The Kosmos cinema in Třinec

Even today, there is a surprising – and in a certain sense fascinating – contrast between the modernist style of the Kosmos cinema (situated in “sector N of district IV of the Třinec–Lyžbice housing estate”¹) and the socialist realism of the nearby square Náměstí T. G. Masaryka, (T. G. Masaryk Square, named after Czechoslovakia’s first President Tomáš Masaryk, but until 1989 named Náměstí Lidových milicí, i.e. the Square of the People’s Militias). The visual impact of this contrast, and the feeling of a certain inappropriateness that the cinema evokes in the context of its surroundings (as well as the auratic quality, uniqueness and authenticity which we still sometimes Romantically expect from a work of art) strengthen the impulse to undertake research into a range of well-preserved sources – including the original design plans and textual documentation, as well as responses to the cinema in specialist journals and newspapers.² Through the “microcosm” of the Kosmos cinema, this article will also trace more general tendencies that were characteristic of Czechoslovakia’s history during the post-war years, four decades of state socialism, the transformation that unfolded during the 1990s, and the present day – when former flagships of heavy industry and the scientific-technological revolution are striving to adapt to the new circumstances of a globalized, post-industrial society.

Třinec during the era of “the building of socialism”³

After the Czechoslovak Communist Party seized power in February 1948, plans for the town’s development were set out in a new indicative zoning plan created by Vladimír Meduna (the “prince of Czechoslovak socialist realism” and the “chief designer of New Ostrava”) and Zdeněk Alexa (who at the time was the head architect at the Ostrava office of Stavoprojekt, the state architectural design institute).⁴ Both natives of Brno, Meduna and Alexa belonged to the generation of young, ambitious architects who were heading to the Ostrava region from all over the country in order to implement the official concept for the creation of new socialist cities;⁵ in 1949–1950 they formulated plans in the spirit of Stalin’s socialist realism, which the Minister of Information Václav Kopecký had declared binding for Czechoslovakia in a speech given in May 1949 at the 9th Congress of the Czechoslovak Communist Party.⁶ As a result of the implementation of the Soviet political and economic model, “political careerist architects” (as well as representatives of other professions involved in the post-war industrialization and construction of new towns) moved to the Ostrava region and other strategic industrial regions such as Most, Nová Dubnica and Košice.⁷

The development of the Třinec ironworks was a key priority, and this brought the need to provide housing for the growing number of employees. In accordance with this policy, the indicative zoning plan drawn up by Vladimír Meduna and Zdeněk Alexa stipulated that the industrial zone would continue to expand in a north-westerly direction, while new residential areas would be built in the south-eastern part of the town. However, in 1954 the role of designing “the construction of the metallurgical town of Třinec” was transferred from the Ostrava office of Stavoprojekt to the Hradec Králové office, and the architect František Křelina was appointed as the chief designer.⁸ Under his leadership, housing estates were built in the cadastral areas of Třinec and Lyžbice, which in contemporary documents were designated as “district II, III and IV” (from 1950 onwards the town’s districts were designated by Roman numerals; district I was Staré Město, i.e. the “Old Town”).⁹

The first phase involved the construction of districts II and III along Jablunkovská Street. Designed in the Classicist pastiche forms of socialist realism, the buildings were laid out in an axial configuration with a central park area containing a new school, and with rows of brick apartment buildings; this imbued the area with an urban character. On land between Jablunkovská Street and Komenského Street, so-called “ensembles” were built; these were symmetrical configurations of partly enclosed residential blocks adjacent to the central square (now Náměstí T. G. Masaryka). This monumental space, with a park at its centre, is delineated by two blocks with shops and covered arcades on their ground floors; the corner sections of these blocks are accentuated by high-rise buildings designed by the Hradec Králové-based architect Břetislav Petránek and built in 1956.¹⁰ Another block-based residential area adjacent to the main square was built between Jablunkovská Street and Palackého Street (though the buildings here use prefabricated panels rather than bricks). During the second phase of construction work for the Třinec–Lyžbice housing estate, new buildings were added on an area of level ground separated from districts II and III by a steep wooded slope. This area was designated as district VI, and it included the Terasa (“Terrace”) housing estate, designed in a post-war modernist style by František Křelina and built in 1961–1977. Its central space was Náměstí Svobody (“Freedom Square”), dominated by a cultural centre and also including other civic amenities – an eight-floor hotel, “existing tall greenery modified as a park”, local government offices and a shopping centre accompanied by a row of eleven-floor high-rise buildings.¹¹

