Susanna Caccia
The volume focuses on the situation of the cinema in the international panorama. A repertory of architectures that materialize technical, spatial and visual requirements, controlled in every single detail, from furnishings to design and art. Such a heritage is today threatened by abandonments, alterations and even demolitions. The book does not only intend to highlight the need to safeguard the cinemas that are still preserved today but also to raise new considerations on restoration and new compatible uses. With contributions by:
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Susanna Caccia (editor) Evinc Dogan Kjell Furberg Marta García Falcó Maria Adriana Giusti Ezio Godoli Richard Gray Patricia Méndez Pierre Pageau Marc Zimmermann
Screen savers
Cinema’s preservation in the international scene edited by Susanna Caccia
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Edizioni ETS
architecture landscape international heritage
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Collana ALIH
architecture landscape international heritage
Maria Adriana Giusti (director)
Image cover: The Fontänen, Vällingby, Sweden (photo by Kjell Furberg)
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© Copyright 2013 Edizioni ETS Piazza Carrara, 16-19, I-56126 Pisa info@edizioniets.com www.edizioniets.com Distribuzione PDE ISBN 978-8846734143-0
Screen savers
Cinema’s preservation in the international scene edited by Susanna Caccia
Edizioni ETS
CONTENS
Foreword
7
Cinema halls in Buenos Aires a XXth century heritage
9
Marta García Falcó, Patricia Méndez From the Volta to the Light House: re-evaluating Dublin’s Architectural Cinema Heritage
35
Marc Zimmermann A Future of Heritage Cinema Buildings
49
Richard Gray The Remaining Cinema Gems of Sweden
77
Kjell Furberg Canada (Québec)
99
Pierre Pageau Cinema Architecture at risk. Experiences and conservation projects
121
Susanna Caccia Rediscovering Cinema Architecture and its value in Malta’s social landscape
139
Marc Zimmermann Cinema Architecture in Italy
157
Maria Adriana Giusti From arcades to shopping malls: preservation of Beyoglu cinemas
169
Evinc Dogan The architecture of northern Africa cinema theaters from their origins to the second world war Ezio Godoli
189
FOREWORD
For too long a time our movie theatres have represented a heritage that seems doomed to disappear. For over thirty years now they have shown signs of irreversible decline, with buildings torn down or altered for other uses. Despite the repeated warnings of scholars and movie-lovers all over the world, despite the publications and conferences they have produced, an important part of our cultural heritage is being lost. This is why we have felt the need for the present volume, in which a series of contributions are brought together, starting out from Quebec, as told by Pierre Pageau, to lap the shores of movie theatres on African coasts, as described by Ezio Godoli. These writings have been deliberately chosen for their reference to a variety of spatial and socio-cultural contexts, not only to offer as broad as possible a panorama of the current situation, but also to trace the paths that can lead to saving our cinemas. They are essays that reveal both the importance of this problem on an international scale and also ways to find new directions and strategies for conservation. Though, as Maria Adriana Giusti shows in her contribution, Italy unfortunately lags behind in this search, not only as regards the literature on the topic but also in the paucity of concrete measures of conservation, some interesting situations do exist. In this context, we need only think of the associations created almost all over the world, of which an outstanding example is London’s Cinema Theatre Association, associations that for many years have been carrying on a vast project of cataloging and conservation. It is especially the English cinemas described by Richard Gray that show us how such associations can play a decisive role in the survival of theatre architecture. Examples of these masterpieces include the Swedish movie theatres described by the historian Kjell Furberg, who recreates for the reader the golden years of cinema with an evocative series of illustrations to accompany the text. Another text offering important insights is the contribution of the Cinema Heritage Group, under the guidance of Marc Zimmermann, the author of two dense essays here included, one on particular aspects of the situation in Malta and the other about the city of Dublin. Other essays that contribute to our understanding of the importance of historical research aimed at a meticulous analysis of the situation of a specific geographical area include the
detailed study of Buenos Aires done by Marta Garcia Falco and Patricia Méndez, or that of Istanbul by Evinc Dogan. Though unfortunately in many instances we witness a series of uncoordinated initiatives and a lack of consistent policy-making, we can also find a stimulating counter-example in France. There, various initiatives promoted by Mission Cinéma, created in 2002, are part of a project aimed on the one hand to safeguard and give new life to historical movie theatres and on the other at an intelligent envisioning of new containers designed to create more geographical balance in the presence of cinemas. A primary role in the battle against the loss of cinemas has been played by citizens who in response to local situations have rallied against closings and demolitions. Sit-ins, petitions and other forms of local protest were, for example, the means used to prevent the loss of Adalberto Libera’s historical Cinema Airone in Rome. This book hopes to join the actions of local communities. Its objective is to recognize the centrality of the architectural heritage of movie theatres and the desire to link knowledge to social action and conservation. It is for this reason that a comparison and interchange with what is happening on the international scene has seemed indispensible. This comparison has its foundations in a common goal: safeguarding movie theatres and with them a piece of the history of the twentieth century, for they are at once icons of modernity in its various junctures and the expression of forms of citizenship that differ according to time and place. With an important final comment: a work like this once again proposes to the historian and the restorer the occasion for reflection on and memory of the various temporalités urbaines.
