Reg. Trib. Milano n. 418 del 02.07.2007 - Direttore responsabile: Elisabetta Brunella

International Edition No. 219 - year 18 - 28 November 2023

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Dear Readers,
Elisabetta Brunella

this issue comes out immediately after the close of the Venice Biennale di Architettura exhibition, which MEDIA Salles has reported on again here, with a close look at the areas devoted to entertainment and, obviously, particular attention to cinemas.

We thus host a long article inspired by one of this year’s award-winning projects, to explore the role and form taken on by movie theatres in the first half of the last century in Italy’s newly founded towns and in the colonies in Africa.

You are also invited to plunge into the contemporary world, thanks to significant experiments concluded in Norway in the field of environmental sustainability, starting out from a cinema with a rainwater basin on its roof, which is particularly useful in the case of unforeseen and abundant rain.

The excess water falling on the city of Oslo can in fact be gradually introduced into the river over the next twenty-four hours.

This, then, is an issue of DGT that explores a range of functions - more or less commonly approvable - that cinemas have found themselves covering n the past, or that they will be able to cover in the near future in the urban fabric and within the community.

We hope you will find some interesting inspiration from your reading, 

Elisabetta Brunella
Secretary General of MEDIA Salles

 

Which space to cinemas at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice?

Cinemas in the new cities in Italy and in its colonial empire
by Cristina Chinetti

At the latest International Architecture Exhibition in Venice, which closed on 26 November, it wasn’t easy to come across a project that regarded spaces specifically devoted to cinemagoing. One of the rare occasions was to be found in DAAR - Alessandro Petti and Sandi Hilal, to whom the international jury awarded the Golden Lion for the best participation in the 18th Exhibition “The Laboratory of the Future” (1)

This was for the project “Ente di Decolonizzazione / Decolonization Authority – Borgo RIZZA”, the last stage in a vast, years-long multimedia and collective research project, led by the two artists who live and work in Stockholm.

Petti and Hilal set themselves the task of studying recurrent colonial, fascist and modernist architectural styles, ranging from the farming colonies established by the fascist régime in the Thirties along the coasts of Libya and East Africa, such as in Asmara and Addis Ababa, and rural villages in southern Italy, exploring “the possibility of critical re-use and the subversion of fascist colonialist architecture through an artistic installation”.

The installation, presented at the Corderie dell’Arsenale in Venice, regards precisely one of those rural settlements, Borgo Rizza, not far from Carlentini (Siracusa), intended by the fascist régime to help modernize the island’s agriculture and built from 1940 onwards by the Ente di Colonizzazione del Latifondo siciliano / The Estate of Sicily’s Authority for Colonization.

It consists of two parts: one is made up of several brick-coloured modules taken from the destructuring and horizontal restructuring of the façade of the building that was home to the Ente di Colonizzazione del Latifondo siciliano / The Estate of Sicily’s Authority for Colonization, re-used as a platform for open and public lectures (2); the other is a film showing a flow of images of the town and its buildings, most of which dilapidated except for some which had been renovated in the opening decade of the year 2000, at times alternating with photographs of other newly founded and/or colonial towns.

One shot shows the planimetry of the Odeon cinema in Asmara, probably that of the first, 1937 project, designed by Giuseppe Zacchè and Giuseppe Borziani, although the plan actually completed two years later was to be that of the Professor of Graphics Luigi Saltelli in collaboration with the architect Ettore Beltrame and engineer Mario Cabassi. The Odeon in Via Sapeto, Asmara, inaugurated on 14 March 1939, is one of the many cinemas scattered through the colonies by the fascist government, as a tool for raising consensus and organizing the régime’s propaganda.

In fact, all colonial towns, even the less important ones, were marked by the same town-planning and architectural principles: a large main square overlooked by the buildings housing state or religious institutions, such as the casa del fascio / fascists’ circle, the town hall, the church, the school, the barracks, the post-office, the working men’s leisure centre - and a cinema was almost never lacking. Already in 1913-15 in Libya there were two cinemas in Tripoli and one in Benghazi, whilst in less populated towns there were rooms for screenings and other kinds of shows in the headquarters of the fascist party, especially at the Opera Nazionale del Dopolavoro / National Working Men’s Enterprise.

