By Mareike Sophie Drünkler and Ralf Günther
60 years ago the sparkling curtain at Kino International opened for the first time. It was the most important premiere cinema in the GDR. And with 607 seats also the largest. Sitting in today “Protocol series 8 “no more GDR officials. But the cinema on Karl-Marx-Allee in Berlin-Mitte is still a major stage for film today. BZ takes a look behind the scenes on the company’s big birthday.
The Kino International was the most important premiere cinema in the GDR Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Jens Kalaene
Once you arrive in the large, wood-panelled foyer, you first go to the old library. Not a cinema library, but the former Bertolt Brecht library, where around 12,000 books were waiting to be read until reunification. The old city library is one of the forgotten rooms that the two-year general renovation is intended to revive from spring 2024.
The Kino International box office Photo: Siegfried Purschke
“At the end of the 90s, parties also took place here. A very popular queer party series – until the neighbors complained about the noise,” says Thore Horch from the Yorck Kinogruppe as he leads us through the house. The East Berlin Filmpalast was not only a cinema and library, but also a club.
The Panorama Bar: From here you can look out over Karl-Marx-Allee under disco balls and chandeliers Photo: Ralf Guenther
And a youth club! However, it is not on the ground floor, but directly under the roof.
It still smells a bit of cigarette smoke here, the path is paved with graffiti and the old bar looks as if it had just been in use.
Kino International is celebrating its 60th birthday Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Jens Kalaene
At the end of a narrow corridor, which is right next to the cinema, the same look into the past – only that the “representative reception area” was not used by young people, but by politicians of the SED regime. Today the windowless room is also called ““Honecker Lounge”. The reception lounge will also be preserved in its entirety as a memorial, but the hammer and sickle are now hanging upside down on the wall.
The windowless Honecker Lounge in the cinema on Karl-Marx-Allee Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Jens Kalaene
“History is alive here,” says cinema boss Christian Bräuer. “For example, the premiere of ‘Coming Out’, the first gay GDR film, took place on the evening the Berlin Wall fell. When people came out of the cinema after the performance, they had no idea what had happened to them…” Coming out – that suddenly also applied to them, who had been locked up in their country for so long.
The birthday is now being celebrated with an anniversary program: photo exhibition, backstage tours, film poster bazaar and the documentary “60 Years of Cinema International” invite you into the past of the popular Berlin cinema.