The 113-year-old Roxie Theater might just last another 113 years, as they’ve closed the sale to permanently buy and own their theater building, and there even are plans afoot to serve wine and movie-themed cocktails from the adjacent Dalva.

It was huge news for SF indie film fans when we learned in April that the Roxie Theater was secretly trying to buy its building outright, after having rented the space for decades. And the secret ruse had been afoot for a while, as in April, the Roxie announced that they had already raised an impressive $5.5 million of their $7 million goal. They’re still not quite at $7 million yet, and the Roxie Theater fundraising drive continues, but there is definitely some milestone news today on the Roxie front.

The Chronicle reported Tuesday morning that the Roxie Theater has closed the sale to buy its own building, and now they officially own their own place. The property purchase covers the large Roxie Theater, as well as the companion theater Little Roxie, and the adjacent cocktail bar Dalva.  

“One of my favorite moments of my decade-long career here was to see our staff’s faces as we made the announcement,” Roxie Theater executive director Lex Sloan told the Chronicle. “It truly was smiles and cheering and woo-hoo’s and maybe some senses of relief. I wish I could have paused time and taken a picture of that moment.”

As mentioned, the Roxie is still $720,000 short of the overall & million goal, and you can still donate here. But the sale of the theater closed before the fundraising drive hit its goal, because the purchase plan called for a certain timeline to be met on the sale of the building.

The Chronicle reports that the building sold for $5 million, and the sale quietly closed in May.

And so now it is on to renovating and modernizing the theater. Per the Chronicle, the theater is having new front doors put in, getting a new projector, and installing sound system upgrades. Though it may intrigue you more that the Roxie Theater is also working on getting a wine sales license for their concession stand, and is planning to introduce movie-themed cocktails from their next-door bar Dalva.

It was mentioned in the Chronicle’s April reporting that the Roxie was on pace to meet or exceed their pre-COVID ticket sales volume of 2019 this year. Now they that own the building and are free from rent increase worries, they feel they’ll be able to keep those affordable ticket prices, and just focus on expanding their programming, and improving the physical Roxie Theater space.

Or as the executive director Sloan said during the SFFILM Festival in April, “Sometimes I’m plunging a toilet or doing touch-up paint, and it’s still the best job in the world.”

Related: Roxie Theater Explains How They Managed to Raise Millions to Buy Their Building [SFist]

Image: Ann S via Yelp

The Roxie Theater is still in the home stretch of its $7 million capital campaign to buy their building outright, but the theater’s leadership gave us some insights into how the mighty little Roxie had already secretly raised 75% of that money.

On Wednesday, the still-ongoing SFFILM Festival awarded their annual prestigious Mel Novikoff Award, given to “individuals and institutions that deepened audiences' love and appreciation of world cinema,” to the Mission District’s 112-year-old Roxie Theater. When the committee that decides the winner of that award chose the Roxie months ago, they had no idea that the Roxie was secretly executing a plan to buy their building, in a still-ongoing fundraising campaign.

“We could not be more excited to celebrate one of our own, an organization that works tirelessly to enhance, encourage, and cultivate the public's appreciation of cinema,” SFFILM director of programming Jessie Fairbanks said when presenting the award.

And then we got a few words from the folks who run the Roxie in a panel discussion. Roxie Theater executive director Lex Sloan joked, “Sometimes I’m plunging a toilet or doing touch-up paint, and it’s still the best job in the world.”

But the news that the Roxie is very close to buying their building outright was of course the hot topic of the evening. “Buying the Roxie, buying this building, has been a long-held dream of many stewards of this organization. This isn’t new,” Sloan told the audience. “This has truly been a labor of love for years for so many people.”

It’s called the “Forever Roxie” capital campaign, and when news of it broke in the Chronicle this month, we learned that the Roxie had already privately raised $5.5 million of that $7 million goal. And we had to wonder, how did the small but mighty Roxie Theater manage to scare up $5.5 million?

So we asked Roxie Theater executive director Lex Sloan that exact question. And it turns out the first million bucks came within two weeks.

“Just about a year ago, May 6, 2024, we signed a purchase and sale agreement. And that was the key that turned on the ignition,” Sloan told us.

“We have 19 amazing board members, they stepped up in a huge way. The first contributions to the campaign were all the Roxie board, and they all made audacious, meaningful gifts,” she added. “With our board collectively, we were able to raise $1 million in that first two weeks.”

Okay, so that’s a million dollars. Where did a few million more come from?

“There are a few leading gifts,” Sloan said. “I’m eternally grateful to the Kenneth Rainin Foundation. They are such an amazing organization. They support many of the filmmakers whose work we love to show, and they support the local film festivals that we host.”

“This was our first grant from the Rainin Foundation, but they came through in a huge way.”