CINEMA HALLS IN BUENOS AIRES A XX CENTURY HERITAGE MARTA GARCÍA FALCÓ, PATRICIA MÉNDEZ
In Buenos Aires, film entertainment called up public attention from its very outset, at the first exhibition at the Odeon theatre on July 18th, 1896. Although the first films showed in Argentina shared buildings with theatre plays – for they were exhibited in existing theatre halls –, in a few years this technological innovation required special locations capable of housing the necessary devices. Thus, in 1900 the National Cinematograph, in downtown Buenos Aires – Maipu 471/79 –, began operating. This was the first hall equipped for film screenings, refurbished to that end inside a private house of the time. The creators of this new cinema hall were Gregorio Ortuño – owner of a photographic equipment shop –, and the Puppo company with Mr. Rodriguez Melgarejo, all three promoters of this first cinema hall in Argentina. The cinema boom was such that, in 1909, Buenos Aires already had more than thirty cinema halls, apart from the forty theatres that showed, alternately, films and plays. Also, in 1909, the Cine Teatro Ateneo (later Empire Theatre), opened at the corner of Corrientes and Maipu streets. The building was the work of the French-Swiss architect Jacques Dunant, who was also one of its owners, and was considered the first truly luxurious cinema hall in the city. Quickly, cinema halls started their decentralization, accompanying the growth of the city and the consolidation of districts, areas with functional structures and identity of their own, sometimes arising as the expansion of the central area (Barrio Norte, Balvanera, Constitution, Palermo), and others deriving from the inclusion inside the city limits of ancient villages of the surroundings (Flores, Belgrano, Colegiales, Caballito). Less than a decade spanned between the opening of the first cinema hall in the family house on Maipú Street and the specially designed places for cinema pioneers. The specific requirements of this new functional program produced architectural and spatial aesthetic results closely related to theatre ones, but with more inspired and imaginative designs. Thus, the Buckingham Palace was a real Moorish castle opening on the very Spanish-styled Avenida de Mayo, the New Palace was a strikingly decorated almostcircus, while, later, other cinemas such as the Hindu or the Renaissance, honored their 9
Cinema halls in Buenos Aires. A XX century heritage
Cinemat贸grafo Nacional
Buckingham Palace , c. 1906
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Marta García Falcó, Patricia Méndez
Views of cinemas in Buenos Aires city, 1926
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Cinema halls in Buenos Aires. A XX century heritage
names with corresponding architectural languages on their facades. Statistics for 1907 reveal the increase in attendance to the movies in one year: from 133,740 viewers in 1906, numbers rose to 666,370 in 1907. The newly born film industry ranked fourth among the favorite entertainments in Buenos Aires, surpassed only by the 1,050,360 zarzuela spectators, opera viewers – 781,800 –, and comedy and drama in Spanish, Italian and French – 978,750 spectators –. Afterwards came the national drama and comedy, and circus shows1. Another entertainment of these early times was the cinema-bar, also called café-concert- movie: in existing bars, projection screens and live music were added to accompany the screening of the mute tapes. The movie-bars appeared mainly in neighborhoods outside the central area of the capital city. There were, in Buenos Aires at different times between 1896 and 2010, over three hundred cinemas. They were -and in some cases they survive as leisure centres- spaces created for film projection or adapted from existing buildings, usually theatres, sharing films with plays. Over more than a century, city dwellers enthusiastically supported all these innovations in film projections and regularly attended both the downtown movie palaces and the smaller neighborhood cinemas, centres for social life.
