Kino International (Berlin, Germany)
Kino International (Berlin, Germany)
Kino International is not only one of Berlin’s most important cinemas, it is also one of the architectural crown jewels of the reunited city.
Today, as a listed cinema monument, it is just as famous world-wide as it is as a major premiere house. Filmmakers such as Tilda Swinton, Steven Spielberg, Barry Jenkins, Taika Waititi, Spike Lee and many others have been guests here to present their films to the public for the first time.
One could make a film about the moving story of the International. It would tell, for example, how Heiner Carow’s COMING OUT celebrated its premiere on 9 November 1989. A sensation and the result of many years of effort to be allowed to make a film about homosexuality in the GDR that promoted tolerance. The film title was to become the programme for the fate of an entire nation on the same night. The Berlin Wall falls during the first of the two premiere screenings. When the guests left the cinema, they found themselves in a whole different reality. In many ways, this evening is a turning point in the history of cinema between the GDR and reunified Berlin.
And Yorck Kinogruppe also ties in programmatically with the events surrounding the premiere of COMING OUT on 9 November 1989. Since 1997, the Mongay film series has been a fixed part of the cinema programme, bringing a current queer film to the big screen on Karl-Marx-Allee every Monday at 10 pm. It is the oldest queer film series in Germany. And outside, on the façade, a beautiful anachronism greets guests from afar, just like almost sixty years ago: hand-painted cinema posters, timeless and unique – like the International itself.