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Dom Kino | The House of cinema
Karavannaya ul., 12
When you go out onto Manezhnaya Square, your attention is drawn to a massive palace-type building with Corinthian columns and Venetian windows above them. Large movie posters and shop windows, and in the evenings neon lights greet viewers of the Cinema House.
And above all these signs of today rises the original cartouche of the building with the image of three balls - a medieval symbol of usury. The cartouche reminds us that a palace of profit of enterprising Petersburg merchants was built here. However, history decreed otherwise. The Petrograd Provincial Credit Society had hardly settled in its new building when it lost it during the October Revolution.
This building on Karavannaya Street (former Tolmacheva), which closed the ensemble of Manezhnaya Square, was built in 1914-1916 according to the design of architects - graduates of the Academy of Arts K.S. Bobrovsky and B.Ya. Botkin. The authors designed the house in the style of an Italian palazzo of late Palladian architecture of the XVI century.
In addition to the bank, a concert hall and shops in the basement of the building were built for commercial reasons. The first cinema opened here in 1917 and became one of the best in Petrograd.
On November 7, 1918, the premiere of the first Soviet feature film based on the script of Lunacharsky "Compactment", directed by A. Panteleev, G. Pashkovskaya and A. Dolinov took place here. It is interesting that in 1924, the young D.D. Shostakovich, who was then a student at the conservatory, worked here in the evenings as a pianist.
After the Great Patriotic War, in 1947-48, major repairs were carried out. On June 12, 1948, the first children's cinema in Leningrad opened with the new name "Rodina".
A new period in the life of this building began in 1959. A major reconstruction of the upper floors was carried out, the auditorium was restored. Since 1960, the cinema center of our city, the Union of Cinematographers of St. Petersburg, has been operating here and the well-known cinema hall of the Cinema House is located here. Today, the Cinema House offers viewers masterpieces of both Russian and foreign cinema, and introduces them to the best examples of contemporary art-house cinema. The cinema center hosts retrospective screenings, film festivals, and creative evenings. Throughout the year, the city's leading film scholars and critics give exclusive thematic lecture series on cinema art. The lobby of the Cinema House regularly hosts painting and photography exhibitions.
