Art cinemas flourishing in Miami 

Smack in the middle of an unremarkable city block in Wynwood, O Cinema — with its neon-blue exterior and mural of cute monsters and precocious aliens — looks out of place, like a pop art gallery that got lost on its way to Art Basel, or a quirky day-care center for parents of extra-terrestrials.

The moment you step inside the place, though, you latch onto the vibe. A year after its grand opening, the nonprofit cinema has grown into one of Miami’s coolest hangouts for fans of eclectic films; home to several art galleries featuring rotating exhibits; a mini-shop of so-obscure-it’s-cool memorabilia; and a former warehouse — once used for wood working and electrical engineering — that has been converted into a cozy, 55-seat theater with a large screen, a full-service snack and wine bar and some of the most comfortable couches you will ever sit in.

Despite the odds — an out-of-the-way location, challenging programming and little to no advertising budget — the O Cinema hasn’t just survived its first year: The theater is actually thriving, with plans to expand.

The O has also become a vital element of a surging art house cinema scene that extends throughout the area. To wit:

• At the O, a weeklong retrospective of the films by the Miami-based rakontur studio sold out nearly every night; documentaries such as Page One: Inside the New York Times drew larger audiences than at the Regal South Beach; anime fans trekked south from as far as West Palm Beach — by bus! — decked out in full character regalia for the premiere of Fullmetal Alchemist; and the original Battle Royale — a Japanese movie rarely screened in the United States that makes The Hunger Games seem like Disney fodder — is scheduled to screen at the theater beginning April 5.

• The Coral Gables Art Cinema, which also opened in 2011, already has film distributors begging to get into the theater. Pina, the recent 3D dance documentary by director Wim Wenders, grossed a whopping $16,000 in its first week at the theater — the fifth highest gross in the entire country. In November, Pedro Almodovar’s The Skin I Live In earned $18,000 its opening week, even though the film was also playing at area multiplexes.

• The Tower Theatre in Little Havana, which is operated by Miami Dade College, sold an astonishing $15,000 worth of tickets during the first week of the Iranian drama A Separation (by comparison, the movie grossed an average of $8,600 per screen at other theaters that week). The Tower’s aggressive slate of programming for April includes the new film by Zhang Yimou, Flowers of War, starring Christian Bale, and the Italian drama We Have a Pope, directed by Nanni Moretti.

• At the swank Miami Beach Cinematheque, movies that might have once never reached South Florida — such as Bela Tarr’s magnificent The Turin Horse and Céline Sciamma’s acclaimed French dramaTomboy — are regularly screened.

• And at the University of Miami’s Cosford Cinema, the programming has become eclectic enough to include the Miami premiere of avant-garde artist Matthew Barney’s controversial Cremaster Cycle (all five parts of it), glorious 35 mm retrospective screenings (including Jean-Luc Godard’s Weekend), new releases such as The Kid with a Bike (which opens April 6) and, for fun, occasional late-night showings of fan favorites such as Back to the Future.