Lantern in the Square

There's a balcony. That means there's a second floor. It's a spacious interior, adorned with a golden finish on the walls and columns - even the floor's low-key yellow feels luxurious. The seats are neatly arranged in rows, their muted red, maybe orange, color mixing well with the rest of the auditorium's palette. It feels like a time machine, transporting you to an earlier age of man from whence extravagance was almost required in architecture.

This place is fancy.

Down past the rows, the focal point of the place is seen: a stage, topped by a vivid green, velvet curtain. A single light hangs near the top, right in the center. Whoever designed this marvel clearly oriented every item - from the lights to the seats - toward the splendid curtain. What lies behind it? It doesn't matter, as $5 is a worthy admission fee just to sit and admire this splendor. This place could easily house an orchestra or lend itself to an opera. It has the look.

The lights dim. The curtain slowly parts. A giant screen becomes visible to all.

And the movie begins to play.

Lucerna Cinema is not a venue for any of those classic forms of art, and is instead a movie theater. The theater - and indeed, Lucerna Palace, the entire complex where the theater is situated - is a cornucopia of history, like most buildings in Prague. Construction of the Palace began in 1909 by Vácslav Havel (grandfather of former President Václav Havel), reflecting upon an early 20th century concept of creating pedestrian friendly shopping ares; the cinema itself opened its doors in 1931. Havel intended the location to be a sustainable business for his sons. As such, the entire complex has a history very much connected with the Havel family. As Keith Jones, a documentary filmmaker who had one of his films screened at the Cinema notes, "The complex is owned by Ivan Havel, Václav Havel's brother, but it's run by Ivan's wife, Dagmar (who, coincidentally, shares a first name with the other Havel's wife)."

The theater is also well-connected with Barrandov Studios, one of the largest and, for its time, most high-tech studios in Europe; another Havel family member, Miloš Havel, who helped found the studio, had his offices in the back of the complex and ran Barrandov from the Palace. The studio's logo can still be found where the offices were located.

Though the connection is not so noticeable today, Lucerna Cinema has yet to lose its importance as a premier venue. "When a Czech film has its premiere," says Jones, "it's either at Lucerna or Světozor (just across the street from Lucerna)." Indeed, as we walked out of the beautiful cafe above the complex that one must pass to enter the theater, workers were preparing the staircase and even the bust of Vácslav Havel for the premiere of an HBO collaboration between Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg. "It's still an event to have a screening at Lucerna. It's not like a screening at a multiplex. It's something special," says Jones.

Lucerna's screenings are not composed of typcial Hollywood fare; there's a certain art house quality to the theater. European films are generally screened here, which would be considered quite art house in the United States but is instead general practice at Lucerna. Indeed, this past month Das weiße Band (The White Ribbon), a 2009 German film about children in Germany just before World War I that has been nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards, was screened. At the same time, controversial horror film Antichrist was screened as well.

More than just a place to watch movies, however, Lucerna is a shining beacon - or lantern, as its name translates - of the importance of the Czech film  industry. "It's important to have culture in the center of town, to not have cheap, second-rate stuff," says Jones. That's exactly what Lucerna isn't: cheap or second-rate. It's a beautiful cinema - complex - that shows the power of film, bringing people together to enjoy great works of art. Truly, the theater lives up to its name, lighting the way toward film.

***

This was an article I wrote for my Travel Writing class. It's a journalism class, and you can see aspects of the field in there - at least, I hope. This is the final draft, which I got back yesterday. It's a piece on a historical monument somewhere in Europe and I chose the old theater I went to my first week. The guy I interviewed, Keith Jones, was rocking with the history of the place. He was actually leaving in a week to South Africa in order to continue gathering footage for a documentary film titled "Punk in Africa." Sick stuff!

Just turned in my second article for class, a profile on a Czech person. We have two more to write. They will be posted in due time!