Prague’s stylish Kino Atlas reopens, promising arthouse movies and cheaper tickets
One of Prague’s oldest and most stylish cinemas, Prague 9’s Kino Atlas is reopening to the public this Tuesday after a change in management. The new operators of the venue are a collective of Czech film directors, who intend focus on documentary and artistic films. In a bold move, they also plan to lower ticket costs for visitors.
The new team that is running the cinema is made up of a group of filmmakers. Among them is the award-winning director Václav Kadrnka, who is perhaps best known for his feature film Little Crusader (Křižáček). It took the main prize at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in 2017. His wife, producer Simona Kadrnková, is also part of the group. As are FAMU film school bursar Věra Hladišová and documentarist Vít Janeček, who teaches at the same world-renowned institution.
The latter spoke to Radio Prague International about how the idea to take over the 1930s venue came about.
“Just before Christmas, I was reading the newspaper and found there that Kino Atlas was going to close. I couldn’t believe it because it is one of the most beautiful cinemas in Prague. I found the email address of the owner of the building and wrote to him asking why he was closing the cinema. He told me that he wasn’t. That he remained open to the space being used as a cinema, but that he had somehow split with the team that was running it at that time. I told him: ‘OK, then. Let’s discuss the conditions.’ That’s how it started.”
The team is not venturing into the cinema business with no prior experience. They are already behind one successful project that is located in one of Prague’s most attractive outdoor garden spaces, says Vít Janeček.
“We ourselves have been running an open-air cinema in the Kinsky Garden in Prague for three years now. We are associated with the National Museum and we are basically using the back wall of their beautiful building as a screen. We started running it during the pandemic when cinemas were basically closed and we were just desperate about where it’s all going to go. It became very popular. That’s how we started to experiment with running a cinema.
Over the past several months they have put much work into Kino Atlas, repainting the cinema’s walls, refurbishing it and expanding its café. A gallery has newly been set up inside too, says Mr Janeček.
“There is a collection of pictures made by Karel Vachek, who was a multitalented professor at FAMU. He was largely connected to documentary film making, but his films are, let’s say, very multi-layered. He was also in exile in the United States for 20 years. He wrote poems and a couple of essayistic books. Most importantly, he also made a collection of paintings together with his sister and brother. He passed away two years ago and the family agreed to lend us these pictures to exhibit them in this space in Kino Atlas.
“We want to use this space as a seminary room and gallery. It won’t be a gallery in the sense that we will be selling pictures and holding temporary pictures. Rather, it will be a permanent exhibition for as long as the family allows and at the same time there will be events, including seminars, there. We are trying to promote this kind of upgrade with, let’s say, the new programming of the cinema.”
The new programming is set to focus primarily around screening artistic films and documentaries. Indeed, the premiere screening at the newly opened venue this Tuesday will show the first fiction film of Slovak documentary filmmaker Zuzana Piussi. The 51-year-old has already received several awards for her documentaries and is deeply involved with the team running Atlas. Her first feature film, Zešílet, is partly inspired by the true story of a single mother.
Vít Janeček says that the team running Atlas also wants to attract viewers by lowering the price of tickets.
“This is our concept. Namely, that in the end it is better to have perhaps a hundred people in the cinema who purchased a CZK 130 ticket rather than 50 people who got their ticket for CZK 170. It’s a challenge that we are going to try. Sometimes it’s not possible of course, because distributors can state a minimum price per ticket for new films which is valid perhaps for the first two months. But otherwise it is mainly up to cinemas themselves which financial policy they choose.
“So we mainly want to incorporate this concept too into cinema. To bring it back to where it started – as a more or less cheap culture. After all, one of the ways in which cinema started as a mass cultural activity was through these so-called ‘nickelodeons’, where you’d pay five cents to watch a movie. Nowadays it would of course cost more due to inflation, but the principle is the same – that more people give in less money but they share in the experience and enjoy it.”
He says that more viewers could also mean more guests at the cinema’s refurbished café, which the team have filled with a wide range of flowers and renamed to “Atlas of Plants”.
Effective use of the cinemas spaces is key in both making it a financial and cultural success, he explains, adding that the challenge arthouse cinemas such as Kino Atlas are facing today is similar to many other cultural institutions.
“Libraries are in the same situation. Everyone can buy and read books online. They can read on kindle. Yet still, libraries represent community spaces where people go not only to borrow books and go home, but also to sit, read, meditate on the titles and so on. We are aiming to use the architectural disposition of Kino Atlas because only around three cinemas in Prague have this connection between a bigger café space and cinema. It’s Lucerna [near Wenceslas Square], which has a huge associated café and Edison Film Hub [near Prague’s Main Train Station]. Every cinema has a café of course, but to create this kind of community space makes sense from both a cultural and financial perspective, I think.”
The cinema features two screening rooms, one of which is smaller and is being referred to as the “blue hall” by the team. According to Vít Janeček, the space of this blue painted venue can be used to provide much more radical dramaturgy.
The new operators promise to entice viewers through a good selection of arthouse films and a significantly more frequent documentary film screenings than is normally the case in Prague cinemas.
There are also several events where visitors will be able to meet with filmmakers and learn more about their work and profession. These are divided into three series called Atlas of filmmakers, Atlas of thinking with film and Atlas of classics. The latter, will focus around exploring cult and classical cult films while also providing contemporary context to these works.