Along the road to modernism

If we view the new part of the town in Třinec–Lyžbice in its wider context, we notice that in accordance with the principles of socialist-realistic urbanism, it is laid out along a generously proportioned visual axis that is dominated by the hospital complex at Sosna (on Jahodná hill) and extends via the central square (Náměstí T. G. Masaryka) to a second square (Náměstí Svobody). The setting in which the Kosmos cinema “landed” in 1968 thus gains clearer outlines. At one end is the hospital, built from 1954 onwards on a five-sided ground plan and designed by the architect Gustav Paul from the Prague office of Stavoprojekt;¹² located on a hill above the town, this is one of the most important examples of ideologically conditioned historicist architecture in Třinec, though it is quite soberly conceived. The hospital is visually integrated with the grandest space in the town – the main square (Náměstí T. G. Masaryka), which is also built in the same style. It should be emphasized that after its completion, this square quickly began to be perceived as the centre of the entire town, as the non-conceptual approach to the completion of the Staré Město (“Old Town”) district – including the fragmentary nature of the post-war developments and inappropriate alterations to the existing urban structure – had deprived it of its natural function as the town’s main public space. However, the termination of the above-mentioned visual axis at Náměstí Svobody in the Terasa housing estate (which featured modernist architecture, albeit with a Classicist urban structure) was perceived by contemporary critics as a somewhat problematic solution.

Nevertheless, the choice of this solution is not in any way surprising: František Křelina created the concept for the urban structure of the new town centre (districts II, III and IV) between 1954 and 1960. He came to Třinec in 1954; this was a critical time, as the Soviet Union had just recently announced the official end of decorative “excesses” in architecture. However, in Czechoslovakia – and in other Soviet satellites – the previous doctrine of Stalinist historicism was still on the rise, and the mechanisms of urban design (and production for the construction industry) continued to exhibit the momentum of this doctrine for a long time after its official demise. Indeed, this was acknowledged by the architect Evžen Kuba in a review of the new developments at Třinec–Lyžbice published in the journal Architektura ČSR [Architecture of Czechoslovakia] in 1966. In this review, Kuba illustrated the situation using the example of the socialist towns in the Ostrava region: “Typical features of Ostrava housing estates are (or rather were) construction on ‘greenfield sites’, the mass production of basic residential units, and a lack of complexity. Havířov, Poruba, Karviná or the Stalingrad estate in Ostrava‘s southern district – they all received these dubious gifts at the very outset, which for generations to come determined their urbanistic concept, the quality of their architectural details, and the ‘livability’ of their environment.”¹³

At the same time, it should be pointed out that although Khrushchev’s famous criticism of “excesses” in architecture was not voiced until December 1954 (at a conference in Moscow for construction industry professionals and architects), and it was not until 4 November 1955 that it was officially expressed in a resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Council of Ministers of the USSR entitled On the Elimination of Excesses in Design and Construction. The resolution was published in Czechoslovakia a month later (in December 1955) in the journal Československý architekt [Czechoslovak Architect].¹⁴ In the still-Stalinist Czechoslovakia of the mid-1950s, František Křelina – in his role as the “chief designer of the metallurgical town of Třinec” (one of the country’s most strategic heavy industrial centres) – simply had no other option than to apply a Classicist urbanistic concept when designing districts II and III, and he later attempted to follow on logically from this concept in his detailed plan for the layout of district IV of the Třinec–Lyžbice housing estate (1960)¹⁵ and his design for the Terasa housing estate.

By the beginning of the 1960s, Křelina could have chosen “a more radical modernist gesture”, but his politically defined responsibility for creating a representative, ideologically stable image of the town within its specific region essentially made it impossible for him to take a more experimental approach. From this perspective, contemporary objections to his design for the Terasa estate can be viewed as marginal – whether these objections concerned the schematic nature of the estate’s urbanism, the needless positioning of the new square Náměstí Svobody on the same axis as the existing parts of the town (from which it nevertheless remained psychologically detached), or the inadequate incorporation of “the beautiful massif of the Třinec forest“ (which is separated from the overall composition by a barrier in the form of the modernist cultural centre on the new main square and the adjacent ”rampart of apartment buildings“). Despite these reservations, however, the reviewer acknowledged that ”the quality [of the design] is far above the national average“ and that ”even if the final implementation is only halfway there, this is not a failure. It is one of the first erudite attempts at a qualitative change in our mass housing development programme.”¹⁶

Where did the Kosmos cinema “land”, and what did it show?

