Historic cinemas remind of int'l past of Tangier

posted by irishcine on March 1, 2010 at 7:35 am

TANGIER, MOROCCO — You would not usually expect to find the Peoples Daily of China to be often cited here as a source of cinema news, and even less likely to look there for stories about cinemas in Tangiers but this is one story about the Rif Cinema.

Yto Barrada, director cinemateque Tangier, said, “This cinema when we found it was playing Bollywood films, with people smoking inside. It was raining in the screening room. It was a 600 seat theatre and it was going to be turned in to a supermarket. It was just for sale, the lease was for sale. What we did is we worked for 8 years to create a film archive and an art-house cinema in this building.”

In the year 2000, the cinema started undergoing major renovations, before becoming home to the Cinematheque Tangier in 2007.

Read more in People’s Daily Online.