In the first Italian-founded town of Littoria (Latina today), built in 1932, there was also room for a cinema and it was in the Thirties, in particular immediately after the proclamation of the Empire in 1936, that cinemas spread into the overseas colonies as well, mainly thanks to private businesses.

In so-called Italian East Africa, in 1939 a total of 55 large cinemas were to be found and were available to the nazionali, or Italians, for a total of 40,000 seats. In Asmara, for example, there were as many as 11 cinemas, the most important of which were the Impero, with seating for as many as 2,300 spectators, the Augustus with seating for 2,000 and the previously mentioned Odeon for 1,880; in Addis Ababa there were 7 and just as many in Mogadishu. In these “white peoples” cinemas brand new films were also screened, very often even before they were presented in Rome, which meant that tickets cost far more than films considered more suited to the indigenous populations, considered to be a different audience to be subjected to cultural education by means of documentaries celebrating the economic and military might of the colonizing power.

In August 1939, for example, a royal decree imposed the obligation for cinema exhibitors in Italian Africa to include in their programming the screening of films teaching civil education, national propaganda and culture of varying types, on pain of having their licences withdrawn; and art. 2 of this same decree established that reels were “provided, on the conditions […] determined by the provisions of the Ministry for Italian Africa, by the national “Luce institution, from which exhibitors will be responsible for punctually collecting them at their own cost”.

Unlike what had been done by the régime in previous decades in the colonies of Libya, where the tendency was to recognize citizenship for the native populations and treatment substantially equal to that of nationals, in East Africa the régime pursued a strict logic of separation between colonizers and native people, “in deference to hygiene and prestige”, activating an authentic policy of apartheid. Indigenous people could only visit the cinemas reserved for them, such as the open-air Benadir inaugurated in Mogadishu on 13 February 1939, with screenings purposely addressing them.

In addition, in order to discourage any sort of promiscuity, a law, also dating to 1939, forbade an “Italian citizen of the Aryan race” access to theatres exclusively reserved for natives and established (in article 12) that “a citizen who, in the territories of Italian Africa, habitually visits public places reserved for natives is punished by six months’ imprisonment or by a fine of up to two thousand Liras.” (3)

From an architectural point of view, these colonial cinemas were not so dissimilar to their contemporaries back home, nor were they particularly innovative, though some were exquisitely modern and quite worthy of the big metropolises.

A significant case is that of the Eritrean capital Asmara, which, as a consequence of its function as the nerve centre of the rear guard during the Ethiopian conflict of 1935-36, was transformed from “the miserable, dusty capital of our most glorious first colony” into a “modern, advanced and industrious city of around a hundred thousand inhabitants”, as Eugenio De Spuches (4) writes, taking the new cinema buildings as an emblem of the city’s architectural renovation.

In his 1939 article, he states that “the Government, the Municipality and private people have competed to construct buildings that are striking in terms of both their size and their architectural value; the Impero cinema/theatre, the Odeon cinema/theatre, the Excelsior cinema/ theatre, the Augustus cinema/theatre can well compare with most of the venues in the largest Italian towns”.

In fact these four cinemas, all designed in 1937 and all with a dual function, as theatres both for screening movies and for stage performances, stand out for the unusual quality of their design, with attention to the inspiration drawn from international output, re-elaborating it in an original manner in terms of the choice of materials and the care taken over furnishings and decorations. In the Odeon, for example, amongst other sophisticated building and furnishing details, the interior design of the bar in the foyer is of particular interest. It is still well preserved and characterised by an American trend in Art Déco evident in its rounded mechanical features.

The Impero cinema in Viale Mussolini established a direct bridge between Asmara and the capital of Mussolini’s little Italy, being one of the symbolic buildings of the Eritrean city. The pharaonic original 1937 plan, later downsized in the building phase in1938, was by the architect Mario Messina, who was at the same time building another Impero cinema in Via dell’Acqua Bullicante in Tor Pignattara which was exactly similar in its straight, rational lines and the design of the façade, purple in Asmara and made of brick in Rome, both sharing the vertical signs in massive letters on the sides and the horizontal features of the windows, whilst the four strips of smaller windows alternating with lines of hemispherical lights in round frames are in a more elegant, Art Déco style in Asmara.

And whilst the cinema in Asmara is still in operation, the Impero, which was the third largest cinema ever built in Rome and which witnessed the golden age of Italian cinema, that of neorealism and the great productions, closed in the ’70s and gradually deteriorated, although in the past decade moves have been made to recover the structure and it has become the headquarters of the theatre school Stap Brancaccio. But that is a whole different story.
 