The Classicist urbanist configuration mentioned above – although it was partly conceived in a timid attempt at a modernist solution and featured buildings made from prefabricated panels – was the setting in which the Kosmos cinema was built. Completed in 1968, the cinema was ceremonially opened on 25 February, to mark the twentieth anniversary of the Communists’ seizure of power (“the victory of the working people over the bourgeoisie and reactionism”) with a screening of Sergei Bondarchuk’s film War and Peace.¹⁷ We can only speculate as to which instalment of this colossal four-part epic was shown. When the cinema was opened, the first three films had already been released in Czechoslovakia (Andrei Bolkonsky, Natasha Rostova and The Year 1812),¹⁸ all of them shot in the 70-mm format which in the early 1950s had represented a major technological advance.¹⁹ It is possible that the third film in the series was shown at the opening; although it was already two years old, it was an unprecedently opulent production, with spectacular battle scenes and a war-focused story which resonated with the official interpretation of history, and which also had the strong potential to present the Soviet Union as a cultural and political model whose cinematography was exceptionally advanced both artistically and technologically.

However, projecting a film in a widescreen format required special technical equipment, and it was not until the end of the 1960s that this equipment became widespread in Czechoslovakia, when the Přerov-based Meopta company launched its Meopton universal professional projector, allowing cinemas to screen films in both the 35-mm and 70-mm formats. These projectors were gradually acquired by around one hundred Czechoslovak cinemas, the largest concentration of them in North Moravia. According to Karel Tomešek, the legendary manager of the Mír 70 cinema in Krnov: “In Ostrava alone there were four such cinemas, probably to provide entertainment for the miners.”²⁰ However, according to available information, the Kosmos cinema was not one of these – which is surprising to say the least, given its innovative structural and architectural design and the massive state support given to cinemas. The subtitle of an announcement in the weekly company newsletter Třinecký hutník [The Třinec Metalworker] entitled The Kosmos cinema opens emphasized the cinema’s sensationally impressive parameters: “Not even Prague has this – it nowhere in the world except in Třinec and in Kuwait – Well-rounded sound – 574 seats await visitors – Air conditioning fit for the tropics“. However, this short article also admitted that ”the cinema can screen all types of films except 70-mm films”.²¹ The reference to a cinema in Kuwait remains obscure, and it would certainly merit further exploration, but the Kosmos was built to a standardized design by Alojz Daříček Jr.²² and Ladislav Bořuta, and the same design was also built in two more Czechoslovak industrial centres – Varnsdorf in North Bohemia²³ and Nová Dubnica in Western Slovakia.²⁴

With its “futuristic form”, its date of origin (designed in 1961) and also the name that was sometimes given to it in its early days (the “Cinema on the Terrace”, after the Terasa housing estate), the Kosmos would more naturally have belonged on Náměstí Svobody, the central square of the new estate. In fact, it gives the impression of existing in a kind of in-between space: for users of the town, it is not really part of either square (Náměstí Svobody or Náměstí T. G. Masaryka), even though the steps leading to the foyer are structurally connected to these spaces (albeit via a car park). The cinema thus exists at the intersection of two eras – one represented by the eclectic historicist pastiche of socialist realism, and the other embodied in the International Style as designed and built in the Czechoslovak context – while also featuring a Classicist ground plan conditioned by an urbanist concept dating from the early 1950s.

By studying archive documentation, it is possible to reveal “the secret of the apparition of the Kosmos cinema” on the boundary line between two parts of the urban fabric – the decorative space of Náměstí T. G. Masaryka, and the modernist buildings dominated by the high-rise sometimes known locally as “the house of horrors”. However, mentally – and from our lived perception of the environment – the cinema essentially belongs to the part of the townscape that was composed according to the tenets of socialist realism. Yet despite this, contemporary visual representations of the cinema (photographs documenting the progress of construction work, or depictions intended for official promotional purposes or to showcase Třinec as “an exemplary socialist town”) cunningly show the building “from the opposite angle”, as part of the modern 1960s town built according to the principles of the Athens Charter.

