'1984' heads back to silver screen

NEW YORK (AP) — On Tuesday, it will be "1984" again in movie theaters across the country.

About 190 art-house theaters have banded together to show the 1984 big-screen adaptation of George Orwell's dystopian masterpiece as a pointed comment on the presidency of Donald Trump, whose "alternative facts" administration has already sent "1984" back up the bestseller lists .

"It's what's in the air. People want to do something," says Dylan Skolnick, an organizer of the event and co-director of the Cinema Arts Centre in Huntington, New York. "This started with a conversation about: ' We need to do something. Well, what do we do? We show movies.' So the obvious answer was: We should show a movie."

Cinemas around the country are increasingly programming with political protest in mind, playing movies that have newfound resonance for those who disagree with the policies of the Republican president. In May, some 60 theaters are planning to screen films from the predominantly Muslim nations targeted by Trump's proposed travel ban. That initiative has been dubbed the Seventh Art Stand and billed as "an act of cinematic solidarity against Islamophobia."

Cinemas, particularly independent ones, are places to gather and connect, and they are finding under Trump a renewed sense of mission that goes beyond the usual arguments for the bigscreen experience over streaming.

"To really genuinely connect with other people — which seems to be a consistent theme our country is struggling with — it's all about being in a corporeal public sphere together, and doing that in and around art," says Courtney Sheehan, executive director of Seattle's Northwest Film Forum and an organizer of the Seventh Art Stand. "We're not just an ancillary component of social change conversation. This is ground zero for action."

A Trump effect has already been partially seen in the recent box-office success of Jordan Peele's horror hit "Get Out".