pathe tuschinski tour

ONTDEK KONINKLIJK THEATER TUSCHINSKI

Vanaf maandag 22 april wordt de gevel van Koninklijk Theater Tuschinski uitgebreid gerenoveerd. Het monumentale pand bestaat al ruim 100 jaar als bioscoop. Om ervoor te zorgen dat bezoekers ook de komende 100 jaar kunnen blijven genieten van het iconische theater, wordt het pand nu zorgvuldig gerestaureerd. Dit met behoud van alle details uit de originele staat. De nadruk van de restauratie zal liggen op het voegwerk, de kozijnen, het koperwerk en ornamenten. Geen zorgen dus… Koninklijk Theater Tuschinski blijft gewoon geopend gedurende de werkzaamheden.

EEN DIGITALE TOUR DOOR DE MOOISTE BIOSCOOP TER WERELD

Een fysieke tour door de mooiste bioscoop ter wereld, audiotour door koninklijk theater tuschinski, rondleiding met gids.

In 1921 opende Abraham Tuschinski na een bouw van twee jaar het Theater Tuschinski. De oorspronkelijk kledingmaker uit Polen was in 1904 op weg naar de Verenigde Staten, maar bleef uiteindelijk in Rotterdam, waar hij diverse bioscopen opende. In 1916 wilde hij samen met zijn zwagers Herman Gerschtanowitz en Hermann Ehrlich iets bijzonders in Amsterdam beginnen.

“Amsterdam heeft vele theaters, maar als ik er één bouw, dan moet het alle andere ver overtreffen. Grootsch als een tempel en fraai als een paleis, een theater dat zijn weerga in Europa nog niet heeft, en zelfs het verwende Amsterdamsche publiek paf doet staan van bewondering.”

Deze drang naar originaliteit en bewondering stond altijd voorop in Theater Tuschinski: een imitatie van andere theaters was voor Abraham Tuschinski uit den boze. Dit is terug te zien in de vele veranderingen die het interieur van Tuschinski heeft doorgemaakt en de vele bijzondere elementen die het theater kenmerken. Onder het bewind van Tuschinski was het theater nooit af.

Het pand is ontworpen door architect Hijman Louis de Jong en werd voltooid onder leiding van ingenieur D.C. Klaphaak. Maar ook na de opening werd in het gebouw verder gewerkt. De vernieuwingsdrang van Tuschinski kwam in de aanloop tot het tienjarig jubileum van het theater in 1931 tot een climax. Vele in het oog springende elementen in het huidige interieur dateren uit die tijd.

Voor de inrichting en de aankleding van het interieur werd een groot aantal (sier)kunstenaars aangetrokken, onder wie Willem Kromhout, Pieter den Besten en Jaap Gidding. Geïnspireerd door de schilderingen van Pieter den Besten zijn in 2019 zaal 2 en 3 teruggebracht naar hun iconische oorspronkelijke stijl. In 2020 zijn ook zalen 4,5 en 6 van Tuschinski vernieuwd met luxe stoelen en bankjes.

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Tuschinski Theater

Top ways to experience Tuschinski Theater and nearby attractions

• Waterlooplein • 7 min walk
• Nieuwmarkt • 10 min walk

Most Recent: Reviews ordered by most recent publish date in descending order.

Detailed Reviews: Reviews ordered by recency and descriptiveness of user-identified themes such as wait time, length of visit, general tips, and location information.

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Tuschinski Theater - All You Need to Know BEFORE You Go (2024)

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• (0.04 mi) House of Amstel
• (0.07 mi) De L'Europe Amsterdam
• (0.11 mi) Banks Mansion
• (0.00 mi) Subway
• (0.01 mi) Jamin
• (0.01 mi) San Georg B.V
• (0.01 mi) Prins Van Oranje
• (0.01 mi) El Torado Gril Restaurant

Tuschinski Theater

Top ways to experience Tuschinski Theater and nearby attractions

• Waterlooplein • 7 min walk
• Nieuwmarkt • 10 min walk

Most Recent: Reviews ordered by most recent publish date in descending order.

Detailed Reviews: Reviews ordered by recency and descriptiveness of user-identified themes such as waiting time, length of visit, general tips, and location information.

Also popular with travellers

TUSCHINSKI THEATER: All You Need to Know BEFORE You Go (with Photos)

• (0.03 mi) Hotel The Bird
• (0.03 mi) Rembrandt Studio's
• (0.04 mi) House of Amstel
• (0.07 mi) De L'Europe Amsterdam
• (0.11 mi) Banks Mansion
• (0.00 mi) Subway
• (0.01 mi) Jamin
• (0.01 mi) San Georg B.V
• (0.01 mi) Prins Van Oranje
• (0.01 mi) El Torado Gril Restaurant

100 Years of Tuschinski: Amsterdam’s Flagship Theater Celebrates Royal Decree

By Ben Croll

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This year’s IDFA makes a rousing return to in-person projections, following an online-only version in 2020 that fell at the mid-point of the nearly 18 months that saw Dutch screens go dark.

