FilmStruck's closing ignites fears that Hollywood's march toward streaming will erase movie history

LOS ANGELES - On a recent Friday night, filmmaker Evan Koehne and his group of fellow film enthusiasts gathered to watch "Stalker," the influential 1979 sci-fi drama by Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky.

The handful of former roommates and college buddies huddled on a couch and camping chairs in the living room of Koehne's Echo Park house to view and discuss the three-hour Soviet-era epic. The event wouldn't have been possible without the classic movie streaming service FilmStruck.

So Koehne was stunned when the AT&T Inc.-owned film and television giant WarnerMedia decided to pull the plug on the small but beloved FilmStruck, a 2-year-old treasure trove for fans of old movies such as 1946's "The Best Years of Our Lives" and Francois Truffaut's 1959 film "The 400 Blows."

"I'm worried people won't be aware these movies exist if there isn't a way