Kino Babylon

Kino Babylon stands on Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz in Berlin's Mitte, directly across from the Volksbühne theatre. Hans Poelzig designed the building, part of a listed complex, between 1928 and 1929. The Neue Sachlichkeit style shaped it, favouring practicality and the emotional pull of colour and form. Rows of windows form horizontal stripes across the facade, under a wide overhanging moulding at the roof. It opened as a silent film cinema, complete with an orchestra pit and its own organ.

Step inside and a spacious vestibule in grey, red and yellow leads you to an auditorium in shaded yellow with red accents. The seats are covered in velvet, and the wooden doors and ventilation grilles carry the same red. Poelzig's range reached beyond architecture: he also worked in set design for film and theatre, and contributed to The Golem in 1920. In 1948 a renovation turned the house into a speciality cinema for the German Democratic Republic. Structural risks closed the auditorium in the nineties. Between 1999 and 2001 restorers refurbished the roof and ceiling, swapped wooden joists for steel girders and restored the front.

Since its reopening, the cinema has served as a venue for film festivals and cultural events. The Berlinale used it from 2008 to 2010. The Berlin Independent Film Festival and the Türkisches Film Festival Berlin appear on its calendar. One fixture predates every festival on that list. The organ, restored along with the building, remains the only one in Germany played at its original location.