Standardization for cinefication: codename “The Bat”

The Kosmos cinema was not designed (as one would expect) by the Hradec Králové office of Stavoprojekt, but by the Bratislava office, where both its main architects and the design team worked in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The architects Alojz Daříček and Ladislav Bořuta, working with three engineers (Poštulka, Hertl and Blahunka) did not design the cinema for any specific location; instead their approach was “wider, so that it can be incorporated into any urban environment”.²⁵ This was no coincidence: the design was produced for an intensively promoted architectural competition entitled Public architectural competition for model cinema designs with 380 and 550 seats, which was announced in 1960 by the Czechoslovak Central Film Bureau on the instructions of “the central contracting authority, the Ministry of Education and Culture, and following consultation with the Czechoslovak Association of Architects”.²⁶

The purpose of this thorough expert consultation exercise was to “disseminate” standardized cinema facilities throughout the country (a process termed kinofikace in Czech, which could be rendered in English as “cinefication”), thus providing optimum facilities for film, which was a key medium of communist propaganda. It should be remembered that the Czechoslovak film industry was the first of the country’s strategic industries to be nationalized after the Second World War (in August 1945), ²⁷ and that two years later, the Minister of Information Václav Kopecký declared in Parliament that “cinefication will involve great duties, great tasks, and we will strive for the complete cinefication of the entire republic, so that besides travelling cinemas, cinema facilities will also be available to large companies, hotels, schools, stations, playgrounds, large buildings, and families”.²⁸ The first competition for a standardized cinema design was announced in 1947.²⁹ Attempts to produce standardized designs for public buildings became common under the communist regime, as can be seen for example in the competitions for standardized designs of cultural centres, held in the late 1940s,³⁰ or the competitions for funeral homes in the mid-1960s.³¹

The results of the competition to design standardized cinemas with 380 and 550 seats were intended to contribute to the achievement of the goals set out in the third Five-Year Plan (1961–1965) for cinematography, which included the goal of solving “the problem of ideological utility, the educational mission and impact of films“, ”improving the existing cinema network at the same time as expanding it”, and introducing the latest projection technologies.³² The competition jury, chaired by František Pilát (the commissioner appointed by the Minister of Culture and Information to oversee the cinefication process, and the Deputy Central Manager of the Czechoslovak Film Bureau with responsibility for technology),³³ chose the designs submitted by Alojz Daříček, Ladislav Bořuta and their team in both categories.

The design concept is based on the variable integrability of two separate masses – a single-floor rectilinear block containing facilities for the general public and technical premises, and a main auditorium with an equilateral spherical triangular ground plan and a special cable-based roof system. The jury described the concept as exceptionally innovative in terms of both projection technology and structural design, and it also praised the designers’ approach to situating the building within the wider urban fabric. The jury also praised “the experimental nature of this work”, which is “evident particularly in the auditorium, whose exterior and interior are actually intended to display a kind of model auditory and visual laboratory for the reproduction of a film and the intense perception of a film when watching it”.³⁴ In the part of the cinema containing the foyer, the jury highlighted the versatility and flexibility of the layout, represented for example by the cloakroom, which could be dismantled in the summer months, enabling the space to be used for other purposes as required. The jury also appreciated the fact that the design could be easily adapted for various urban locations.

The design won first prize in the 380-seater category, and second prize in the 550-seater category, as the jury expressed certain reservations about the interconnection of the technical part of the building (also containing an apartment) with the public entrance area, the design of the heating system, and the technical design of the amphitheatre-type auditorium and its roof: “The auditorium is designed with wit, and it presents a bold, original idea; however, implementing it will be laborious and therefore difficult for the given purpose. One of the causes of this difficulty will be the correct coordination of the shape and tension of all three cable systems. The foundations of the structure will also be challenging, as it will be sunken into flat terrain.” ³⁵ The team submitted the design under the codename Netopier (“The Bat”) in a reference to the shape of the auditorium’s roof, and despite the reservations outlined above, the design performed exceptionally well in the competition, being selected over a further 110 entries (the large number reflects the intensity with which the competition was promoted). ³⁶

The question remains why this “experimental laboratory” – “diametrically opposed to classical forms, especially in terms of its application of a set of new film technologies”³⁷ – was unable to screen films in the 70-mm format. A likely explanation can be found in oral testimony given by the projectionist Mr. Jurman, who in 1968 worked at the Hutník cinema in Třinec and who was well acquainted with contemporary developments in the industry.³⁸ According to him, the Kosmos was in fact structurally and technologically equipped to screen 70-mm films, and the cinema acquired the necessary projection equipment as part of the preparations for the first screening. However, rivalry between local politicians in Třinec and in the town of Frýdek-Místek (the administrative centre of the district in which Třinec was located) led to the decision that the Kosmos cinema would not be used for screenings of 70-mm films. The technological primacy thus went to Frýdek-Místek, somewhat absurdly confirming the town’s status as “an important district capital and an important political and cultural centre”.

