Good morning! I have watched quite a few Scandinavian movies lately! It was all part of our coverage of Silverdocs, the annual film festival that kicks off Monday. The Washington Post‘s Ann Hornaday also previewed Silverdocs! However, her essay has no Scandinavian content! It is positively un-Scandinavian, a symptom, no doubt, of some sort of institutional bias, or perhaps a wider, cultural one. Know this, Nordic diaspora: City Paper‘s got your back.

Lots of local artsy news to cover!

*The Bethesda Theatre is for sale, Washington Business Journal reports. A former movie house (of which I have strong childhood memories), it reopened as a theater in 2007:

Less than three years later, the like-new theater is scheduled to change — ownership, that is, at a mortgage foreclosure auction.

Owned by The Bethesda Cultural Alliance Inc., a nonprofit formed by the Bozzuto Group, the theater put on its last performance in spring 2009. In August of that year, Director Ray Cullom said the theater was poised to announce its 2009-2010 season, but the announcement never came.

*  For the next three years, five playwrights will have full-time jobs with benefits at Arena Stage. WaPo:

The venture is part of a major change at Arena, which is preparing to open a $125 million three-theater campus in the fall and to try to rebrand itself as a national center for American theater.

Over the next three years, five playwrights will be part of Arena’s American Voices New Play Institute, which was formed in August and financed by a $1.1 million gift from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The writers will be paid to write on any project they please during their three-year tenure, with the promise of a stage production and an additional pot of development money under their control.

* Parliament-Funkadelic guitarist and Upper Marlboro, Md., resident Garry Shider—-better known as Diaper Man—-is dead.

* IMP Inc. has filed a suit, WaPo reports, challenging Maryland’s subsidies for a planned Live Nation venue in Silver Spring—-the 2000-capacity Fillmore Silver Spring. IMP, which owns the 9:30 Club and stages shows at Merriweather Post Pavilion, claims that Montgomery County, which would also contribute funds, has not provided adequate information about the project’s costs in violation of state law.

* Lots of cool repertory film tonight: Ferlinghetti and Cecil Taylor: All the Notes at the National Gallery; Red Cliff Part 1 at the Freer.

The venture is part of a major change at Arena, which is preparing to open a $125 million three-theater campus in the fall and to try to rebrand itself as a national center for American theater.

Over the next three years, five playwrights will be part of Arena’s American Voices New Play Institute, which was formed in August and financed by a $1.1 million gift from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The writers will be paid to write on any project they please during their three-year tenure, with the promise of a stage production and an additional pot of development money under their control.