Consolidation of the cinema hall as architectural type In 1907, with the arrival of the first soundtrack films – distributed in Argentina by Casa Lepage – the movie became an entertainment genre on its own and began to compete strongly on billboards. At the time, with advances in image registration techniques, recording social events or city news alternated in cinema hall projections with documentary films. The first film considered as such was Eugenio Py’s – a Lepage House cameraman – register during a visit to Buenos Aires of Brazil’s president, Dr. Manuel Campos Salles in October 1900, exhibited at the Salon Florida some days later. In the second decade of the XXth century film production, distribution and exhibition in Argentina began a steady development which continued over the next 40 years. Entrepreneurs like Max Glücksman or Pablo Coll contributed towards the making of film industry, and filmmakers like Mario Gallo, the director of the first Argentine plot film, The May Revolution, premiered on May 22th, 1909 at the Athenaeum Theatre (Cine-teatro Ateneo) on the corner of Corrientes and Maipú streets (and later re-released in 1910), consolidated the film-related activity in the country. Meanwhile, the first cinema hall was built on Lavalle Street, which would, many years later, be known as the “street of the cinema halls”. That first cinema was the Lavalle Biograph, later Lavalle Select, opened in 1911. Very soon came along the Radium, the Pa Direction Générale de la Statistique Municipale, Annuaire Statistique de la Ville de Buenos Ayres. Année 1907, Ville de Buenos Ayres, 1908.
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Marta García Falcó, Patricia Méndez
Electric Palace, Lavalle Street 836, 1913
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Cinema halls in Buenos Aires. A XX century heritage
Ambassador, Lavalle Street 777, 1933
Gran Rex, 1936
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Gran Rex, Corrientes Ave. 857, 1937
Marta García Falcó, Patricia Méndez
risiana and the Electric, all on the same street. Of these pioneer cinema halls, the Electric still remains open, but quite changed and as part of the Monumental cinema complex. Places devoted to film exhibitions had developed very quickly: from a single courtyard house adapted as the first cinema room becoming the National Cinematograph on Maipú street, through the theatres, circuses or other meeting places that accepted a screen and a projecting device, such as bars and cafes, the cinema halls soon acquired a specific typology. Requirements for projection devices, seats inclinations and angles for easy viewing of the screen, lighting and sound issues from the incorporation of soundtracks in films, as well as ventilation and heating systems made the cinema halls a very specific project subject. In popular imagery, going to the movies meant to enter an exotic, distant, and therefore legendary world, embossed in ornament, both outside and inside the buildings. The idea was to suggest a mythical experience, prior to the screening of the film – it was the place of the extraordinary –, attainted by unusual resources in facades and foyers accompanying this mood. This attitude started at the dawn of cinema halls architecture, but showed its best results during the ‘30s and ‘40s. Even though there were a large number of cinema halls in the city of Buenos Aires during this period, whether as isolated buildings devoted to film projection or sharing with other uses, as those occupying the ground floor of a residential building, it has not always been possible to trace their author’s names. However, some common formal types can be recognized in the single building cinema of this period, in plots 8.66 m wide, their facades bear a large central opening and small side towers, in the manner of medieval tents- with garlands or a frieze around this opening, an arrangement common in the first decade of the XXth century. This pattern was independent of its location: downtown or in the neighborhoods. Only a few remain today, reused in many cases as ballrooms. Whenever the plot allowed for it, the typological variation included two or three arches on the facade, and even a loggia on the upper floor, with windows and tracery enclosures, such as the Electric Palace. It was the time of sliding roofs, used to cool the interiors with evening breezes. These sliding roofs were possible even in those theaters occupying the ground floors of residential or office buildings, which ground floors spanned the whole lot. This mixed use complexes were usual from the early XXth century into the ’70s, in residential buildings with ground floor commercial arcades and cinema halls at street level. By the 1930s the cinema had become extraordinarily widespread in many a country. In Buenos Aires, the architecture magazines echoed modernity reflecting in their pages the speed of construction, the technological developments and the proposed layouts, now committed to professionals skilled on the subject. This widespread development of the cinema halls as an architectural typology in itself 15
Cinema halls in Buenos Aires. A XX century heritage Opera, general view
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Marta García Falcó, Patricia Méndez
Opera, details of interiors
Paris, Lavalle Street 769, 1940
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Cinema halls in Buenos Aires. A XX century heritage
Grand Splendid, Santa Fe Ave. 1860, 1919, external view
