TUESDAY, OCT. 8, 2019 @ 05:00 PM

 

VIENNA’S CINEMAS  (Kino Wien Film)

 

Austria 2018, 97 min

 

Writer, director, producer, editor and sound recording: Paul Rosdy

Cast: Anna Nitsch-Fitz, Gerhard Gruber, Stefan Nehez, Horst Raimann,

 

VIENNA’S CINEMAS is a journey through Vienna’s movie theaters from 1896 to today. Told through the stories of movie theater owners, projectionists and technicians, audience members, an historian, and countless documents in film, photo and text, the film is a history of Vienna’s cinemas – from the first cinema on Kärntner Straße to the multiplex world of today.

The film tells a tale of Vienna…

– From the Breitenseer Lichtspiele cinema, with silent movie pianist Gerhard Gruber, to “living pictures” in the Prater, and the “film courier at work” arriving at the Zentral Kino in Ottakring, Vienna’s 16th district.

– From cinema technician Horst Raimann in the Gartenbaukino, designed by cinema architect Robert Kotas, and its opening in the 1960s with special guest Kirk Douglas…

– To the construction of a new theater at English Cinema Haydn – with the Dörfler family, and the tragic story of the previous owners, the Honig family.

– From the formation of the first cinema chain in 1920s Red Vienna – the Kiba – and its dubious development after World War II…

– To Michaela Englert, who took over the Admiral Kino in 2007 and Henry Ebner, the son of the Jewish owners, who fled Vienna in 1938.

– From cinema audiences and the question: “Why do I go to the movies?”…

– To Peter Kubelka in the Invisible Cinema, the last day at Eos Kino, and the long demise of movie theaters – in the age of television.

– From the first multi-screen movie theaters, to film and politics at Votiv Kino.

– Into the multiplex building boom at the turn of the millennium and the free market flow, to Cineplexx, the largest cinema operator in Vienna and Southeast Europe, and the globalization of the cinema business today.

And the question about …

the future of film projection. Darling I’m at the movies.