As it plays out in 15 venues in Amsterdam, including prestigious halls like the Eye Film Museum and the generally live-performance oriented Royal Theater Carré, and another 40 satellite spots across the country, the 2021 doc fest has reserved most of its marquee events – like live concerts, orchestral accompaniments, and a daily screening made available to online viewers all across the country – to a 750-seat Old World film palace recently heralded as the most beautiful cinema in the world: the Pathé Tuschinski .

Or, to be more precise, the one-time Pathé Tuschinski. As of its centenary birthday celebration this past October, the august venue has been newly renamed the Royal Theater Tuschinski – becoming the first and only cinema to receive such an honor. Though for all the building’s dazzle and heft, it derives much of its mythic status from a checkered history marked as much by tragedy as by glitter.

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Abraham Icek Tuschinski never expected to end up in Amsterdam. Born into a Polish shtetl in 1886 and trained as a tailor, the young man traveled overland across the European continent at the turn of the century, hoping to escape the pogroms of the old world for the promise of the new.

Only the émigré and his family never did get on the boat. Hunkering down in the port city of Rotterdam, Tuschinski partnered with his brothers-in-law Hermann Gerschtanowitz and Hermann Ehrlich and together they prospered,  opening a series of businesses that would grow to include four movie palaces, converted from regular theaters.

“Gerschtanowitz was the financial man, Ehrlich was the programmer, and Tuschinski was the one with the dream,” explains Robbert Blokland-Wijchers, who has written a recently published book about the cinema’s 100th anniversary. “[And after the four converted theaters in Rotterdam,] Tuschinski dreamt of building his own cinema from his own design. He wanted to do everything he could imagine to make a movie palace for regular people.”

In 1918, the three men set their sights on land in the heart of Amsterdam, and on Oct. 28, 1921, inaugurated a movie house unlike anything built before or since. “When you enter, it’s like walking into another world,” says Blokland-Wijchers. “There’s so much to see, so many details and ornaments. Tuschinski thought about everything, he thought about the doorknobs, the doors, and the tapestry on the floor, which was hand-made and imported from Morocco.”

“You’re so amazed by everything you see it’s almost a pity that the film starts,” he continues. “You’re amazed by its one of a kind combination of Art Deco, Jugendstil and the Amsterdam School styles of architecture, which is actually a bit of a mess, but it’s a beautiful mess, and that’s what’s so wonderful about it.”

For the next two decades, Tuschinski would act as ambassador for the theater that bore his name and for the art form itself, opening more theaters in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Schiedam. More showman than business shark, he would spend lavishly to welcome foreign stars, to import luxury decorations, and to make sure that each and every working-class filmgoer felt welcome, going so far as to lower the price of admission to make sure the big screen remained accessible to those hurt by the crash of 1929.

But the violence Tuschinski had hoped to flee eventually came for him, as for so many others. In May 1940, German bombs destroyed all four of Tuschinski’s Rotterdam theaters while occupying forces ousted his board of directors and all Jewish employees. Within six months, his theater would be renamed “The Tivoli,” made a haven for Nazi propaganda, and, over the next two years, the entire Tuschinski family would be murdered in Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, and Sobibor. By the time Gerschtanowitz’s son Max took over the theater in 1945, he did so as an orphan; but for two cousins, everyone else in his family was gone.

Untouched by bombs and returned its original name, the Tuschinski has since stood as a kind of gilded memorial and glorious window into a vanished world. And in the intervening decades, filmmakers have toyed with different aspects of the theater’s weighty past. In 1971, for example, the cinema celebrated its 50th anniversary by hosting the world premiere of “Fiddler on the Roof” – in a move that emphasized the founder’s biography and early glories, making parallels between the real life figure and the characters in the film.

“[Like Tevye the milkman] Tuschinski was also a Jewish worker who left Eastern Europe to find fortune in the West,” says Blokland-Wijchers. “Director Norman Jewison chose the Tuschinski because he really wanted that story to be seen here.”

Two decades later, Steven Spielberg keyed into the tragic aspects of this tale when he handpicked the cinema for the European premiere of “Schindler’s List,” hosting an event that left an indelible mark for all in attendance.

“There were many survivors and relatives of Holocaust victims present,” says Blokland-Wijchers. “Everyone who was there still remembers this feeling, this sanctity and quiet during and after the film. It was the premiere, so there were drinks and little snacks afterward, but nobody touched them. [After a while,] Spielberg stood and said, ‘Let’s just go home and experience the quiet.’”

