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In Prishtina the Kino Aramata once again belongs to everyone
by Elisabetta Brunella
“How will we live together?” is the theme of the 17th edition of the Biennale di Architettura that has just closed in Venice. Impossible for us, at MEDIA Salles, not to see the resonance with the motto and statement of intent we chose right at the start of our work: “Europe gets together in the cinema”.
For us, the movie theatre was - and remains - one of the main meeting places where life is lived collectively, with special characteristics. The random element creates a sort of temporary community in the theatre that shares the experience of a certain type of product with a recreational, artistic, cultural or informative etc. intent. At the same time, the movie theatre plays a vital role in the city’s cultural, social and economic fabric.
It is therefore only natural to think that at the Biennale we might find reports, models and reflections regarding cinemas and their future, also in the light of the impact Covid has had and the consequent restrictive measures affecting the social consumption of audiovisual products.
“The current global pandemic,” we read in the contribution by the curator Hashim Sarkis, ”has no doubt made the question that this Biennale Architettura is asking all the more relevant and timely, even if somehow ironic, given the imposed isolation. It may indeed be a coincidence that the theme was proposed a few months before the pandemic”.
Nonetheless, despite the theme and the stimulus - or constraints - generated by the worldwide upheaval caused by Covid, the works exhibited at the Biennale 2021 seem to have privileged home environments rather than public spaces. As regards the cinema, the most striking intervention came from Bekim Ramku, of the Kosovo Architecture Foundation, in collaboration with Nol Binakaj, entitled “Prishtina Public Archipelago”.
The research analyses five public spaces built in the centre of Kosovo’s capital between the Nineteen Sixties and Nineteen Eighties. The political events and warfare that exploded at the end of the Nineteen Hundreds completely overturned the function, use and perception of these structures (a hotel, a cinema, a square, a printer’s, a space for youth and sports activities).
At first the Albanian population was unable to make use of them, whilst later the race to privatize began. The Kino Armata managed to escape this destiny and as from 25 April 2018 resumed a public function. The history and current events are clearly explained by Alush Gashi, now manager of the cinema, in a post and a video that are part of the initiative “Prishtina Public Archipelago” at the Biennale.
The Kino Armata began to re-emerge as a public space in mid-2017, with the removal of the barbed wire and barriers that had isolated the group of buildings used as the headquarters of the international administration of Kosovo, for which the UN was primarily responsible, as well as the EU for economic reconstruction.
The cinema had come into being as the “House of the Yugoslav People’s Army”, a state institution present in several of the Federation’s big cities. It acted as a hub of propaganda, based on the screening of films carefully chosen to praise communism and the birth of Yugoslavia at the end of the Second World War, but also as a leisure centre for the local people.
In fact there were plenty of films starring Bruce Lee or the Italian duo Terence Hill and Bud Spencer, which were favourites in the Eighties, as well as musical evenings or dances, which gave the impression that the socio-political situation in Kosovo was more or less normal.
But when the situation worsened and the boycott of federal initiatives by the Albanian component began, in 1988 the Kino Armata abandoned its public function, was made available to the army and, if required, to initiatives destined for specific segments of the Serb population, such as students for example.
Even when the army withdrew from Kosovo in 1999, the Kino Armata did not re-open to the public. The UN and the EU used it for their own purposes, including the organisation of press conferences. However, the European institutions favoured a project that started to take shape in 2015, for handing back the Kino Armata to its public and creating a centre for cultural exchange and an engine of critical thought in Prishtina.
Today the cinema is in the hands of an independent foundation, including participation by the state and the municipality, which oversees programming and remains faithful to the principle that every event must be open to everyone. Retrospectives by masters of the cinema alternate with experimental or locally produced films and music events, as well as meetings with artists, especially from the younger generation, and debates on current issues.
Despite its “outer shell” which has conserved the characteristics of socialist architecture in the second half of the twentieth century, as well as the UN’s 300 blue armchair seats, in the first few years of its new life the Kino Armata has demonstrated that the cinema can act as a bridge to fill the cultural divide between Kosovo and the international scenario, standing out as a model in the area of the Balkans.
Without denying its complex and painful history, the name has remained as it was - Kino Armata -, whilst its role in society and in history means to be different.
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