100 years of a Berlin film institution: the Zoo Palast
A century ago, the opulent Ufa-Palast cinema opened in Weimar Berlin and became a venue for celebrated premieres — and later Nazi propaganda. Badly bombed, it was reborn as the Zoo Palast and remains a cinema icon.
The Ufa-Palast am Zoo
In 1912, the Italian Cines Company that specialized in film production and distribution bought the Neo-Romanesque exhibition halls near the Berlin Zoo, where it premiered its own films before Universal Film AG, or Ufa, rebuilt it to create Germany's largest cinema on September 18, 1919. The Ufa Palast am Zoo opened with the debut of an Ufa production, Ernst Lubitsch's "Madame Dubarry."
Classics of silent cinema
At the time, Ufa productions kept pace with Hollywood and even became hits in the US. Silent films such as Fritz Lang's "Die Nibelungen" (1924) and "Metropolis" (1926), Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's "Faust — German Folktale" (1926), and Ewald Andre Dupont's "Variete" (1925), celebrated their world premieres at the Ufa Palace. In 1925, the hall was enlarged from around 1,700 to near 2,200 seats.
Dark times
When the Nazis seized power in 1933, the Ufa Palast was turned into a propaganda cinema, its program featuring films the likes of Leni Riefenstahl's "Victory of Faith" (1933), "Triumph of the Will" (1935, pictured) and "Olympia" (1938). It also screened anti-Semitic films commissioned by Joseph Goebbels such as "Süss the Jew" by Veit Harlan, and Fritz Hippler's "The Eternal Jew," both from 1940.
Reduced to rubble
The vast Ufa theater was destroyed in an Allied air raid in November 1943, eight months after the cinema hosted what would be its last major premiere, the fantasy comedy film "Münchhausen" produced for the 25th anniversary of Ufa. It would take more than a decade for normal life to return this war-ravaged quarter of West Berlin, with the remains of the building finally demolished in 1955.
Symbol of West Berlin renewal
In 1957, the Zoo Palast opened at the same location and quickly became the home of major movie premieres, with stars from Sophia Loren to Jodie Foster and Tom Hanks passing through its grand foyer. Also hosting Berlinale competition screenings, the cinema's impressive oval ceiling illuminated by spotlights like a starry sky symbolized West Berlin's urban renewal following years of deprivation.
Home of the Berlin Film Festival
As the main location for the Berlin International Film Festival, or Berlinale, until 1999, the Zoo Palast was an institution associated with the democratic freedoms and cosmopolitan ideals trumpeted on the western side of the divided city. As the movie theater gained renown as the Berlin's home of major film premieres, additional cinema screening rooms were added.
Bleeding the business dry
Between 1998 and 2004, cinemas such as the Gloria and Astor closed on the neighboring Kurfürstendamm, giving way to branded shopping outlets, boutiques and mobile phone providers. At this time, the Zoo Palast was threatened with closure to make way for a shopping mall or office space that would fetch a higher rental return. Finally, however, community resistance meant the cinema was preserved.
Feel-good cinema
The cinema shut in 2011 to undergo a two-year renovation. The building reopened in 2013 with a completely new interior that is a homage to the grand cinemas of the 1950s and 1960s — combined with the comfort and technology of today's premium cinemas. While only the outer shell of the postwar modernist monument remains, the Zoo Palast has again hosted Berlinale screenings since 2014.