Apollo Kino (Vienna)

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View from Gumpendorfer Strasse in 2007
The Apollo establishment shortly after it opened in 1905

The Apollo Kino in Vienna - Mariahilf is a cinema in the premises of the Apollo Theater, built in 1904 . It was opened in 1929 with initially 1,500 seats in one hall. With 2,160 seats in 12 halls today, the cinema, which benefits from its close proximity to Mariahilfer Strasse , has always been one of the largest cinemas in Austria .

In recent years, the Red Vienna for urban cinema operators Kiba counting - interrupted only by the years of National Socialism - is the Apollo cinema since the total reconstruction in 1997 in part and since the privatization of Kiba 1999 wholly owned by the Austrian Constantin Film Holding and in the Cineplexx chain incorporated.

history

In 1904 the building complex planned by Eduard Prandl on Gumpendorfer Strasse on the corner of Kaunitzgasse in Vienna-Mariahilf was completed. In addition to a hotel and three apartment buildings, this also included the Apollo Theater . In 1928, Kiba bought the theater and in 1929 had the architect Carl Witzmann convert it into a cinema. Witzmann has been one of Austria's most sought-after cinema architects for more than a decade and was able to assert himself against Hubert Gessner with his project . He decided to use red as the base color, which dominated the whole building as a result of the flooring and wallpaper and furnishings.

The cinema of the building, which is located in the middle of the densely built-up inner-city area, held around 1,500 visitors - and thus not much less than the largest cinema in Vienna, the Busch-Kino in the Prater, which held up to 1,800 visitors.

When talkies were already making their triumphant advance in the United States and parts of Europe, the Apollo Cinema was opened as a silent film cinema in 1929. In September of the same year, the new Christie Unit organ was purchased, a complicated instrument that was praised in the press as a marvel of modern instrument making. But only a few months later, the Apollo Kino also recognized the importance of the sound film and was one of the first cinemas in the city to acquire the technical equipment for the projection of international sound films. The first such film was the American film Show Boat , which was a huge hit with audiences. In the following years, the Apollo finally developed into one of the most important cinemas in the city, which was also used for important premieres, not least because of its size and modernity.

In 1938, after Austria was annexed to Germany, the cinemas of the municipal Kiba, to which the Apollo now also belonged, were expropriated by the National Socialist Ostmärkische Filmtheater Betriebs GmbH . It was returned to the city after the end of the war by the Allied Information Service Branch .

In the 1950s, along with Gartenbau , Weltspiegel and Tabor, the cinema was one of the cinemas that showed films in 70 mm projection. On November 19, 1952, the Austrian science fiction film April 1, 2000 premiered here. In 1962 the cinema was rebuilt for the first time by Walter Koch . The screen was now on the opposite side, and there were now two more cinemas.

Apollo cinema with nightly neon advertising 2010

In 1993 the cinema was remodeled by Walter Kral and the outdated large hall became seven different sized halls. In 1996, the total renovation followed - again according to plans by Walter Kral - by Cineinvest - a subsidiary of the municipal Kiba in Vienna and Constantin Film-Holding - and the Apollo cinema became a modern 12-hall multiplex cinema with 2,160 seats counted - 504 of them in the largest hall. At the time of the opening, the Apollo was again the largest cinema in Vienna with around one eighth of the total cinema seats in Vienna. In the first year of operation, the Apollo, which continues to benefit from its proximity to Austria's busiest shopping street, Mariahilfer Strasse between Westbahnhof and Ringstrasse, and its good transport connections, recorded 850,000 visits and thus around 8% of all cinema visits in Austria. Since then, however, several more multiplex centers have been opened that have caught up with the Apollo in terms of visitor volume or put it in the shade - the UCI Kinowelt in Millennium City is now the largest cinema in the city with over 3,500 seats in 21 halls. Since 2009 there has been an IMAX + 3D room in the Apollo , in which IMAX films have been shown since June 24, 2009.

literature

  • Sabine Claudia Tanner: From Varieté to Cinema. The history of the Viennese "Apollo" variety from 1903 to 1929. In: Wiener Geschichtsblätter. 62, 3, 2007, ISSN  0043-5317 , pp. 1-27.

Web links

Commons : Apollo Kino  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. a b Andreas Ungerböck: On the situation of Austrian films on a changed cinema market ( Memento of the original from September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Austrian Film Institute, 1999, p. 4 (PDF file)  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.filminstitut.at
  2. The total number of seats is stated on the back of the program brochure for the Apollo Cinema, August 17–23. August 2007, imprint: www.starmediaverlag.at
  3. Ungerböck, p. 5
  4. UCI Kinowelt Wien Millennium City ( Memento of the original from August 19, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed on August 20, 2007)  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.uci-kinowelt.at

Coordinates: 48 ° 11 ′ 51 ″  N , 16 ° 21 ′ 14 ″  E