Richard Thieler. Cinema Architectures Berlin

The present is a symptom of the twin birth of immediacy and obsolescence. Today, we are nostalgists as much as we are futurists.
Luke Turner, Metamodernist Manifesto, N. 6, 2011

The exhibtion CINEMA ARCHITECTURES BERLIN tells a story about urgency and likelihood, about setting out to create an utopian world, about West Berlin's economic growth and primarly about Today. The cinema and its architecture have always had socio-cultural dimensions from their very beginnings. Their lockdown, due to the Covid-19 pandemic 2020, dramatically affected and is still affecting urban space and society.

The artist Richard Thieler illuminates the current state of the Berlin movie theaters with his newest photographs. He confronts them with older images of better times as well as with a drawing of a film palace by Hans Scharoun. Thieler explores the architectonic shell, asks what it represented and what is happening right now with those buildings and its environment. His photographs document the current „Ersatz“ communication by the cinema operators, as it shows their strong willpower to step up against the vacantness of urban space and to actively shape our cultural and political life.

The exhibition raises the urgent question: How much crisis management and pragmatic idealism is necessary to fight the ongoing catastrophic death of the cinema?

The exhibition CINEMA ARCHITECTURES BERLIN deliberately sets a counterpoint to the now handicapped 71st Berlinale.

Curated by Sigrid Melchior.