Completely different film

The history of the evolution of Minsk cinemas

Cinematography, which appeared at the end of the 19th century thanks to its legendary ‘fathers’ Auguste and Louis Lumière, quickly conquered the hearts of the public of various countries and walks of life. Our compatriots were no exception, and even in 1900, five years after the first commercial public screening on the Parisian Boulevard des Capucines, the residents of provincial Minsk got acquainted with this magical new world — Richard Strömer, businessman and enthusiast, opened the first cinema in the city.

‘Billy, charge!’

There was no limit to the creativity of the owners of the first Minsk electric theatres under the dim lights of a provincial city — Modern, Illusion, Lux, Gigant (Giant), Eden invitingly lured to the premiere of an outlandish spectacle, offering comfort according to one’s wealth: from comfortable chairs and the orchestra for respectable gentlemen to the smell of fuel oil and smoky cramped halls for the general public.
However, a few years later, the revolutionary ‘Comrade Mauser’ established equality between everyone, and at the same time expropriated a profitable business, replacing the pretentious names in tune with the time: Illusion became Proletariy (Proletarian), Giant — Krasnaya zvezda (A red star), and Eden —  Internatsional (International). Authorities saw no obstacles to set up new visual platforms in sacred places. So, in the Minsk choral synagogue on Serpukhovskaya street (now Volodarsky street) a cinema called Kultura (Culture) appeared, and on the site of a Lutheran church on Zakharyevskaya street — a Detskiy (Children’s) cinematograph was established.
In the 1930s, most of the Minsk cinemas bore little resemblance to their predecessors. They acquired a certain, albeit very democratic gloss: there were box offices, well-furnished lobbies, comfortable and spacious auditoriums — all this have fortunately coincided with the beginning of the era of sound cinema... And then the war began. All the largest cinemas in the city centre were seriously damaged during the bombings, and then they were demolished during the subsequent post-war reconstruction of the Belarusian capital. 
In 1942-1943, the occupation administration decided to implement a rather bold idea — to build a cinema called Pershy (First) in a dilapidated city. Surprisingly, the two-story wooden building was able to survive numerous bombings and was demolished only in the 1950s during the construction of the Hotel Minsk.

More halls — suitable and diverse

In the post-war years, cinema was, perhaps, the only available entertainment for the broad masses of the country lying in ruins, so the Soviet authorities attached great importance to the construction of cinemas and the restoration of the cinema network. The aforementioned Pershy and a couple of cinema halls available, which were located in the few buildings that survived in the centre of Minsk, were uneventful, and already in 1950 film lovers warmly welcomed the very first of post-war cinema created by the legendary architect Iosif Langbard — the Pobeda (Victory) cinema. But such a picture show was more of a luxury than a model project for a country that was recovering from ruins and ashes with great difficulty. Therefore, in the next decade, inexpensive wooden buildings became the main trend, the first of which was the nice Letniy (Summer) movie theatre in the central Gorky Park. Unfortunately, the building was completely destroyed in the fire in 1975, and even more unfortunately, it wasn’t restored. A co-brother of the Letniy, however, not so high-bred, known as the Raduga (Rainbow), opened in the park named after Chelyuskintsev in 1952. It was a little more fortunate: it left this world in the 90s, having been demolished for lack of prospects. 
In the 50s, when the authorities began to solve the problem of providing cinemas to new residential areas, three more samples of simple wooden architecture were built — the Znamya (Banner), Vympel (Pennon) and Udarnik (called in the name of top-quality staff members) cinemas. But the wooden Zorka (Star), which was built in the area of the Academy of Sciences, amazed not only with its heroic dimensions, but also with the outlandish night illumination for those times. Which, alas, did not save it from the bulldozer’s bucket after the decision to build the Oktyabr (October) major cinema on this site in the 70s.

The first post-war decade became a real heyday for the capital’s film distribution facilities. According to the standard project of Zoya Brod, a popular in those years in the Soviet Union architect, the Spartak (Spartacus) cinemas on Storozhevka and Avangard (Forefront) on Grushevka were built. In the same years, two curious film facilities were opened for visitors, located in residential buildings: Smena (Session) on Dolgobrodskaya street (closed in 2002) and Tsentralnyy (Central) on Independence Avenue which is quite okay to this day.
Cinema halls, built in the 60s of the last century, were no longer impressive either with special architectural delights or in scope. Komsomolets, Rodina (Motherland), Mir (Peace), Belarus, Raketa (Rocket) — in the days of Khrushchev’s minimalism, it wasn’t their aim, so they just regularly performed their main functions. As an exception, one can only note the Pioneer and Partizan cinemas built already under Brezhnev. These cinemas attracted attention with a fundamentally new type of architecture — with a lot of glass, light and greenery. 
Most of the cinemas built in the capital in the 70s (the bulk of the construction took place in remote areas of the city) — Vilnius in Zeleny Lug, Druzhba (Friendship) in Chizhovka, Sovremennik (Contemporary) on Kharkovskaya street — were guided by the architectural parameters of their predecessors. 

‘Cinema was born at the fair. And 100 years later, it returned there.’

Separately, it is worth mentioning cinemas, which to a certain extent became the forerunners of modern cinema complexes. Oktyabr was the first-born of the era of gigantomania, which is still conspicuous, although somewhat lost its former charm, built in 1975. It had a hall that could accommodate 1,400 spectators, unimaginable figure at that time. During the first year of operation, it was visited by more than 2,200,000 people.


The next colossus of the Minsk film distribution was the Moskva (Moscow) cinema, two halls of which were able to accommodate 1320 people. For its time, it was the most technically advanced and equipped cinema in Belarus, however, it should be noted that its best days are already over. Built in the late 80s, the Aurora and Berestye turned out to be the last carriages of the Lumiere brothers train in the Soviet era...
At the end of the last century, 26 cinemas worked in Minsk for ‘the most important of all the arts’. Many of them, unable to compete first with the stubborn, aggressive and ubiquitous video recorders, and then with the heavy artillery of the technological revolution in the world of entertainment, were closed. Some have survived and are content with the little that new audience favourites leave on the master’s table: cosy multiplexes, private cinema rooms and private cinemas. Yes, this is also a movie, but only completely different movie... 

By Sergei Nikolaev, Vladimir Likhodedov
Photo from the personal collection of Vladimir Likhodedov