There's also a circle of donors called the Poppy Society, named for the Roxie’s original 1913 name, the Poppy Theatre. The Roxie has had six different names over 113 years, and was interestingly called “The Gaiety” for a few years in the early 1930s, before becoming The Roxie in 1933.

“Our marquee came from an auto dealership in Oakland, and it was brought on a barge over here in the 30s,” according to Sloan. “I think when they got that marquee up there, they were like, ‘We’re sticking with The Roxie.’”

And yes, it is true that The Roxie was one of those seedy pornography theaters during the 1970s and 80s. “Definitely The Roxie had its time as a XXX movie theater,” Sloan told us. “I always joke that we’ve replaced the seats since then.”

With the Forever Roxie capital campaign, they also plan to replace the projectors, screens, and sound system, as well as buying the whole building. They could still use more contributions to make that happen, and you can donate here.

Related: Roxie Theater on the Verge of Buying Its Building, Launches ‘Capital Campaign’ [SFist]

Image: Joe Kukura, SFist

“I hope everybody peed and pooped outside,” Dog Film Festival founder Tracie Hotchner announced humorously but earnestly, kicking off a Sunday afternoon show featuring this year's finest short films from the canine canon. The Dog Film Festival is a traveling show that’s playing in a total of 15 cities nationwide, and SFist was on hand this weekend at the Roxie Theatre to catch the proceedings as the festival came through San Francisco.

A post shared by Jody Hackerott Gibney (@jodyhackerott) on Feb 19, 2017 at 4:25pm PST

The festival is the pet project of Tracie Hotchner, better known as the Radio Pet Lady and host of NPR’s Dog Talk (and Kitties Too!). Dogs were actually allowed inside the Roxie for the show — a request most theaters balk at when she tries to book festival venues. But Hotchner insists dogs should be the least of the theaters’ worries.

“They serve food and they say it’s against the health rules, or they’ve recently renovated and they’re fearful of their carpet being stained,” she told SFist. “Dogs haven’t done anything in theaters. It’s more likely that people would drop their Coca-Cola than a dog would pee.”

A post shared by Buttercup (@butter_sf) on Feb 19, 2017 at 3:40pm PST

Festival attendee and Instagram enthusiast belindacherie observes that “Taking Oona to the movies was very much like taking my 4-year old niece to the movies, only with different snacks. Instead of goldfish crackers and M&Ms, dried beef esophagus and bully sticks.”

Image: Joe Kukura, SFist

Though it was raining — cats and dogs, you might say — on Sunday, pets and their people still posed Hollywood-style with a movie premiere backdrop outside the Roxie. The films themselves, all shorts about dogs, ran the gamut. Some of the films are dog-umentaries, others were doggie parodies with names like “Game of Bones”, and others tackled complex social issues to examine dogs’ roles in rehabilitating prisoners or the pups’ tragic plights in the home foreclosure crisis.

Image: Joe Kukura, SFist

The festival benefited dogs and other animals: Half the proceeds from the show went to San Francisco Animal Care & Control. “We have a new shelter that’s being constructed, so we’re looking for more funds,” SF Animal Care and Control Sgt. Eleanor Sadler told SFist. SF Animal Control isn't dogmatic, either, “We’re an open-door shelter, which means we take in every animal that we find and we help it however we can.”

Image: Joe Kukura, SFist

For it's next stop, the Dog Film Festival travels to Marin today, marking the first time ever that dogs will be allowed into Larkspur’s historic Lark Theater.

Related: World Dog Surfing Championship Wraps Up In Pacifica

You guys. The world’s longest-running LGBTQ film festival Frameline kicks off Thursday night at the Castro Theatre and runs through the end of Pride Weekend, and boy could we use some Frameline right now. Here to open a No. 10 can of social justice, solidarity, and unapologetic fabulous flair on our currently conflicted society, Frameline’s 40th annual incarnation gets loud and proud with more than 150 screenings at the Castro, the Roxie, the Victoria, and in Oakland and Berkeley. While the Closing Night screening of the feature-length finale of HBO’s Looking is “At Rush” (that’s film festival-speak for “sold out, but you can stand in line and hope to get an unoccupied seat”), there are still tickets available for these other magnificent, thought-provoking and massively entertaining contemporary works of queer cinema.

