Between the Honecker Lounge, "Dirty Dancing" and the Berlinale: Kino International was once the most important premiere cinema in the GDR, is a permanent fixture at the Berlinale and is also known among film fans and tourists for its striking architecture. In November, the building on Karl-Marx-Allee, which was built in 1963, will be 60 years old.
The listed post-war modernist building can look back on the history of the GDR with one or two unusual anecdotes - and its end. Because while the audience is watching "Coming Out" on November 9, 1989 - a gay love story and thus the first film in the GDR with a homosexual theme - the Wall falls. A doubly memorable evening for the cinema.
In addition to mainly productions by the GDR film company Defa, the cinema also showed selected Western films, such as the 1987 dance film classic "Dirty Dancing". It was intended to be a prestigious building, as Thore Horch from the events department at Kino International says.
