Orda cinema, Heritage movie theater in Rambam Square, Ramat Gan, Israel
The Orda Cinema at Rambam Square is a building designed in International Style with functional forms and minimal ornamentation on its white exterior walls. The structure contains a screening hall with modern projection equipment and balcony seating arranged in the typical layout of that period.
Construction of the cinema began on 15 March 1936 under Yaakov Rosenblum, and it opened on 21 April 1937 with a premiere whose proceeds went to an orphanage in Tel Aviv. A dispute with the Ramat Gan Workers Council over hiring local workers led to a boycott and delayed regular screenings until a settlement in July 1937. It served as a cinema until 1991.
The cinema's name gave Rambam Square its popular name, Orda Square. On Saturdays the hall hosted political meetings, including those of HaPoel HaMizrachi, the Israeli Communist Party and Mapam. Since 1991 the building has no longer served as a cinema; it later housed a branch of the International Bank and today holds a Super-Pharm branch.
The building no longer operates as a cinema; since 1991 it has housed other businesses, and today a Super-Pharm branch occupies it. It stands on Rambam Square, also called Orda Square, between Herzl and Bialik streets at the southern end of HaYeled Boulevard. The Great Synagogue faces it, and beside it stands a statue of Chaim Nachman Bialik that replaced an old fountain in 2006.
The cinema's owners also ran the Mograbi cinema in Tel Aviv, and before the April 1937 opening the Ramat Gan Workers Council demanded that staff be local residents unfit for physical labour. The owners refused, citing relatives they had to employ, and the council called a boycott. Only the premiere went ahead, its proceeds going to an orphanage in Tel Aviv; regular screenings began after an arbitrator's ruling in July 1937.
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