Kiki
Opening Night vogues hard with this modern-day revisitation of the underground queer ballroom dancing culture seen in the 1990’s groundbreaking film Paris is Burning. Ballroom dancing serves as an escape for a band of New York City LGBTQ kids as they struggle with poverty, homelessness, and harassment in Sara Jordenö’s unflinching and relentlessly inspiring dance scene documentary.
Castro Theatre, Thursday, June 16, 7 p.m. and Landmark Theatres Piedmont (Oakland)
Friday, June 24 7 p.m. Get tickets here

Akron
The squee, teenage gay jock romance we’ve always been waiting for has finally arrived. Put aside your LeBron hate for 90 glorious, heartwarming minutes as we take a fictional, romantic trip to the small town of Akron, Ohio (LeBron’s real-life hometown) where two hunky football players find young love. Unsurprisingly, complications ensue as the story unfolds into a hot, young beefcake version of Romeo and Juliet.
Castro Theatre, Friday, June 17, 4 p.m. and Victoria Theatre, Saturday, June 25, 4 p.m. Get tickets here

Girl Gets Girl
It’s like a lesbian Three’s Company delivered telenovela-style in Sonia Sebastián’s dyke dramedy. A teenage girl’s “Period Party” flows heavily with adult situations, mistaken identities, comic twists and sexual innuendos in this feature-length film adaptation of the popular Spanish TV series.
Roxie Theatre, Saturday, June 18, 6:30 p.m. Get tickets here
UPDATE: As luck would have it, this film has gone to Rush. But there are 54 other outstanding lesbian films for your consideration in this year's Frameline.

'Vegas In Space', image via Frameline

Vegas In Space
The Peaches Christ Productions offering at this year’s Frameline — hostessed, of course, by Peaches herself — is the 1991 Troma Entertainment low-budget epic Vegas In Space that has played at Cannes, Sundance and most prestigiously on USA’s Up All Night. Peaches packs plenty of the film’s stars into the Victoria for this screening, including longtime local drag faves Connie Champagne, Timmy Spence, and the film’s director Phillip R. Ford
Victoria Theatre, Friday, June 17, 9:30 p.m. Get tickets here

PUSHING DEAD TRAILER from MrD on Vimeo.

Strike A Pose
Rejoice, vintage Madonna fans — here’s the documentary that shows you what the documentary Truth or Dare did not dare show you. The surviving background dancers, all of whom were hand-picked by Madonna for the “Blonde Ambition” tour, reunite to tell the inside story of what really happened on tour and to their lives afterward. Christ, have they aged well, and yes the boys will be onhand at this Castro screening to hopefully dish some serious dirt about Madge.
Castro Theatre, Saturday, June 25, 8:30 p.m. Get tickets here

Growing Up Coy
The bravest little soldier in the transgender bathroom access movement is Coy Mathis, a Colorado first-grader who won the right to use the girls bathroom in 2013. This is her story. A poignant portrait of the a family whose persistence set of a national battle still being fought today, this documentary details the very personal and very public conflict they waged on behalf of the “thousands of Coys out there”
Castro Theatre, Saturday, June 25, 11 a.m. Get tickets here

If your invitation to the Vanity Fair Oscar Party somehow got lost in the mail, you can still get all the ballgowns, ballots and bingo of this Sunday night’s 88th Academy Awards at a local San Francisco Oscars viewing party. The Academy Awards ceremony officially begins at 5:30 p.m. PST Sunday, but some of this year’s nominees for best Oscar watching party in San Francisco begin a little earlier so you can razz the red carpet arrival broadcast, hashtag #SoWhite references and compare last-minute predictions with your gussied-up friends.

Academy of Friends Oscar Night Charity Gala
The glitziest, glammiest and for-a-really-good-cause Oscars party north of Beverly Hills is the annual Academy Awards Night Charity Gala hosted by the Academy of Friends. This is your most opulent Oscars option, but you can be sure that 100% of your ticket price will directly benefit Project Open Hand, Maitri and several HIV/AIDS charities and nonprofits.
San Francisco Design Center Galleria, 101 Henry Adams St., 5 p.m. ($300 General Admission, $750 VIP)

Up The Awards Benefit Bash
Hecklers, razzers and lovable haters always congregate at the Roxie for the annual Up The Awards Benefit Bash, a bring-your-own-carry-out-food Oscars watching party that — hey-o! — now serves beer. You don’t even have to sit through the commercials, because the Roxie plays their “latest discoveries of curious and never-less-than hilarious cinematic detritus during the breaks”.
The Roxie, 3117 16th St., 3:45 p.m. ($15)

Image: Madame Tussaud's and SoMa StrEat Food Park

Oscars Party at The Knockout
The Knockout knocks out another annual Oscars party with Hollywood-themed drinks, fresh-popped popcorn, prizes for the best dressed and the Knockout Oscar Ballot Challenge.
The Knockout, 3223 Mission St, 6 p.m. (Free)

Image: The Oasis

Balboa Theater Oscars Party
Watch the Academy Awards on the silver screen at the Balboa’s beloved annual Oscars party, this year hosted by Reed Kirk-Rahlmann, Joshua Brody, and Merle and Amy Kessler.
Balboa Theater, 3630 Balboa St., 2:30 p.m. ($11)

There's been another cinematic coup for Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, newly open at Mission and 21st Street. After scoring Star Wars: The Force Awakens for their grand opening and bringing in Lost Weekend Video plus the enormous Le Video collection, the cinema-bar-restaurant-video-rental concept will now serve as the main venue for the 59th San Francisco International Film Festival (April 21 to May 5). In a Tuesday announcement on their website, the SF Film Society staked their 2016 claim on “San Francisco's newest (Alamo Drafthouse New Mission) and oldest (Roxie Theater) screens to bring the best of world cinema to Bay Area audiences.”

