The Buskirk-Chumley Theater on Kirkwood Avenue is a restored 1922 vaudeville house that now operates as Bloomington's main venue for independent and foreign films, live music, and performing arts. The building has been largely preserved: the ornate plasterwork ceiling, the original marquee, and the narrow stage-front configuration remain intact, which gives it a character that purpose-built modern cinemas cannot replicate.
Programming leans eclectic — film festivals, touring musicians, comedy shows, and occasional lectures. The theater is community-owned and non-profit, which explains both its financial precariousness over the years and its willingness to program things that commercial venues won't touch. Check the schedule before arriving; it is the kind of place that might be showing an Ingmar Bergman retrospective one week and hosting a punk show the next.