A similar rivalry existed in the late 1960s and early 1970s between two North Bohemian towns, Varnsdorf and Děčín. Cinemas capable of screening 70-mm films were built and opened in both towns. The author of an article in the Děčín weekly newspaper Průboj wrote: “The original devout wish was to have a new cinema in Varnsdorf in 1969 – of course for 70-mm films, and if possible before Děčín. As we know, My Fair Lady has long since sung all her songs at Děčín’s Sněžník cinema, and those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines have flown the requisite number of kilometres, but they have not yet dared to fly to Varnsdorf. After all, what would they do there?“ The article criticizes the delays in the construction of the Panorama cinema in Varnsdorf due to a shortage of materials – yet in the same breath it also emphasizes the unique structural design of the roof, ”which resembles a huge steel spider’s web“, noting that the roof ”was filmed by a camera crew that had come all the way from the State Film Bureau in Bratislava“. The article states that the cinema’s roof was to become ”a template for the entire assembly system” of the roof at the Olympic Stadium in Munich, the venue for the 1972 Olympics; the Bratislava-based Priemstav construction company, which was building the roof at the Panorama cinema, was one of the bidders in the tender to build the roof of the Munich stadium.³⁹

Experimentation is the future: the designers of the Kosmos cinema

The 1960 competition was part of a trend which came to dominate the Czechoslovak construction industry in the late 1950s and early 1960s, initially in connection with the need to address the country’s housing crisis. The centrally controlled economy was based around five-year plans whose implementation permanently deviated from their stipulated goals – and this system was unable to respond adequately to the housing shortage, which was due partly to damage sustained during the Second World War and partly to the obsolescence of the existing housing stock. During this period, theoretical studies were drawn up at the Research Institute for Construction and Architecture as well as at other institutions (primarily the State Institute for Standardization); these studies were intended to form the basis of a long-term concept for the development of the housing sector in the period 1959–1970.

In March 1959, the Central Committee of the Czechoslovak Communist Party announced the ambitious (and evidently unachievable) plan to build 1 200 000 residential units by 1970. Its Resolution on the solution of the housing problem in Czechoslovakia up to 1971⁴⁰ set out two significant “tasks for the era”: the modernization of existing housing stock (which was to be achieved by experimentation) and the standardization of housing units (which was to make construction easier and cheaper). The same requirements (under the umbrella concept of industrializing construction) were also applied to the standardization of other forms of construction, including public buildings. However, in most cases the results of experimental housing construction did not progress beyond the prototype stage, and either they were never implemented in mass construction at all, or the scope of their implementation was very limited.⁴¹ Many designs for cultural centres and cinemas met the same fate. The architects of the Kosmos cinema were actually lucky that their design was built at three locations.

Alojz Daříček played an active part in the experimental wave of the late 1950s and early 1960s, when he was involved in a number of other projects in addition to the Kosmos cinema. In 1959, an experimental apartment building (with twelve apartments on three floors) was built in Bratislava to a design produced by Daříček and a team consisting of the architects Konček, Skoček and Titl, the structural engineer Poštulka, and the engineers Bukva and Kratochvíl. The purpose of this project was to test a monolithic sliding formwork system which used hydraulic jacks that lifted the formwork into place; the system had been developed in-house by Daříček’s team. A particularly noteworthy aspect of the design was the insertion of cladding on the outer face of the formwork of the perimeter walls, which created the finished surface. After the perimeter walls were concreted, “monolithic top-ribbed ceiling slabs were laid during the reverse motion of the sliding system“. Using this process, the construction of the building took just seven to eight days. The design was later ”improved and simplified by K. Šafránek. In Ostrava–Mariánské Hory a five-floor apartment block was built by concrete-casting the lateral load-bearing walls into sliding steel formwork; the ceilings were made of prefabricated panels, as were the perimeter walls.”⁴² However, these experimental techniques were likewise never used in mass construction projects.