Grand Splendid, Santa Fe Ave. 1860, 1919, view towards the stage and painted dome
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Marta García Falcó, Patricia Méndez
Detail of Grand Splendid’s Plafon
resulted in a more accurate resolution of spaces with an almost exclusive use for movie projections, as at the same time the Modern Movement’s consolidated its presence in Buenos Aires’ architecture, and specially in these new functional programs. Also, the population growth obliged to an increase in rooms’ capacity: from 500 to 1.000 seats in theatres in the early decades of the century, to around 2000 to 3500 in the ‘30s, while projection technology also evolved. This meant an impact on shapes, function and structure of the halls, which then became the real “movie palaces”. The outstanding examples of this transformation in typology and aesthetics of cinema halls were the Broadway (1930), Monumental (1931), Ambassador (1933), Opera (1936) and Gran Rex (1937), and also – by the end of the period – the Normandie (1939), Luxor (1943), Ocean (1944) and Los Angeles (1946). Except for the first two and the Opera, which still appealed to ornament and scenographic resources, all the other cinemas were designed on the Modern Movement language then booming, incorporating large glass plates and exposing the catwalks to be seen from street level. The new cinema halls had large foyers, fit for social gathering prior to movie watching, and intended to house the large number of spectators that go in and out of the rooms. In the foyers the most refined and noble materials available at the time were used: marble, bronze, glass and wall decorations, painted or textured to give identity and character to the hall.
Integral art The interior decoration of the movie palaces found alternative approaches in their different designers. In those outstandingly ornamented pieces, such as the Ópera, by Alberto Bourdon, scenographic decoration was included, with paintings and small-sized sculptures to achieve the atmosphere of a legendary city. These settings caused uneven 19
Cinema halls in Buenos Aires. A XX century heritage
Cine Arte, Corrientes Ave. 1551, 1941
Cuyo, Boedo Street 858, 1948
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Marta García Falcó, Patricia Méndez
reactions; the Argentine writer and editor Victoria Ocampo, for instance, was horrified at the opening of the Opera on seeing the unusual unreal setting. Another such cinema hall was Andrés Kalnay’s Suipacha which introduced Kálnay’s typical sculptural elements difficult to assimilate with habitual sculpture pieces, but artfully and wisely articulating the plane changes in walls or balconies and stressing spatial rhythms. There was also mural painting as in the Los Ángeles and Grand Splendid cinemas, and bas-relief murals in foyers, such as in the Luxor, or on the facade, as in the Paris cinema. These ornamental works gave character to the cinema halls and particularly to their foyers, where they were usually located. Nonetheless, the architects’ opinions regarding the location of artworks in cinema halls were not always coincident. Architects Abel López Chas and Federico Zemborain – designers of the Los Ángeles Cinema – , for instance, seeing that many theatre buildings were bound for play representations and film projections as well, stated: “In the theatre buildings, the audience is part of the show and thus the ornamented rooms in a way are justified by the long intervals between acts. But in cinema halls the subject is otherwise focused: faster and more synthetic, with shorter intervals, the audience does not stay enough time inside the rooms as to turn it worthwhile to provide substantial imaginative decoration. Quite on the contrary, it would disturb the audience during the very short intervals. We believe that the foyers, however, must bear permanent exhibits of art works -fixed or temporary-, for enjoyment and education of the audiences”2. According to this thought, they commissioned the Galician artist Maruja Mallo to produce the ornamentation: three panels – 6,54 metres by 4 –, which iconography was inspired in Chilean coastal flora and fauna. These paintings were destroyed at the start of the ‘90s, when the cinema was divided into several rooms and incorporated a fast food business. The convenience of mural paintings as part of cinema halls ornamentation depended on each designer’s criteria. Following theatres’ tradition, ceilings were painted by renowned artists such as the Italian Nazareno Orlandi, active in Argentina in the early XXth century, who painted the dome of the Grand Splendid –now converted into one of the best bookstores in the world and still showing the paintings-, the Broadway, Monumental, Renacimiento, Ideal and Versailles cinema halls in Buenos Aires, as also the City Theatre in Santa Fe and the Colon Theatre in Rosario. In the marouflage technique, the Grand Splendid dome carries an allegory for Peace (the Great War had just ended, it was 1919), and opposite this group, – figures surrounded by angels – a female figure italic type holds a film projector, while the film itself flows around the depicted group. In 1942 the Art Cinema – a name recalling it was devoted mainly to non-commercial films – opened in its own premises (it had previously occupied rented temporary ones, and celebrated it by placing six mural paintings by the foremost vanguard artists of the 2 López Chas Abel, Zemborain Federico, Cine Los Ángeles, in «Arquitectura», Buenos Aires, Sociedad Central de Arquitectos, march de 1946.
