Cinema Sil Plaz
Illanz, Switzerland

Few activities that involve sitting in complete silence, shrouded in darkness, are as inherently social as a night at the movies. Time and again we’re reminded that cinemas perform a vital social function, generate dialogue and are capable of forging a community.

In Ilanz, a tiny Swiss city on the banks of the Rhine, the 1989 closure of the area’s last cinema sparked the beginning of Filmclub Ilanz: a dedicated band of local cinephiles. For 15 years they presented screenings in makeshift locations around the town until a 19th century forge presented itself as a permanent location in the heart of the alpine city.

Cinema Sil Plaz was pieced together on a shoestring budget using the resources of the community. Within the club’s members were its architects, Ramun Capaul and Gordian Blumenthal. Just over 100 km away, beyond an Alp or two, lived an Austrian rammed-earth specialist, and so the architects’ experiments with the material took flight.

This single-screen cinema and bar have united Ilanz residents by serving the distinct needs of the alpine community. The rammed earth isn’t simply visually striking – it’s a highly sustainable use of materiality that enhances the acoustics of both the cinema and the venue, helping create a state-of-the-art destination. As a result, the city of just 2000 residents now frequently hosts international musicians and speakers in their cinema.

When the stage isn’t hosting live music, it’s scattered with chairs and tables with patinas only a mountain village can provide. Here, a cinema club that for so long wandered the Alps without shelter now spend long evenings drinking local wine, discussing film and feeling proud of what they’ve helped build.

Zumzeig Cinema and Bistro
Barcelona, Spain

The Sants-Montjuic neighbourhood is home to countless bars, restaurants and cafes, yet has never been much of a tourist destination. It’s the sort of unpretentious Barcelonian quarter that gives a feeling of being culturally alive but also very much lived in. This is where you’ll find Zumzeig Cinema and Bistro, where blue and white awnings upon its façade belie the sophistication of its design and the progressive nature of its cinematic offering.

Something about the Zumzeig Cooperative feels a little magical. The Catalan word is onomatopoeic, referring to the buzz of bumblebees. By flying, with their big bodies and tiny wings, bumblebees seem to defy the laws of physics. Like the bumblebee, Zumzeig, a passion project with social good at its heart, shouldn’t be able to exist in a big city, but it does so with style.

As a not-for-profit cooperative, the cinema balances the need to cover costs with a commitment to programming independent cinema in all its forms: art films; documentaries; auteur cinema; and bizarre forgotten treasures. All the while, its casual bistro serves contemporary French food with zero-miles produce and almost no waste. All this refinement should never be mistaken for film snobbery. Zumzeig’s manifesto simply states: “We believe in popular cinema, accessible to everyone, and at affordable prices.”

By assigning itself a particular role to play in its city, Zumzeig seeks to expand local minds through a “pedagogy of the look”. The pedagogical task at hand is to view film from outside conventional, myopic frames of reference. If something feels rather earnest about all this, that’s balanced by a sense of sharing the joy of the cinema experience and, as is evident from the small, well-designed spaces – the incomparable importance of spatial design.

Raj Mandir
Jaipur, India

“Showplace of the Nation – Experience the Excellence”. So goes the emphatic neon tagline atop Jaipur’s single-screen cinema Raj Mandir. Despite its regal trappings, the space serves a civic function – a place where the chasm between India’s rich and poor narrows slightly and the disparities of social status are subdued, if only fleetingly.

To understand the splendour of the Raj Mandir, one needs to appreciate the city it inhabits. Jaipur, the capital of India’s Rajasthan district, is known as the Pink City. A city literally splashed with pink (the colour of hospitality), it was originally painted in 1876 to “welcome” British royalty. This welcoming spirit can still be felt today and contributes greatly to the Jaipur’s appeal for both locals and visitors.

The Raj Mandir’s salmon façade evokes the stylistic strokes of Wes Anderson, but conceals an interior built like an opera house. Streams of people weave their way through the cinema’s grand foyer; at the centre, a domed ceiling is elaborately decorated with star-dappled skylights and mesmerising chandeliers echoing Hollywood’s golden age.

The act of watching a film in this palatial auditorium is a joyously indulgent experience. Everyone must rise for the national anthem before each screening and up to 1,300 patrons are split into five tiers of seating. The cheapest seats in the house are, in many ways, the best. Close to the screen, families eat from their aromatic “tiffin picnics” and take audience participation to a new dimension – cheering, crying and dancing, as the film careens through classic Bollywood themes of love, despair, cruelty and redemption. It’s a theatrical experience that defies description and remains beyond compare.

Cinema Sil Plaz photography by Flurina Rotherberger
Zumzeig photography by courtesy of Zumzeig Cooperative
Raj Mandir photography by Nitiraj Singh