Daříček nevertheless became known in the field for several designs that impacted on the urban fabric of Bratislava and other urban centres. In 1957–1958 – again working in conjunction with Ferdinand Konček, Ilja Skoček, Ľubomír Titl and Jozef Poštulka – he created three versions of a study for Bratislava’s Podhradie housing estate, conceived on a large scale and incorporating 880 apartments, a music school, a widescreen cinema, a primary school with three classes, as well as cafés, clubs, shops, garages and other civic amenities. The design also incorporated three solo high-rise buildings at the edge of the planned estate, facing onto the river embankment (Nábrežie armádneho generála Ludvíka Svobodu) near the mouth of the Bratislava tunnel. However, the plans for the complete housing estate were eventually abandoned, and only the three high-rises were built (in 1960–1963) using “the new technology of assembled concrete elements” which made it possible to implement a variety of architectural solutions, accentuated by a system of loggias and balconies.⁴³ Although only part of the planned estate was actually built, it attracted substantial media attention as an example of how to create modern housing stock with high-quality architectural design and variable apartment layouts.

As an employee of the Bratislava office of Stavoprojekt, Alojz Daříček participated in several urban planning projects, including the general plan for the Bratislava heritage reservation, the castle and the Podhradie district below the castle (1963–1965) or a study for a terrace-type development in the Podhradie district (1965). He also collaborated on a number of “architectural-artistic construction projects”.⁴⁴ In addition, Daříček was active as a member of competition juries. In 1963 he sat on a jury which chose Vladimír Dedeček’s surprisingly progressive design for the reconstruction and extension of the Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava,⁴⁵ and in 1967 he was on a jury assessing proposals for Prague’s Jižní Město (“Southern City”) housing estate complex, in which a team consisting of Krásný, Musil, Ondruška and Skokan won second prize (the highest prize awarded in the competition).⁴⁶

Much less information is available about the other designer of the Kosmos cinema, Ladislav Bořuta. We only know that in February 1977, as a member of the Slovak Association of Architects, Bořuta signed the Anti-Charter, a pro-regime document condemning the dissident movement Charter 77.⁴⁷ The model design for 380-seater and 550-seater cinemas received only scant attention from contemporary authors on architecture, and it is hardly mentioned in more recent literature on Czechoslovak architecture of the second half of the 20th century. The design was repeatedly mentioned in earlier textbooks on architectural typology and in technical publications on the architecture of theatres, cinemas and cultural centres.⁴⁸ However, it does not feature in representative synthetic histories of architecture or smaller-scale studies – though this does not mean that the Kosmos design does not merit attention from a “qualitative perspective”; rather it reflects the common practice in historiography of repeatedly and mechanically citing the same set of examples.

Cosmic enthusiasm

The choice of the cinema’s name also fits into the experimental ethos of the design and the notion of “building of a socialist future”. The name represents a promise of a different reality, a journey into fictional worlds that a cinema can convey to us. It is no coincidence that during the inter-war period, Czechoslovak cinemas often had names like Kosmos, Luna, Vesmír (“Universe”) or Universum – just as every large city had hotels called Metropol, Savoy or Imperial. In post-war Czechoslovakia, three cinemas bore the name Kosmos – in Třinec, Prague⁴⁹ and Most⁵⁰ – though the motivation for the name was somewhat different in these cases. Three is a tiny number compared with the situation in Poland, where from the late 1950s until 1989, the name Kosmos was given to thirteen cinemas – in Szczecin, Chojnice, Mława, Zambrów, Poznań, Świebodzin, Kalisz, Lublin, Gorzów Śląski, Katowice, Mysłowice, Dębica and Przemyśl. As Filip Springer has aptly noted, “all these owe their name to the wave of madness that erupted after Yuri Gagarin‘s first space flight. Yet besides their name, nothing connects them […]. Nevertheless, for millions of Poles they became a window on the world. When people talked about ‘going to the Cosmos’, it acquired an almost literal meaning.”⁵¹

