Visions Bar Noir, an independent two-screen theater near Dupont Circle, showed its final film last Thursday night. Sources cite debt and increasing competition as the main reasons behind the theater’s closure.

Visions’ President Andrew Frank began the theater four years ago as a showcase for foreign, independent and art house movies. He had hoped Visions would serve as a venue where people could watch movies and then talk about them afterward.

“It’s not good enough to go watch a movie and end up talking about the movie on the way home in the car,” Frank told the Washington Times before the theater opened in 2000. “We want film to be looked at as an art form, something that is about ideas, and when you are done watching the film you don’t go home: You can sit down and deconstruct what you saw. And that’s what makes it fun.”

Film buffs are left wondering what went wrong in the wake of Visions’ closure. Visions was one of the only independently owned theaters in the area, struggling to compete with chains such as Landmark Theatres and Loews Cineplex.

“We really tried to give the theater a personality and individuality, which you don’t usually get in theaters,” Frank told The Washington Post last week.

In an attempt to combat dropping ticket sales, Frank revamped the theater’s bar last year, dubbing it Bar Noir.

Last Wednesday, Visions staff broke the news to friends of the theater in an e-mail. “Recently there have been many rumors circulating that Visions Bar Noir is going to close. Sadly, we must now confirm that the rumors are true,” the e-mail said, going on to thank the entire “Visions family” for its support over the years.

Ken Cornwell, a graduate film student at American University, received the e-mail.

“It was a hip place,” he said, adding that he went to a Valentine’s Day brunch and screening of Breakfast at Tiffany’s in February. “It was a great place to see independent films and obscure movies — things that you couldn’t see at your average, run-of-the-mill movie theater.”

Jonathan Gardner (COL ’05) enjoyed Visions as well.

“I was really disappointed to find out that they closed because even though there are other options in D.C. for viewing similar films, I think its closure speaks to a larger indifference toward independent and foreign films,” he said.

Other disappointed patrons include Carla Cohen and Barbara Meade, founders and owners of Politics & Prose Bookstore and Coffeehouse, who have long-standing ties to Frank and his theater.

Frank approached Cohen in 2000, when plans for Visions were in the works, asking for help in gathering support for his project. Cohen agreed, becoming one of Visions’ most loyal advocates.

Frank, who owns Sirius Coffee Co., also runs Politics & Prose’s coffee shop.

Meade said she and Cohen were “delighted” to pass on that responsibility to him a few years back, because it allowed them to focus more on the book-selling side of their business.

“Andrew Frank went to a lot of film festivals to find good off-beat films that you wouldn’t see in a theater chain,” Meade said.

Frank’s biggest obstacle was the set of “unwritten rules” that operate between film distributors and large theater chains, Meade added. Frank often had trouble getting the movies he wanted, she said.

“I’m sorry that it happened,” Meade said. “I think it’s a loss to the city.”