Cinema Paris is one of the city's most glamorous and ambitious movie theaters and was a Berlinale venue for many years. From its opening in 1950 in the Maison de France center, it showed sophisticated film productions from France and Europe, thus assuming a crucial cultural role in the changing city. It has remained true to this mission. Today it is a popular premiere cinema, Berlin's 1000st officially protected landmark building, and host of the "French Film Week" as well as the French youth film festival "Cinefête".
1948
Architect Hans Semrau is commissioned to redesign the former "Scharlachberg" building on Ku'damm into a French cultural center. His work will go down in history as a prime example of New Objectivity.1950
The Maison de France center, with its integrated Cinema Paris and Institut Français, opens and becomes an important cultural institution in western post-war Berlin.1983
A terrorist bombing on the building shakes West Berlin. The cinema is closed.1985
Reopening after two years of closure after the bombing. Chancellor Kohl and President Mitterrand personally return the Maison de France, including Cinema Paris and the Cultural Institute, to the Berlin public.1992
The property is sold to the French state.1993
As the 1000th building, the Maison de France is declared an architectural monument of Berlin.1994
The French state ends the search for a tenant to return the cinema to its original programmatic course. Delphi operator Walter Jonigkeit (1907-2009) and the Yorck Kinogruppe are awarded the contract and, from 1994, make the cinema once again an important ambassador for European and, in particular, French-language film culture.