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Cinema halls in Buenos Aires. A XX century heritage
time. They were Juan Carlos Castagnino – Seventh Art, or Homage to the movies-, César López Claro – with a modern allegory on arts –, Manuel Espinosa – two works inspired on the films Joan of Arc and Mary the sailwoman –, and Orlando Pierri with two murals – Drama and Passers-by –. The Art Cinema became, in the ‘50s, the Lorraine, then the Lorena, and now it houses the Losada Bookstore, preserving just two of the primitive mural paintings, those by Castagnino and López Claro. Castagnino’s, 2,50 metres by 5,50 is a temple work, includes allegories and mentions film directors like Chaplin, Buñuel and Einsestein; López Claro’s, in the same measures and technique, symbolizes theatre, cinema, dance, music and visual arts, summed up in a woman dreaming life through her artistic views. Moreover, the Art Cinema had in its foyer, at the time of its opening in 1942, complementing these mural paintings, prints and free-standing paintings by Argentine artists, which were renewed fortnightly3. Another cinema to include mural art was the Luxor (Lavalle 669), opened in 1944, with ornamental work by Máximo Maldonado and Miguel Ocampo. These mural paintings were 6 metres wide by 2,50 metres high and were placed inside the room. In the foyer, a huge bas-relief of Egyptian reminiscence went along with the cinema’s name. All murals were destroyed on the cinema’s demolition in the early ‘90s. The Metropolitan was another hall to house two murals by Cleto Ciocchini, located in the main foyer. One of them, depìcting fishermen at work, is now at the Tigre Art Museum; the other was devoted to northern Argentine scenery. Ciocchini’s work is seen by art critics as close to that of Quinquela Martin, in their references to port tasks and workmen. But the main modern mural work was done at the San Martin Theatre – which also houses a cinema hall, the Lugonesl –. There, at the ground floor, Luis Seoane built a major work, 11 meters high and 33 metres wide, and at the entrance of the Lugones cinema hall a ceramic mural by Juan Battle Planas –one of the greatest Argentine Modern artists and ceramic sculptor-, still captures the audience’s attention when waiting at the foyer. Just outside Buenos Aires, the San Martin cinema hall in Avellaneda, built in the ‘50s, had a remarkable mural by Antonio Berni, which was lost in time until the cinema turned into a bingo and they were rediscovered and restored. But very few of the artworks originally born with theatres’ or cinemas’ architecture is still at glance: if architecture could scarcely survive, these less strong works could hardly do it. Many, like the ones at the real cinema or the Losuar, then Gandhi bookstore and now a restaurant, are covered under several layers of paint or coatings waiting to be unveiled. Other contemporary cinema palaces turned to the expressive force of plain materials to deliver their message of modernity: the huge glass window in the Gran Rex and, previously -even if a little smaller- in the Ambassador, was later repeated in several cinemas Gutiérrez Viñuales Rodrigo, Cincuenta años de pintura mural en salas de espectáculos porteños (1920-1970). Algunos apuntes, in García Falcó, Marta, Patricia Méndez, Cines de Buenos Aires. Patrimonio del siglo XX, Buenos Aires, CEDODAL/ Editorial Publicaciones Especializadas, 2010. 3
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Marta García Falcó, Patricia Méndez
Statistics of cinemas hall in Buenos Aires, 1896-2010
Statistics of cinemas constructed, demolished and standing at 2010
as a signal of modernity. The Normandie, the Ocean downtown; the Cuyo, Gran Sud, Constitución, Aconcagua in the near neighbourhoods, all allowed for invading natural light in their foyers through an almost invisible glass facade. The cinema was no longer a mysterious place: street light – natural by day, artificial by bight – got inside the foyer, and the wide screen and the talking films broke into the cinema halls, even more so after 1929 when the first sound-track film arrived in Buenos Aires to be shown at the Grand Splendid: The divine lady. Architectural modernity was shown in cinema buildings through some such features as receded and sometimes blind façade planes, slim canopies curving at their extremes to cover the whole facade’s width, entirely opened with pairs of doors – a need to let the hundreds of persons coming in and out at the same time on starting and ending a function –, and Art Déco inspired light fittings or staggered mouldings on pilasters or cornices. These features are common in cinema halls design of the time all over the western world. So, it is no surprise that one of the most imaginatively decorated examples, the Opera, in Buenos Aires, resembled closely the Paris Grand Rex4, opened in 1932, a work of Au4
Listed as National Heritage in France in 1981.
