Arts Cinema, Movie theater in Arbat Square, Moscow, Russia
Arts Cinema is a movie theater on Arbat Square in central Moscow, housed in a classical building designed by architect Nikolai Blagoveshchensky. It has four screens of different sizes, along with a snack bar and a reading room.
The building opened on November 10, 1909, making it one of the oldest surviving cinema venues in Moscow. In 1926, it hosted the premiere of Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin, a film that shaped the course of Soviet cinema.
The cinema shows films from around the world in their original languages with Russian subtitles, making it one of the few places in Moscow where foreign cinema can be seen without dubbing. The audience tends to be made up of people who seek out independent and international films.
The cinema sits close to Arbat Square in the city center and is easy to reach on foot. The building has steep stairs between floors and limited space for mobility assistance, so visitors with accessibility needs should plan ahead.
Leo Tolstoy visited the cinema in its opening year, 1909, just a year before he died. This made him one of the very few major 19th-century Russian writers to personally encounter the new medium of film.
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