The festival’s opening and closing night screenings will still at be held at the Castro Theatre. “We love the Castro,” SF Film Society executive director Noah Cowan told SFist. "It’s been the home to our biggest nights over the decades.” Cowan noted there will be many additional film festival screenings at the Castro this year as well.

“But the Alamo Drafthouse will feel like the center of the festival, in many ways,” he said.

This marks a huge change from the SFIFF's traditional primary venue being the Sundance Kabuki Theater, which will not be holding film festival screenings this year.

The Alamo will now serve as the main hub for the festival’s 200+ screenings, with other shows at the Castro, the Victoria, the Roxie and in Berkeley’s Pacific Film Archive. The festival is also adding the digital arts studio/hackerspace venue Gray Area on Mission Street for many of its non-screening events.

And it looks as though the Lost Weekend Video and Le Video collections will be available for rental when the film festival rolls around — recent visitors to the Alamo Drafthouse have seen the video racks under construction (the kiosk was earlier promised to be open by February).

The burning question on this primary venue change is whether festival attendees will have to stand outside in the howling wind whilst waiting for the theaters to seat them, as they did when screenings were held at the Kabuki. “We’ll do our best to ensure that most people who need to wait significant amounts of time at the Alamo Drafthouse will be able to do so inside,” Cowan said.

The full program of the 59th San Francisco International Film Festival will be released on Tuesday, March 29, with the opening film on April 21.

Wes Craven was doubtless a visionary, and what he envisioned scared (and titillated) pretty much everybody. The Last House on the Left (1972), The Hills Have Eyes(1977), and Scream (1996), which gave the slashers a good slashing of their own, are all considered to be his classics. Sadly, on August 30th the filmmaker died of brain cancer, as LAist reports.

Honoring him, the Mission District's Roxie has selected another Craven classic, the particularly inventive A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), to screen several times this weekend and again next Wednesday. Here are the times:

Friday, September 4 @9:45 p.m.

Saturday, September 5 @9:45 p.m.

Sunday, September 6 @ 3:00 p.m.

Wednesday, September 9 @9:45 p.m.

Writes the Roxie's director Isabel Fondevila: "Rest In Peace Wes Craven, (even if you rarely let any of YOUR OWN characters do so!) "

Related: The Roxie Theater, SF's Oldest Cinema, Gets A Three-Year Reprieve From Landlord

Bay Area-raised director Jennifer Phang's Sundance Jury Prize-winning film Advantageous tells the story of a futuristic corporation called The Center for Advanced Health and Living, which offers an alternative to invasive plastic surgery via a radical new technology that allows people to overcome their natural disadvantages. It's a sort of sci-fi mother-daughter story centered on Gwen Koh, a spokesperson for the company who, ultimately, has to decide whether she'll undergo the procedure herself.

Phang will be here in SF for a Q&A after a screening of the film on Sunday at the Roxie Theater, in the Big Roxie, at 9 p.m. Additionally, the film is showing in the Little Roxie, starting Friday. See showtimes here.

Also, the movie's on Netflix streaming now too.

Crime isn't supposed to pay, but sometimes it does ... to the tune of something like $1 million a week. Screening at the Roxie Theater this week, How to Make Money Selling Drugs (2012) is an unusual documentary that delves into the lives and businesses of big-time drug dealers from their perspectives, and includes candid interviews with dealers themselves, who shares thoughts, stories and hows-tos on making money in the drug trade. Most notable among these is "Freeway" Ricky Ross, the 1980's drug kingpin who claims to have once earned $3 million in one day from drug trafficking.

With a structure somewhere between a how-to video and a video game walk-through, you can learn Ross' tips, along with insights on why the War on Drugs is failing to stymie the illicit drug industry (and may even be helping it).

7:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m.
Roxie Theater
3117 - 16th Street San Francisco
415-863-1087

Oh, we love the Roxie. Or rather, we love the idea of the Roxie. It's a small, yet oddly spacious seeming, theater nestled in the heart of the Mission with so much potential. And according to Mission Mission, the theater wants your feedback on how they can do a better job at the best independent cinema house in San Francisco -- e.g, ease up on the progressive elite/boring documentaries; enact some sort of B.Y.O.B. unwritten rule; invent a warming device that softens Milk-Duds. Anyway, MM editor Allan Hough suggests serving "serving beer and pizza," but we think vodka and pizza would do just as nicely. For more info on how to give the Roxie your sparkling brilliant ideas, go here.