The name of Třinec’s Kosmos cinema can likewise be interpreted through an ideological lens, as space exploration was one of the fields in which the Cold War was played out. A milestone moment in this duel came on 4 October 1957, when the first artificial Earth satellite Sputnik 1 was launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to orbit the Earth. This feat became a part of the visual culture of the Eastern bloc, and its (often quite peculiar) iconographic configurations were widely used in all disciplines from fine arts to design, architecture and typography – whether as a symbol of the “trans-galactic” peace campaign led by the USSR and its satellites, or as a symbol of an important (if still only partial) Soviet victory over the USA, culminating on 12 April 1961 with the first manned space flight. In Czechoslovakia, this latter event immediately became the object of huge media attention, and it was immediately celebrated in the legendary Czech Dixieland hit Pozdrav astronautovi (“Greetings to the Astronaut”), which also became known (after the first line of the second verse) under the name Dobrý den, majore Gagarine (“Good day, Major Gagarin”); the text fittingly continues with the line Tak jsme se konečně dočkali (“So we’ve finally lived to see it”).⁵² A noteworthy aspect of the song is the tension between its form and its message: this agitprop piece, dressed in the garb of contemporary Western-style music, resonated powerfully in the media, and it had a firm place in the memory of at least two subsequent generations. However, the USA’s own milestone victory – putting the first man on the moon – understandably received far less attention in Eastern-bloc Czechoslovakia. The choice of the name Kosmos was undoubtedly inspired by the contemporary enthusiasm for space exploration, but as was reported (entirely prosaically) by newspapers at the time, it was the Třinec municipal council that ultimately decided on the name.⁵³

Space exploration was likewise a source of inspiration for the artist Rudolf Štafa in his delicate sculpture Cosmic Sun,⁵⁴ which he created for the interior of Třinec’s primary school no. 6; in 1968 a figural relief by Štafa was installed on the west façade of the Kosmos cinema, to the right of the former (now no longer functioning) side entrance.⁵⁵ Also in 1968, Štafa’s monumental and politically motivated work Totem of Freedom was installed outside the entrance to the cinema; it was later relocated on the roundabout at the junction of the nearby square (Náměstí T. G. Masaryka) and Komenského Street.⁵⁶

In the cities of the Eastern bloc, names such as Kosmos, Sputnik or Moskva were given not only to cinemas, but also to cafés, bars, cafeterias and other social or cultural amenities; this practice can be interpreted as a manifestation of the Soviet Union’s colonial attitude to its satellites, or even as a direct “marking of territory”, a declaration of belonging to the socialist camp. And in many of these cities we can also observe a seemingly unexpected (or even incomprehensible) contrast between the “cosmic” or “futuristic” ethos of modernist architecture and the historicist pastiche styles of ideologically conditioned architectural production.

In the Polish city of Szczecin, the Kosmos cinema was opened in 1959, having been built on a vacant lot formerly occupied by bomb-damaged apartment buildings at the junction of Wojska Polskiego Street and Małkowskiego Street. Designed by Andrzej Korzeniowski, it was the first modernist building in the centre of Szczecin, and it marked a departure from the conventions of socialist realism; the design was an aesthetic revelation, and the cinema soon became a vibrant hub of the city’s social life. In 1962, the Kosmos cinema was built on the Karl-Marx-Allee in East Berlin. Designed as a venue for premiere screenings, the cinema seated 1 001 people, and its architecture contrasts starkly with the buildings around it. Designed in 1959 by Josef Kaiser and Heinz Aust,⁵⁷ this modernist structure is situated on a grand avenue lined by palatial buildings in the style of socialist realism; from 1949 to 1961 the avenue bore the name Stalinallee. East Berlin received special attention from the Soviet Union, which strove to promote it as a showcase city of the Eastern bloc – at least on a symbolic level, for which architecture is an ideal medium, as are the names given to buildings and establishments (Kino Kosmos, Café Moskau); this is a practice that is also very familiar in the former Czechoslovakia and elsewhere.

It may seem inappropriate to compare the highly specific situation in a divided metropolis like Berlin with the situation in Szczecin, or with the situation in Třinec. In both Berlin and Szczecin, the Kosmos cinemas were built as solo structures that clearly expressed the architect’s modernist ethos, whereas the Kosmos in Třinec was designed as a template which could be repeatedly built in various locations that were considered strategically important: the Kosmos cinema in Nová Dubnica was opened in 1969,⁵⁸ and its Varnsdorf counterpart was opened two years later. However, these towns were still in the Eastern bloc, and they were thus in the same situation: all the towns and cities mentioned above (which we are viewing through the lens of a highly specific genre, i.e. cinemas named Kosmos) had experienced an episode of Stalinist architecture. And in this part of Europe at that time, the Classicist pastiche forms of Stalinist architecture were becoming a backdrop for new, modernist designs applying innovative construction technologies and showcasing architectural and artistic creativity; as solo projects existing in a peculiarly inappropriate environment, these modernist structures embody an ethos that looks to the future and sees humanity as “evolving towards a triumph of (technical) progress”. However, the important thing is this: not only in the one-off projects but also in the designs intended to be built in multiple locations, there is a declarative reckoning with the principles of socialist realism and a “leap forward into a new epoch”. The juxtaposition we can see in Třinec – between socialist realism and a modernist cinema – thus represents a clear example of an encounter between two specific developmental phases in post-war Czechoslovak society: firstly late Stalinism, and then the rejection of the personality cult, which resulted in the appropriation of international architectural trends and a certain rehabilitation of the Czechoslovak Functionalist tradition.

