While it was firmly in line with the venue’s more than 40 years of LGBTQ-friendly film, Friday night’s final screening at the Harvard Exit probably stirred up a ghost or two. Haunting is what you get when you mark the death of cinema with an event celebrating the premier of the third season of a successful HBO series. The stars and creatives behind HBO’s Looking drew a selfie-centered crowd to E Roy for one final night at the old art house destined to be redeveloped into a preservation-friendly office and restaurant complex.

An effort to “save” the Exit continues.

Meanwhile, 12th Ave’s Northwest Film Forum is more concerned about the living:

The Harvard Exits
Jan 18
Free event!
Screening at 4:45pm
Discussion at 6pm
Fond farewells at 7pm
Sunday, Jan 18 at 04:45PM

“Which Seattle theater will close next?” the Seattle Met wondered last month, observing (and warning) that, “We have a trend, people.”

The incomparable Harvard Exit flickers into darkness on the heels of a perfect storm that led to the unexpected art house release of a gaseous wave of Seth Rogen jokes. Small, independently owned movie theaters are the mom and pop shops in an industry dominated by box stores, at a time when customers are shopping increasingly online. The wild wild west of the film industry is now multi-platform.

So, how are Seattle’s small theaters doing these days? We’re wrangling together theater operators, programmers and filmmakers from across town in a public discussion to contemplate the current state and future of theatrical exhibition. Speakers include:

• George Kindl—former manager of the Harvard Exit
• Jeff Brein, Faraway Entertainment—operates multiple theaters in the area and just bought the Varsity
• David McRae, Ark Lodge Cinema—the first Seattle theater to book The Interview
• Brian Alter, Grand Illusion—programmer of the only volunteer-run theater in town
• Megan Griffiths—filmmaker
• Charles Mudede, The Stranger—film critic and filmmaker

After setting the scene with this talk, we’ll pay our respects and bid fond farewells to the Harvard Exit and On 15th Video. All are welcome to join and share memories and odes, propose toasts, and perform interpretive dance pieces.

It all starts at 4:45pm on January 18 with a free screening of The Juche Idea (Jim Finn, 2010), an hour-long satirical imagining of King Jong Il’s ideological textbook “On the Art of Cinema.”  It follows a South Korean video artist and her Bulgarian interviewer on a rural North Korean art residency populated by Stalinist vegetarians. They clean chicken poop and create video mash ups of anti-capitalist English lessons between a spaced out Russian and a friendly but confused North Korean, footage of the mind-boggling choreography of the Mass Games, and excerpts from propaganda-laden North Korean films. Plus, a socialist sci-fi sequence.

Goodbye, Harvard Exit. #capitolhill won’t be the same without you pic.twitter.com/HC24PIjK0P

— GabrielaDenise Frank (@CivitaVeritas) January 12, 2015

Glad to say I have been to the Harvard Exit. I remember Ira Glass making fun of the name when he was here.

— Reluctantly, she (@taterpie) January 9, 2015

Sorry to hear about the closing of Seattle’s Harvard Exit, which was the place that got me excited about movies. pic.twitter.com/ZbYVqTRCM3

— erickohn (@erickohn) January 9, 2015

I think I finally spotted the ghost at Harvard Exit. pic.twitter.com/fFBejCqeX8

— josh (@joshc) January 9, 2015

Doors closed tonight on the Harvard Exit movie theater :( Thanks for giving me 20 years of 1st class indie cinema :) pic.twitter.com/2LAoha2l8G

— Bhaskar! (@wittygecko) January 9, 2015

Final credits rolling at the Harvard Exit. Goodbye old friend. pic.twitter.com/EbOM8HJj0d

— Libby Denkmann KIRO (@seattlelibby) January 9, 2015