For T.
The picture above is the only visual
document I have found. “Atkantis” was one of the typical names
for cinema halls, the “Atlantis” from my home town Bochum
deserves this name for more than one reason. It exists only in my
memory and if my memory does not betray me, it was one of the most
beautiful film theatres I aver visited. Built 1957/58 it was the
technical most advanced film theatre in this city. That was the time
when Cinema fought with Cinema scope, 70 mm and Vista Vision against
the competition of Television.
Even though I am grown up in the 1960s
where already the first wave of the extinction of Cinema halls took
place. Every second Super market was once a film theatre.
I was around 14 when I watched in the
“Atlantis” Planet of the Apes, The Time Machine (a film which was
already shown on TV but which amazed me in all its glory, vista
vision and in colors). The big inwards arched screen gave me the
possibility to enjoy first time in my life Cinema scope. Very few
film theatres today offer this pleasure of watching a film in Cinema
scope or 70 mm. These are formats which are wastes when the big
screen is not arched at all. The “Atlantis” was by far the finest
cinema hall for these formats. Later I saw films like Papillon
and Logan´s Run, Films which are only available on DVD but
just the memory to have seen these films in the right cinema hall
helps me even today to remember the glory of these films.
The “Atlantis” had once around 800
seats. Later they built in the first floor a movie hall called
“Atelier” and after 1976 when the “Atlantis was renovated a
small film theatre was as well included, the name unfortunately
escaped me.
Just 6 years later and I think Stanley
Kubrick´s 2001: A Space Odyssey was one of if not the last
film screened there. Soon after the “Atlantis” was closed
forever. A Super market replaced it and just the name of a pharmacy
beside the former cinema hall called “Atlantis-Apotheke” reminds
on the name of a destructed film theatre.
Such things happen all around the
world, if in the USA, India or even the most cinephile country in the
world France.
Film theatres are no protected cultural
monuments which is one of the most dramatic mistake in the culture of
the Twentieth Century. When the “Atlantis” was closed down
forever, my other favorite film theatre in Bochum “Bali” was also
closed but reopened 1985 under a new name “Metropolis”.
I remember the red seats and the
entrance of the “Atlantis”which was like a secret path into a
hidden paradise. During summer holidays they showed each day at 11 in
the morning films for young people for less than one Euro. That were
the most beautiful hours I spent in my youth. The triste every day of
my working class family, the already beginning worries what to do
after school disappeared for 2 hours completely. And when I attended
these screenings at the “Atlantis” with my younger sister or my
youngest brother, we walked home very slow, trying to safe the film
experience as long as we could against the grey every day. Well, as I
was far away from knowing all the great films I love today, Ozu, Hou
Hsiao Hsien, Terrence Malick etc, I never really got rid of this
fascination for a magic which really is a combination of the film I
watched there and the architecture, the big screen and the feeling to
be in a completely different world.
“The Atlantis” was one of the
cinema halls where I learned seeing films. Recently I watch from time
to time some films which I saw there at the first time in my life on
screen like Schaffner´s Planet of the Apes, Michael
Anderson´s or George Pal´s
The Time Machine. While
the first two films were at that time contemporary films in an
aesthetic which almost disappeared at the same time like this
wonderful film theatre, Pal´s film was already shown several times
on TV and like in most families at that time in black and white and
in the wrong aspect ratio. In a way the “Atlantis “screening of
The Time Machine
gave me an idea about the fascination
the film must have had for the people who watched it around 1960.
When I dream about cinema halls, the “Atlantis” which is even
more lost than the legendary continent come often back to me. The
films which occupy my passion about cinema today like those from
Aparna Sen, Terrence Malick or Hou Hsiao Hsien – or even the
wonderful films by Vietnamese Dang Nhat Minh which were never
released in my country – are screened in this cinema hall and I am
sitting on one of the red seats looking at this mighty big screen.
Rüdiger Tomczak
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