Communal cinema
A communal cinema - or often abbreviated to KoKi - is a non-commercial cultural institution in Germany and Switzerland that shows films .
Financing and organization
Municipal cinemas are usually financed by the municipalities (and partly through grants from the respective federal states ). They either play in their own rooms, in cooperation with the local adult education center , in cooperation with commercial cinemas or in other rooms run by municipal or independent organizations. Like the venues, the organizational forms and degrees of professionalism of municipal cinemas are different: This ranges from cinemas with a few game dates per month, which are based entirely on voluntary work, to those with full game operations, in which large parts of the activities are carried out by full-time employees become. Whether a cinema sees itself as a communal or free play area is not necessarily linked to the amount or availability of public subsidies. The Federal Association of Communal Film Work (BkF), based in Frankfurt am Main , acts as the umbrella organization for municipal cinemas in Germany .
history
Fifteen years after the development of the first cinematograph apparatus, a municipal cinema was opened in Eickel (today a part of the city of Herne ) on December 1, 1912 , probably the first of its kind. Based on the "Eickeler Model", numerous community light theaters were built in the German Reich set up.
With Cinema 66 , the first municipal cinema in the Federal Republic of Germany was opened in Essen in 1966 . With the filmforum , the first all-week-long municipal cinema was opened on September 27, 1970 in Duisburg . The third cinema of this type followed in Mannheim on October 13, 1971 with the Cinema Quadrat . On December 3, 1971, the fourth municipal cinema opened in Frankfurt am Main . The opening was largely carried out by Hilmar Hoffmann , then cultural advisor in Frankfurt. The institution was initially headed by Sigmar Ahlering, before its long-time director Walter Schobert was appointed to this position in 1973. These pioneers in the non-commercial cinema scene inspired cultural consultants in many German municipalities; according to the German Association of Cities , there were already ten municipal cinemas in 1973. In 1974 a municipal cinema was established in Hanover , which initially had no permanent venue.
The Frankfurt ruling was also the incentive here : cinema owners in Frankfurt had complained that the gaming facility subsidized by the city was unfair competition for commercial operators. The court contradicted: In addition to the traditionally recognized public cultural institutions such as theater , concert , museum , library and others, the cinema is also a bearer of cultural property and therefore entitled to public funding. The performance of a municipal cinema is fundamentally different from that of a commercial one and therefore does not represent competition. In 1978, the Hitpass study confirmed this assumption and found that non-commercial film work promotes rather than inhibits the interest of its viewers in commercial cinema .
This first venue with the name "Kommunales Kino" was not the first city-sponsored cinema - as early as 1963, the Munich Film Museum was set up in Munich as part of the City Museum , which, as a cinematheque , sees the collection, restoration and showing of films as its main tasks. Despite its name, it is perceived more as a cinema than a museum.
In some municipalities the initiatives for municipal film work emerged again, in others they developed from existing film clubs - this applies to the old federal states as well as to the new ones, where a diverse non-commercial cinema scene was able to develop and maintain after reunification.
Many communal cinemas and similar institutions are organized in the Federal Association of Communal Film Work, including a number of student film clubs that were founded in the late 1950s. There is a regional association in Baden-Württemberg. In Switzerland, non-commercial cinemas and film clubs are organized in the CinéLibre association.
The KoKi in Heilbronn was a specialty : it was housed in a multiplex cinema for 10 years , but was then canceled by the operator Cinemaxx due to the low number of viewers . The city of Heilbronn is now working with the local Arthaus cinema .
Film program
True to the motto "Show other films differently", the municipal cinemas strive for a program that differs from that of commercial cinemas . "Other films" are, for example, experimental films, films from non-Western countries, documentaries , silent films (also with live music accompaniment). Also short films , from the commercial cinema mostly disappeared, are fixed in many local cinemas part of the program.
The films shown come from the regular range of commercial film distributors as well as from cinematheques , film collectors , from film archives and from special distributors. Some municipal cinemas have their own film stock and exchange ideas with others.
"Show differently" means, on the one hand, that films are shown in their original versions as far as possible (both in the original language and in the correct format and, in the case of silent films, at the correct speed) - not in dubbed versions as in commercial cinema or in the wrong version, as on television Format. On the other hand, municipal cinemas also try to show films in context. Many municipal cinemas therefore show retrospectives on individual filmmakers or thematic or film-historical film series. Some municipal cinemas also add lectures to their film series. Some film festivals go back to the initiative of municipal cinemas and are organized by them.
See also
Web links
- Federal Association of Communal Film Work - umbrella organization of communal cinemas in Germany
- First municipal cinema in 1912 - Wanne-Eickel / Herne town archive
- State Association of Municipal Cinemas Baden-Württemberg
- Cinélibre - Association of Swiss Film Clubs and Non- Profit Cinemas