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20

Kino International

MITTE

Opened in 1963, and built in the International Style that dominated the second phase of building on Karl-Marx-Allee (see p. 200), the Kino International served as the main theatre for premieres in East Germany, especially showcasing films produced by the state-owned film studio.

The building was designed by Josef Kaiser and Heinz Aust using a reinforced concrete frame construction with light sandstone façades; the rectangular glass-front façade itself resembles the maw of a vast screen. The building’s remaining three sides are closed, bearing reliefs that display a range of athletic, pastoral and industrial scenes.

The Kino’s very last GDR-era premiere, Heiner Carow’s Coming Out, was shown on 9th November, 1989, the day the Berlin Wall fell. Right up until then, the Kino served as a venue for the regime’s more prestigious apparatchiks to see and be seen. The theatre’s first eight rows, with their optimal views and extra legroom, were reserved for the Socialist party and national leadership. Before and after premieres, the pols and their state visitors reconnoitered in the ‘Representation Room’, with its buffed parquet floor, well-stocked bar, swanky mesh lamps, leather- and glass-topped tables and red-upholstered chairs.

The glass-fronted room, today called the Honecker Lounge after the GDR’s final head of state, enjoys a panoramic view, and one can easily feel transported back to the ’70s, especially with the colourful Plattenbauten, GDR hotspot Café Moskau and the Fernsehturm (TV Tower) looming large as life through the windows.

Though the present-day lounge, as well as the formerly grand lobby, have grown a little faded around the edges, the screening room has lost none of its grandeur. Sitting in one of the plush, royal-blue seats as the billowing curtains part to reveal the giant screen, visitors can still admire the acoustic-tiled walls and wave-like ceiling, which testify to the state-of-the-art viewing and listening experience enjoyed by the powerbrokers of a bygone regime. MR

Karl-Marx-Allee 33, 10178; U Schillingstr.

Map: East F1