For years, the Los Angeles Film Festival was a cinephile's delight. Until it wasn't

You wouldn't think it'd be too difficult to maintain a thriving independent film festival in one of the world's biggest and most iconic movie cities, a so-called "company town" whose inhabitants are assumed to live and breathe cinema as few others do. But Wednesday's announcement that the Film Independent-run Los Angeles Film Festival would be shuttering after 18 years has demonstrated the opposite.

It is, in fact, all too easy for a sprawling metropolis already stuffed to the gills with entertainment coverage, industry and media screenings and Oscar-season festivities week in and week out to take one of its flagship events for granted.

In Los Angeles, casual and professional moviegoers alike have ready access to new independent, foreign-language