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Cinema halls in Buenos Aires. A XX century heritage
Lavalle Street, c. 1940
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Marta García Falcó, Patricia Méndez
guste Bluysen and John Eberson, still in use. The boom and decay of single-screen halls At the middle of the nineteenth century, Buenos Aires had a consolidated urban structure, with a commercial and administrative central area which included entertainment, and highly developed neighbourhoods with residential and service areas, and none of them lost their identities. Meanwhile, cinema halls location reproduced and underlined those centralities’ structure. It should be remembered that between 1914 and 1960 the number of cinemas in Buenos Aires rose from 53 to 186, with a sensible increase in the new neighbourhoods. So, if in 1914 a 33 per cent of the cinemas was not located downtown, in 1960 that portion was nearly 80 per cent. The cinema had become a meaningful milestone in urban landscape, and acted in developing residential districts as social gathering sites. Even though, in the second half of the century Buenos Aires went through a radical change in the cinematographic products, in close relationship with social movements at the time and the evolution in audiovisual media during the ‘50s, with home-available television sets turning cinema-going into a less frequent entertainment. With the ‘80s shopping centres boom including cinema halls inside them, and the building of cinema complexes, movie-going was no longer a social event – with its accordingly outstanding architecure –, and became mere film watching for itself, which only advantage over watching films on television sets was the screen size. Old single-screen cinema halls were divided into several rooms, trying to diversify the films’ offer and so turning them profitable again. This fragmentation of old cinemas helped to extend the life of already decaying ones, which would otherwise have turned into less cultural sites quite long before.
The importance of legal protection and private support Even if downtown cinemas or the neighbourhoods’ bigger ones have turned into showplaces, or have been taken up by religious congregations, many of the old cinema buildings are now in use as covered parkings, self-service markets or storages, or have been fragmented into several shops, or even continued in use as cinemas with as many as seven small rooms. Many of Lavalle street cinemas have been so converted, taking away all splendour and glamour from them, not only erasing the spatial qualities of halls themselves but of their foyers as well. From the start of the wave of cinema closing in the early eighties, there were not many that could make their way out from decay. The few recoverings were due to neighbours’ initiatives in their aim to give cinemas back their social purposes in the neighbourhood, 25
Cinema halls in Buenos Aires. A XX century heritage
Cine Roca, Rivadavia Ave. 3753, 1938, today one temple
Cine Plaza, Corrientes Ave. 939, 1937, a parking
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National Palace, San Juan Ave. 2461, 1927
Cine Minerva in 2010, Rivadavia Ave. 7428, 1925
Marta García Falcó, Patricia Méndez
Cine Brown, Almirante Brown Ave. 1375, 1903
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Cinema halls in Buenos Aires. A XX century heritage
Rivas, La Rioja Street 2054, 1927, today one temple
some times with the City Government’s financial support. But, which can be the real cause of the old cinemas’ decay, of the scarce possibility to give them new life with a role like the one they used to have, or to invest in their conversion into multipurpose buildings, bearing in mind that, at the time of their construction, they were the utmost in technology? In several neighbourhoods in Buenos Aires these conversions and reuse have taken place linked to different kinds of cultural activities or shows, many a time housing official theatre schemes. Among them can be mentioned the Regio, from 2009 on ruled by the City Government linked to the San Martin City Theatre’s official schedule and the 25 de Mayo, in Villa Urquiza, connected to the Colon Theatre schedule. From neighbours initiative have sprang the former Park cinema, reopened as Jacobean Park which, most regretfully, had to close again because of lack of resources to operate and keep it up, and the Brown, another private venture in the traditional Boca district, which obtained 28
Marta García Falcó, Patricia Méndez
Cine Teatro Regio, Córdoba 6055 (1929), recovered and run by he City Government