Five years after Max Gerschtanowitz took back his family’s theater, a young boy walked through its doors, parents in tow, to catch a screening of “Bambi.” “I went there for the first time when I was five or six years old, which is now 70 years ago,” recalls actor Jeroen Krabbé . “I still remember it vividly. Entering that building was like entering a fairy tale.”

Like many a child of his generation and of those that would follow, Krabbé looked to the theater with reverence. As the war years receded, the Tuschinski returned to its original goal: To serve as a high temple for cinema, as a rarified space that turned a trip to the movies into a full-on event.

Indeed, for millions of Dutch citizens, memories of Tuschinski come bathed in the warm glow of nostalgia; for it was the place where birthdays were celebrated, where families gathered en masse to catch the new James Bond together.

Only for Krabbé, the theater had a more direct impact on his personal and professional growth. The son of a film subtitlor, the Dutch star would spend countless mornings seated behind his mother in the theater’s intimate screening room, watching her work and losing himself in the latest upcoming releases from France, Italy and the U.S. “I learned several languages through that experience,” he says. “Because I wanted to understand what these people were saying. Though I had trained as a painter, there I decided that I wanted to make movies.”

Years later, when Krabbé himself made his way into 007’s world, the actor knew where this story would lead. “While we were still shooting ‘The Living Daylights,’ I told my fellow actors that the film would premiere at Tuschinski,” says Krabbé. “I said that I would host a party before the premiere, because Bond movies always premiere there. Little did I know that half of Holland would be there with us, cheering and waving outside the theater that night!”

For all the excitement of that Hollywood fete, Krabbé marks the high watermark of his professional life a decade earlier, at the 1977 premiere of Paul Verhoeven’s “Soldier of Orange.” In what would prove to be a milestone event for the Dutch industry writ large, that screening hosted the country’s royal family – for whom a new VIP section was built – while the full breadth of the national film and television industry came out to celebrate.

“Up until that point, we had never had such a premiere in Holland,” says Krabbé. “When I was a child, I would look at Tuschinski from the other side of the street, thinking maybe one day I’ll be a movie star and one day I’ll be there. So that night, when Rutger [Hauer] and I arrived on motorcycles, with a brass band playing, hundreds of people out there to celebrate, and the royal family there with us, I thought, okay, now I’ve made it. I was absolutely moved, feeling like I reached my goal.”

Since then, Krabbé has never stopped attending Tuschinski. He was there for the cinema’s hundred-year celebration in late October, and was there, as a simple filmgoer, weeks before, to catch (what else but) the latest James Bond.

“That same feeling – that overwhelming feeling, is still there,” he says. “It’s been over 70 years since I walked in for the first time, and I still have the feeling of the first day. You go there to feel humble, to think ‘OK, I’m going to see something special.’ Even if the movie is shit.”

Built to showcase the pearls of another age, the Tuschinski palace remains somewhat resistant to the particularities of modern exhibition.

“When the theater was founded, it was for silent films,” explains Blokland-Wijchers. “So sound remains an issue. Dolby Atmos, for example, requires the installation of speakers in the ceiling. And that’s not possible here, because the ceiling is decorated, and too high.”

“Also, the projector is quite high in the building, creating a slightly warped angle,” Blokland-Wijchers continues. “But it’s not possible to change. That’s just one of those quirks of Tuschinski – it’s not a perfect theater.”

In practical terms, such limitations have created headaches for certain perfectionist directors. At the 2002 premiere of “The Pianist,” for example, Roman Polanski stormed out of the theater in a huff, demanding to speak with the projectionist and imploring that they “stop ruining my movie!”

But in a more figurative sense, such limitations have slightly shifted a certain balance of power: Because to present a work in Tuschinski, one must recognize that the theater itself will leave its own mark on the film.

For some, that scenario has led to advantageous outcomes. “When we started screening films in Tuschinski, we wanted to show that documentaries could reach a wider audience,” says IDFA executive director Cees van’t Hullenaar.

“We didn’t want to show our films in small theaters,” van ’t Hullenaar continues. “We wanted to show that documentaries could reach, and could be accessible to, bigger audiences. IDFA proved that it was possible… [And through our partnership with Tuschinski] IDFA became a bigger festival for a wider public.”

Now well into its second decade, IDFA’s partnership with Amsterdam’s flagship cinema continues to pay dividends. “When it’s possible to have something special attached to the film, we program it in Tuschinski,” says van ’t Hullenaar. “We’ve made so many memories over the years.”

Indeed, when Variety spoke to the festival director late last week, he reminisced about the previous evening’s Tuschinski events while inside the century-old auditorium, an orchestra offered live accompaniment to Dziga Vertov’s “The History of the Civil War.”

