Moviemento

Kottbusser Damm 22, 10967 Berlin

Founded in 1907 on Kottbusser Damm, the Moviemento holds a credible claim to being one of the oldest continuously operating cinemas on the planet. Over more than a century it has weathered two world wars, division and reunification, emerging each time with its single screen intact and its doors open. Today it is run as a cooperative, owned collectively by its members -- a structure that suits the fiercely independent character of the surrounding Kreuzberg neighbourhood near Kottbusser Tor. The programme leans toward politically engaged work, documentaries, and films from voices too often ignored by mainstream distribution. Premieres and filmmaker conversations are regular occurrences, lending the small auditorium the feeling of a living forum. To sit here is to participate in a tradition of communal cinema-going that predates the medium's own sense of itself as an art form.