Bantam Cinema up for sale

LITCHFIELD — Bantam Cinema, a landmark building on Route 209 in the Bantam borough, is for sale.

The property is listed with Coldwell Banker for $450,000.

Bantam Cinema is located at 115 Bantam Lake Road.

The cinema, which opened in 1927, includes a twostory, 3,200squarefoot building with two indoor theaters with seating for 100 people each and features “state of the art digital sound and projection” according to Coldwell Banker.

The cinema is open, according to the theater’s website, and is screening the recently released “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” and a Chinese film, “The Farewell.”

According to its Facebook page, the cinema was first called The Rivoli when it was opened in 1927 by Domenic Evangelisti, and showed silent movies accompanied by a Wurlitzer organ, with live entertainment occasionally provided on stage. In the 1960s, it was owned by the Duvall family, which also owned the restaurant next door, now Wood’s Pit BBQ.

The Duvalls sold the cinema in 1968 to Michael Mabry, former head of the Ford Foundation’s Theater Communications Group and Intern Program. Mabry and his wife, Patricia, remodeled the theater and renamed it Cinema IV Bantam. The couple began showing foreign and independent films, and opened an art gallery. Some years later, the Mabrys sold it to Jim Bohnen, a stage director with Hartford TheatreWorks, among others, who continued running the cinema and added a concession stand.

Bohnen sold it in 1990 to Lisa Hedley, who renamed it Bantam Cinema and upgraded the projection equipment. She began a Meet the Film Maker series, where writers, producers, directors and actors including Arthur Miller, William Styron, Campbell Scott, Mia Farrow and Joan Rivers, appeared there to discuss their films.

Hedley sold the theater to David Koch, Sidney Koch and Elizabeth Merz in 2007. According to a story published in the Litchfield Enquirer in 2007, Hedley decided to sell after her spa at the Mayflower Inn in Washington was keeping her from giving the cinema the attention it deserved.

Doug Richardson is listed as the cinema manager since 1984. The cinema could not be reached for comment Monday.