“On Friday evening, Patti Smith performed there,” he said. “She stood alone, performing for more than 20 minutes. She sang and recited poems, and it was great. The whole room was almost in tears. That’s already a dear memory.”

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Amsterdam » Entertainment » Cinema » Tuschinski

Pathé Tuschinski Cinema in Amsterdam

Tuschinski is a huge, Art Deco cinema palace conveniently located between the Munt tower and the Rembrandtplein . Walking in the area of the flower market, you may see two towers of Tuschinski rising above other buildings. Built by the immigrant from Poland Abraham Icek Tuschinski, the cinema opened in 1921 and it remains until today with its Art Deco interior one of the most cherished buildings in Amsterdam. Tuschinski has been thoroughly modernized and is today one of the release cinemas in the city.

History of the Tuschinski cinema

Abraham Icek Tuschinski (1898-1942) arrived to Rotterdam from Poland at the beginning of the 20c. The legend says he was just a poor, self-taught Jewish tailor aiming for America. Cinema was a new craze then and Tuschinski in a short period managed to open four cinemas in Rotterdam. In 1917, Tuschinski moved with his brothers in law, Gerschtanowitz and Ehrlich to Amsterdam, and a year later began the construction of the big cinema in Amsterdam at the cost of 4 million guilders, using according to his own words the best people, best ideas and best materials he could get.

The original project of the new cinema has been made by a young and later somehow unrecognized architect Hijman Louis de Jong and is a mixture of Art Deco with the style of the Dutch Amsterdam School in architecture , and Abraham Tuschinski's own taste. The architect could not to finish the building, Tuschinski fired him before the end of the construction, and two other architects were to complete the interiors.

The cinema has been designed as an imposing building, with a big entry, an imposing Art Deco façade and two towers on both sides, rising above the neighborhood. The interiors, designed by Pieter den Besten and Jaap Gidding were very Art Deco, with strong Jugendstil influences, just as the investor wanted it to have. The main foyer was imposing, plush, somber, lit by big yellow Art Deco lamps. The walls are from covered by carvings in dark wood, glazed tiles and bronze elements.

The huge main Tuschinski auditorium had an allure of an opera, with two big balconies one above the other, hanging above the audience. It had originally 1200 seats. In the side rooms, a cabaret named La Gaité , a Japanese tea room, a Moorish suite were located. Several smaller suites on higher floors were built. An elegant lift was taking the guests upstairs. The corridors of Tuschinski were built were not only to connect the various auditoria. Their labyrinth was meant to offer its guest the privacy. The cinema had a modern ventilation and heating system maintaining the same temperature throughout the whole building. In 1936, the cinema has been thoroughly renovated. The beautiful 2-inch thick woolen carpet in striking colors dates from this time.

During the German occupation 1940-1945, Abraham Tuschinski and nearly his entire family were murdered in the Nazi concentration camps. The cinema could not bear his patron's Polish-Jewish name – it has been renamed to "Tivoli". After the war, Tuschinski returned to its glory.

Tuschinski as a stage

Tuschinski's main hall has a wide stage with large cinema organ Wurlitzer-Strunk installed there in 1940, replacing an earlier Wurlitzer model 160. Previously Tuschinski had also a resident 16 instruments orchestra and presented stage shows with famous singers and musicians. Maurice Chevalier, Judy Garland, Marlene Dietrich, Edith Piaf, Dizzy Gillespie, Fats Domino, Dionne Warwick - all of them had concerts in this auditorium. The resident orchestra was disbanded in 1969 and the organ ceased to play before the movies in 1974.

Recent years

The old cinema needed renovation. First in 1984, the whole cinema carpet has been redone using the original thread in Morocco. Somehow, despite having the identical colours and the original thread, the carpet’s patterns have been lost. Still the effort was enormous. The carpet for the main foyer was 50m long and had to flown in one piece to Amsterdam by a KLM plane. KLM covered the cost of this cargo (more than $ 100.000). In 1998-2002 Tuschinski has been thoroughly rebuilt with the aim to restore it as a historical monument. The old original mural has been discovered and the painstaking restoration of the interiors performed. At the back of the old cinema, a modern annex has added with three more screens. The technical equipment of the cinema has been modernized.

Tuschinski cinema today

Today, the Tuschinski cinema belongs to the big distributor Pathé. It has three screening rooms in its old part and three in its new wing. The nearby newly built Pathé Munt cinema has additional 12 screens. The main auditorium of Tuschinski audience has been reduced to 740 sets including love seats and private boxes. You may order wine and small meals to your private box. The Tuschinski's auditoria are also available for special events, concerts, and weddings. All red carpet premieres in Amsterdam take place at Tuschinski with stretched limousines bringing celebrities to its front among the crowd of the cinema by the movie lovers.

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