Basel’s kult.kino turns 50 by doing the unglamorous thing: surviving

Basel’s old cinema mile in Steinenvorstadt has largely been repurposed into restaurants, shops and offices. The city has not lost its appetite for screens entirely, but the business of showing films has long since moved into a different shape — and, in Basel, into fewer, more stubborn hands.

Among the survivors is kult.kino, which is marking its 50th anniversary. The company now runs seven screens at two locations: Kino Atelier at Theaterplatz and Kino Camera near Claraplatz. What began as a film-club-style venture has become a properly established cinema operator, which is perhaps less romantic than the old story, but far more useful.

The group’s history is a small lesson in Swiss persistence. Studiokino AG was founded in 1976, Kino Atelier opened in 1979, and the various houses later came together under kult.kino ag in 2002. In 2015, Atelier expanded from three to five halls and added a bar, lounge and outdoor area. The old Club and Movie cinemas disappeared along the way, as did so many other Basel screens.

The company has not survived by pretending that cinema is somehow above economics. Co-managing director Gini Bermond says kult.kino has built a strong independent brand with an arthouse focus, and it even operates its own streaming platform to make very niche films accessible. The point is not ideological purity. It is keeping enough audience and enough income to show films that would otherwise vanish from the map.

That is why blockbusters are part of the programme. They help finance the more fragile titles, because most films lose money and even a success such as Heldin last year does not make the arithmetic beautiful. The bar and food offer have therefore become more important, especially at Atelier, where many guests come for the tables as much as for the screen. Culture, as ever, is supported by the less poetic parts of the balance sheet.

Bermond says Swiss films make up the bulk of the programme, with French films also playing a major role, and almost all Basel productions are shown. As a local company, kult.kino can read its audience more precisely than a large chain, she says; what works in Basel does not necessarily work in Zurich. The audience is also more female than male.

The broader Swiss cinema market is stable rather than spectacular. According to Ivette Djonova, general secretary of Pro Cinema, there are currently 193 cinema companies in Switzerland, with 261 screens and 620 displays. The number of companies has remained broadly steady for years, while the number of screens has increased. One visible trend is event cinema, from grill evenings to women’s or men’s events and knitting screenings, which Djonova says are extremely popular.

kult.kino’s deeper advantage, though, lies in its ownership model. It started as a lovers’ project and was never meant to make anyone rich. In the early years, shareholders even gave up a large part of their capital so the cinema could survive. Today the company has around 150 shareholders and a support association with 430 members.

Tobias Faust says the business has been privately financed through its audience for all 50 years and cannot pay dividends. Every profit goes back into the programme. In a sector that likes talking about scale and synergy, that sounds almost quaint. Yet it has worked, and not because of sentimentality. Bermond argues that in a digitalised world, people value the chance to retreat, focus on one thing and switch off the phone. A dark room with one large screen, it turns out, still has a case to make for itself.

Written by Martina Kirchner martina.kirchner@alpineweekly.com