a subsidy in 2010 from the Patronage Act, a City law which derives a percentage of income taxes paid by companies to support cultural activities5. Different laws contemplate the protection of several cinema halls to preserve their buildings, preventing them from demolition. Most of them have precautionary protection6 and, less often, structural status7. They are considered cultural heritage as a basis for their protection. At the moment, protected cinema halls are the Taricco in Paternal district; the Pueyrredon in Flores; the Gran Rivadavia in Floresta, the Aconcagua in Villa Pueyrredón (still waiting for the law to be enforced); the Cuyo in Boedo; the Rivas in Parque Patricios, all with structural protection, some of them in use as religious centres In this case, funds are assigned alter an evaluation committee recommends valuable projects to be supported. Precautionary protection: for buildings which are cultural and formal reference for their environment, they give meaning to whole area. Certain increase in area and alterations which do not alter its character are admitted. 7 Structural protection: for buildings of typological or otherwise singular character, they qualify their environment and are part of city memory. Alterations in their substance are not admitted. 5 6
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Cinema halls in Buenos Aires. A XX century heritage
Cosmos, Corrientes Ave. 2046, a cultural center of the University of Buenos Aires (the photograph date 2010)
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Marta García Falcó, Patricia Méndez
and some others closed. Those assigned precautionary protection are the Cumbre in Saavedra and the El Plata in Mataderos (called the Gran Rex of Mataderos, for its resemblance to the downtown cinema so called) which opened again in May 2010 for occasional projections or gatherings after 23 years of decay. In this path of cinema-rescuing, at the end of 2010 the City Legislature started studying a law project to create a fund to support the needs of neighbourhood cinemas. This initiative, started by deputy Raul Puy, stands for the cultural promotion of Buenos Aires districts from the identification of historical theatres and cinema halls, studying the possibilities of their upkeep, rehabilitation and promoting the participation of cultural, theatre or cinema-supporting associations. In the national order, some other theatre-cinema halls were officially protected by law: they were listed as National Historical Monuments and historical-artistic assets. They are the Gran Rex, Opera, the San Martin Theatre (which contains the Lugones cinema hall), the Maipo theatre (once a cinema), and the Regio cinema-theatre. It should be noted that in some cases, national and local protection acts overlap on the same building. But hey are complementary, for they have different legal scopes. Even though these regulations are a legal safeguard for these cinema buildings, there are no substantial incentives related to them, which may help and encourage owners to restore and keep them going. City taxes’ relief is the only benefit nowadays allotted to them when legally protected, and it is not enough help towards their support. There are no subsidies or bland credits for their maintenance, repairs or technological updates that, owing to their age, these buildings must face. So it turns necessary, and urgent, to find a way through which these places can recover their use as social centres once again, not only because of their spatial qualities but also for their potential ability to recover their past purposes – taking advantage of their standing in the city’s memory – in the central area as much as in the neighbourhoods-, as generously sized places where people can go on form a passive audience role to a more active social actors’ one. They could be multipurpose cultural places, housing activities such as workshops, performances, neighbourhood’s gatherings, debates, music shows, theatre and, why not, also cinema. The ability of cinema halls to function as milestones, with their consequent identitykeeping capacity, especially in small towns and districts in larger cities, stays long in them, even after their original use has long been lost, and is a quality that should be accordingly recognized, valued and recovered. Further on than the traditional concept in rehabilitation that states that the original use is the best a building in the way to recover can have, new life for old cinema halls – those which were conceived as cultural sites for large numbers of people all around the country and the world –, symbols always of the newest technology and social sharing of a cultural event, it must be stressed that their recovering should be a real purpose for 31
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