As already recalled, it was on Asmara and Addis Ababa, as cases studies for the reappropriation of the fascist colonial heritage, that the third chapter of the research by Alessandro Petti and Sandi Hilal concentrated in 2019, their most recent work having inspired this little excursion into history.

-------------------------------------------

> (1) Motivation for the award: “for their long-term commitment aimed at profound political involvement with architectural practices and learning from decolonization in Palestine and in Europe”.

> (2) which constitute “an open, discursive space, where the public is invited to critically reconsider the social, political and eonomic effect of fascist and colonial heritage and at the same time collectively imagine new, shared uses.”

> (3) E. Godoli, “L'architettura dei cinema nelle colonie italiane” in Opus Incertum, anno I, n. 2, 2006. Polistampa, Firenze, pp. 100-111.

> (4) E. De Spuches, Asmara città imperiale all’inizio dell’Anno XVIII, “L’Azione Coloniale”, X, 1939, 16 November, p. 1.


GREEN CINEMAS

Green cinemas in Norway: best experiences, information tools for cinema exhibitors

In Norway, green northern lights and green cinemas
by Samuele Paolinelli

Norway is very famous for its magnificent green northern lights. But regarding the process of “Green” transition in the cinema sector, with particular attention to its movie theatres, what is the present situation?

As can be seen on the NNFC (Northern Norway Film Commission) website, associations are making every effort to have more and more people become aware of the need for sustainability, remembering that contributions by all sectors in the cinema delivery chain, including that of exhibition, are indispensable.

On analyzing exhibitor strategy, it emerges that several virtuous practices have already been implemented. One practical example is the Trondheim cinema, which has taken active measures to reduce the amount of waste produced, succeeding in lowering the average volume of waste generated by each individual spectator by 20%. In addition, before each screening audiences are briefly reminded to dispose correctly of containers of snacks and drinks.

And that’s not the end of it. This cinema is part of the KinoNor chain which, in January 2017, obtained a certificate of environmental sustainability for all its venues; this document ascertains widespread commitment in fields such as the workplace, tenders, energy management, transport, waste disposal and pollution.

Another exemplary experience is to be noted at the Vega Scene cinema in Oslo, which enjoys BREEAM certification, the world’s main validation system, based on scientific principles, with the aim of guaranteeing an environment where sustainability is taken into account. Indeed, from the building process onwards the interaction between Nature and the building itself is taken into consideration: the roof can store rainwater for as many as 24 hours, later emptying it gradually into the Akerselva River. In this way, the risk of flooding and ensuing damage is significantly reduced.

This management of rainwater is then combined with a unique project. In collaboration with researchers at the NIBIO (Norwegian Institute of Bio-economy), a project has been implemented for investigating how vegetable species at risk of extinction on the Oslo fjord can survive in a hostile urban environment such as the roof of the Vega Scene; the aim is to safeguard the species and preserve biodiversity.

Last but no less important is the Edda Kino in Haugesund, a cinema seating 944 spectators distributed through 5 auditoriums, as well as being the main arena for the Norwegian film festival, which is hosted every year. This venue respects Eco-Lighthouse standards, i.e. the certification system most widely used in Norway by enterprises that wish their efforts on behalf of the environment and their social responsibility to be acknowledged.

Moreover, this certification has created specific requisites developed according to the particular features and parameters of each business sector. Further confirmation of the certification’s validity comes from the fact that it was the first national certification system to be recognized by the European Commission.

What catches the eye and what links all three of the cinemas previously mentioned is the desire to have the work they do on environmental sustainability certified by a third party. This constitutes an advantage for the exhibitors themselves, since they benefit from a status that is not self-conferred but acknowledged by external bodies.

In conclusion, it can safely be said that the attention to environmental issues that is becoming increasingly widespread within the cinema industry is to be witnessed in the work of the Norwegian exhibitors, whose efforts have been acknowledged and certified.


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Edito da: MEDIA Salles - Reg. Trib.
Milano n. 418 dello 02/07/2007
 
Direttore responsabile:
Elisabetta Brunella
 
Coordinamento redazionale:
Silvia Mancini
 
Raccolta dati ed elaborazioni statistiche: Paola Bensi, Silvia Mancini