Thursday, January 12, 2017

The battle will be to the house of the cinema in Port – Public.en

that Is to say: "the back Will go in the Battle!". Only this time, it does not apply to the popular expression “Go in the Battle…”, which the people of porto use when they try to sell as true a fictional story, as the cinema will even go back to the remarkable modernist building designed by the architect Artur Andrade. The mayor of Porto, Rui Moreira, confirmed this Thursday to the PUBLIC the realization of a project that had been claimed for many years: the local authority will rent the Film the Battle and turn it into the house of the cinema that the city needs, private that is, since a long time ago, of a circuit the normal showing of a cinematographic work in the Downtown area.

The negotiation of the rental has been completed this week with the family and the company that owns the Plaza building of the Battle – the company Neves & Pascaud, and the decision will be submitted for the approval at the meeting of the chamber on the next Tuesday, day 17.



The lease contract will have a term of 25 years, and the local authority will pay a monthly fee of 10 thousand euros – "a value slightly less than the commercial assessment of the property", explains Rui Moreira, highlighting, however, that were simultaneously taken care of the interests, the legitimate, the family owner and of the local authority".

The Camera Port is still considered the outright purchase of the building, which is classified as monument of public interest since 2012, but "the family preferred not to dispose of the property, which we understand," adds the mayor.

The Chamber of the Port will make the Battle in the house of cinema – or a kind of cinematheque – the city. Want to install in the building, designed by architect Artur Andrade (1913-2005) and opened in 1947, "exhibition rooms that are able to respond to the needs of technical, aesthetic and programmatic of the films the view," and to which will be equipped with "equipment updated from a technological point of view," says the memorandum of the contract, which also includes the installation of "the room of study and research and also exhibition", in addition to a recreation area that "fosters the dynamic of cultural enjoyment".

For the adaptation of the building to these requirements and to the new times, Rui Moreira has advanced the name of Alexandre Alves Costa, "which has already been probed" for the effect, a choice justified by its historical connection and family to the building" – in addition to the film buff and director cineclubista, the architect is the son of the historian and film critic Henrique Alves Costa (1910-1988)".



Contacted by the PUBLIC, Alexandre Alves Costa did not want to make any comment on this challenge. But he admits that the Battle is part of his life: "it Is a little bit to my church, it was my mass weekly".

the president of The Chamber of the Port caveat, however, that the future intervention in the film "lacks always of the authorisation of the Regional Directorate of Culture of the North", something that is, moreover, contemplated in the contract of hire.

When you re-enter the cultural circuit of the Downtown Porto – who can hardly happen before 2018, with a view to the need for a project and later contest for the realization of the works, the Cinema, the Battle will be included in the package of the newly created Tripass, a card that will give you access to the sessions and programming of the Teatro Rivoli, Passos Manuel and also of Trinity, whose return to the activity of the film was also already announced, but still waiting for the completion of the adaptation works to the effect.

Rui Moreira admits, moreover, that the re-entry into operation of the Battle can come to free up the rooms in the Rivoli of the film programming, and thus the Municipal Theatre more available to the other arts.

On the horizon of the future home of the cinema of Porto is also the relationship and collaboration with the Cinemateca Portuguesa. "Both the Ministry as the Secretary of State for Culture, have been informed and are aware of the projects of the Chamber to the Battle, and hope that we will have a collaboration fruitful," says Rui Moreira.

The Battle was opened on the 3 June 1947, in the place where previously existed the New Cinema High-Life, and that outside the extension, in 1908, in this quarter of the city, of the primitive Lounge High-Life, installed two years before in the Garden of Cordoaria, and that in turn was already the heir also of a short-lived venue of the exhibition, a shed of the fair to show "tapes animated" at the Fair of St. Miguel, the current Rotunda da Boavista.

The building designed in 1946 by Artur Andrade is a landmark of modernist architecture by the porto, and the first cinema designed in the city with this order. Hence, his rating sheet.

in Parallel to the exhibition business – and also the ephemeral uses such as concert hall, at the beginning of the decade of the 60′s, by the Portuguese Musical Youth; in 2007-08, reflecting the Festival Intercéltico; and, more recently, concerts of fado and brazilian music, the Battle was for years the screen’s weekly cine-club of Porto, and by it a temple of cinephilia porto. Closed its regular activity in 2010, finished that was one happy little contract of use for five years by the Office Trade Live, the merchants of the Port.

At the time of launch of the project for the Porto 2001 – European Capital of Culture, the Battle, with the nearby Cinema Águia d’ouro (now a hotel), came to be considered as a place for the implantation of the Casa da Música.

Now, it seems to have arrived the time of ultimate realisation of the house of cinema.

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