MONTREAL — Fans and distributors of independent film are asking Daniel Langlois to keep his Ex-Centris complex open after the philanthropist and Softimage founder announced he will stop showing films there March 20.

Since Langlois confirmed Tuesday that he would no longer project movies at the swanky state-of-the-art facility he built in 1999, Montreal’s film community has been up in arms. The three-theater venue, which hosts the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma, is the premiere venue for independent films in a city which has lost a number of rep theaters in the last decade.

Louis Dussault of distributor K-Films Amérique pled with Langlois, in a statement issued Wednesday, to change his mind. Distributors of Quebec independent film obtain between 30% and 50% of their box office from Ex-Centris, says Dussault, who is currently in France and couldn’t be reached for comment. ‘Without the Montreal box office we couldn’t afford to show these films outside Montreal.’

Ex-Centris supporters have started a Facebook page, which had 800 members by late Wednesday.

Langlois, who says he wants to use his venue for more experimental, multimedia projects, appears to be losing interest in cinema. After buying and refurbishing the rep house Cinéma du Parc, Langlois shut it down in 2006 because it didn’t make enough money. It was reopened shortly after that by Roland Smith.

FNC will likely need to find a new place to roost, the festival’s codirector Nicolas Girard Deltruc told Playback Daily. ‘We have historic ties with Ex-Centris, but the big question is what will it look like now? Will there still be seats and screens in those theaters? We don’t know. Once we know, then we will have to make a decision. Everyone is surprised.’

Girard Deltruc says Chamberlan has asked Langlois to delay changing Ex-Centris’s vocation for a year, so Cinéma Parallèle — a nonprofit organization which shows independent films and occupies one of Ex-Centris’ theatres — will have a chance to find a new venue.

Langlois says he wants to use the soon-to-be vacant cinemas to experiment with projects that mix theater, music, dance and high-definition projections. He told Montreal’s French-language daily La Presse that the new programming will likely begin at the end of the summer.