After the Big Bang

What happened to the Kosmos after the disintegration of the Eastern bloc? It would be tempting to assume that the complex and ambiguous circumstances of Czechoslovakia’s post-1989 economic and cultural transformation brought irreversible damage to at least one of the three Czechoslovak cinemas discussed here. Surprisingly this was not the case, though each of the three cinemas experienced a different approach to managing immovable cultural heritage dating from the era of state socialism. In Varnsdorf, the cinema came into private ownership, and in his enthusiasm for cinematic history the owner tried at least partly to preserve the original character of the architecture and (primarily) the 70-mm projection technology.⁵⁹ In Nová Dubnica, the cinema was sensitively (almost reverently) restored in a bid to secure its listing as a cultural monument, and the formerly monofunctional building was converted into a municipal cultural centre that is now used a venue for film screenings and live performances.⁶⁰ In Třinec, the Kosmos underwent a pragmatic renovation to ensure that it continued to fulfil its key function as a cinema, as well as offering other services and serving as a hub for the town’s cultural and community life.⁶¹

Despite all the insensitive alterations made at the Kosmos cinema in Třinec during the early 1990s (such as subdividing the generously proportioned entrance area to create premises for a florist, a pizzeria or a shop selling “books, gramophone records, pottery items, art works etc.”),⁶² the cinema has still not lost its seductive modernity. It gives the impression of a UFO that has landed on the boundary between two distinct townscapes – the decorative environment of socialist realism and the laconic austerity of modernist architecture. Nevertheless, what at first sight may appear to be a strange singularity is in fact not so much a form of escapism, but rather a manifestation of the more general situation in the Eastern bloc at the time of construction. In this sense, modernist buildings can be seen as “harbingers of a new epoch” – even if they are not unique works, but merely standardized designs. In this regard, the incunable in Třinec – just like its two replicants in Nová Dubnica and Varnsdorf – remind us that cultural values need not necessarily reside in originality, uniqueness or difference, but that they may also lie in utility, functionality, and above all in their ability to enrich the life of a community. Standardization is important in this regard, and it deserves our attention; even if its goals remain unmet, it at least attempts to bring us closer to the ideal of universally accessible culture.

At the same time, it is symptomatic that all three cinemas built to the design by Alojz Daříček and Ladislav Bořuta share the same story: the people of all three towns identify with them, many personal memories and experiences are associated with the cinemas, and they are perceived with affection and joy. This is evident from a remarkable research project conducted by Juraj Janto, who published some of its findings in 2002 in an article entitled Život v „ideálnom socialistickom meste“: Naratívne reprezentácie minulosti Novej Dubnice [Life in “an ideal socialist town”: Narrative representations of the history of Nová Dubnica]. Interviewed about the period from the 1950s to the 1980s, respondents mentioned the cinema particularly frequently, describing it as a lively and exceptionally popular place to spend leisure time.⁶³ The Kosmos in Třinec and the Panorama in Varnsdorf would certainly merit similar research.

The specialness of a building is not, therefore, conditional upon the uniqueness of its architectural design or any radical experimentation – both qualities which can be attributed to the Kosmos and its replicants. Instead, its specialness lies in people’s minds. The Kosmos has become a focal point for cultural life in Třinec. Testimony to this is provided not only by a wealth of documents held in the cinema’s archives (bearing witness to the vibrant tradition of the film club which offered a form of internal exile for “a secret brotherhood of film-lovers” during the era of “normalization”, the political crackdown of the 1970s and 1980s), but also by the vigorous efforts of a community of present-day enthusiasts. Despite the challenging current situation, when the building is undergoing reconstruction work (and like in the early days of cinema, it has a nomadic existence, sometimes screening films in a library and other times in a sports hall or a cultural centre), it is thanks to these enthusiasts that the Kosmos cinema still remains alive today.

Markéta Žáčková,
Faculty of Fine Arts and Faculty of Civil Engineering, Brno University of Technology