
For the past few years, former tenant Ark Lodge Cinemas had struggled with low attendance and paying its rent. Following an eviction notice and a GoFundMe campaign last year that sought to raise $250,000 to cover back rent and operating costs, The Seattle Times reported in February that Ark Lodge had officially shut down.
Although its official reopening is years away, Meher said the cinema’s windows won’t be dark for too long, and that they plan to have some sort of programming or activations in the interim. Being situated in Columbia City is a boon to Tasveer. As the only Oscar-qualifying South Asian film festival — now celebrating 20 years — in the world, the organization has a large global following on the South Asian film fest circuit and is excited to bring films and filmmakers from around the world to its corner of South Seattle.
“It will put Columbia City on the global map and the theater on the global map,” Meher said. “We want to do a good job in making it state of the art.”
