Cinema in the Round

One of the most surreal episodes of the Cold War occurred during Nikita Khrushchev’s historic tour of the United States in 1959, the first time a Soviet – or Russian – leader ever visited the U.S.

Khrushchev, who was visiting Los Angeles, literally threw a temper tantrum when his hosts told him that, due to security concerns, they could not allow him to visit Disneyland.

“And I’m telling you, I would very much like to go and see Disneyland,” Khrushchev shouted angrily, according to the New York Times report of September 19, 1959.

The LAPD had said they could not guarantee Khrushchev’s security at the park unless they emptied it entirely.

The newspaper wrote at that time that it was the first time that the famous amusement park “had figured as a controversial subject in Soviet-United States relations.”

“What is it?” Khrushchev continued with anger. “Is there an epidemic of cholera there or something? Or have bandits who can destroy me taken control of the place?”

the soviet leader never visited Disneyland, but the trip was later recounted in Russian news reports, and a myth still holds that Khrushchev did in fact visit the park and was especially taken by Disney’s multi-screen Circarama, the world’s first 360º cinema, so much so that he ordered a similar one constructed in the Russian capital.

The facts are rather more mundane: Khrushchev ordered Soviet engineers to build a cinema in the round before he even departed on his American trip. The structure, with 22 screens, was built in a record three months, just in time for the June 1959 plenary of the Communist Party. Since then, the cinema known as the Krugovaya Kinopanorama, or “Circular Filmpanorama,” has been functioning continuously in Moscow except for a few short intermissions – living through waves of popularity and surviving numerous political leaders.

Located on the premises of the All-Russia Exhibition Center,* a masterpiece complex of Soviet architecture and design, the Kinopanorama can still boast of being Khrushchev’s favorite cinema. But today the Soviet chef-d’oeuvre of the film industry is forgotten by most and expected by many to soon disappear.

The Presence Effect

On this day, the handful of visitors to the Kino-panorama mill about in the circular screening room, then look up and start smiling as they see eleven large rectangular screens fill simultaneously with images of the Volga River. Some stand up from the benches to take a broader look around when they realize that all the screens are showing different images.

During the 20-minute show a narrator tells the river’s story, mentioning its landmark military battles, the history of important towns scattered along its banks, the great artists who painted them, and the hospitality they show to foreign tourists. The script of the 1985 movie, patriotically titled Volga, the Russian River is pure Soviet propaganda. Yet the modern viewer can barely focus on the voice; he’s too busy trying to take in all the pictures, turning dizzily about.

Modern 3D-theaters cannot hold a candle to the Kinopanorama, where viewers experience an unusual effect of presence, of being truly inside the image, surrounded by 360º of screens.

This effect must have been even stronger prior to the 1965 reconstruction. Originally the theater had two stacked rows of 11 screens each. Now only the lower row remains, with each screen a projection of a separate roll of film.

Still, even today, watching the panoramic A Story about Rus (1987), one has a feeling of sitting on a cart driving down a rural road somewhere in Pskov region, past ancient buildings with grass rustling all about you. In the next episode, the viewer is watching a battle scene, but if he turns around, he finds himself standing in the crowd of tourists looking at the staged show. Later, the viewer is swaying on a swing, the swift motion on the screens inducing vertigo.

Irina Dorofeyeva, one of the two staff workers still working at the Kinopanorama, explains that the swing was the only visual “special effect” used by Soviet directors in their panoramic movies.

“They didn’t know how the public would react,” Dorofeyeva said. “They could easily all fall down.”

Today there are several benches set up in two rows, where visitors have enough room to sit down. But in the past, there was no room for benches in the crowded theatre, and the audience simply stood in the middle of the circular hall.

Rise and Fall

The first movie filmed for Moscow’s Kinopanorama, translated into English as Russian Roundabout, was filmed “at random, simultaneously with the construction of the theater,” Dorofeyeva said.

At that time, in 1959, engineers at the Yakovlev Design Bureau had developed a suspension device for shooting circular, panoramic movies from a Yak-24 helicopter. Interestingly, while developing those cameras they found a way to transport goods with a minimum amount of vibration.

The first movie – made using 11 cameras – was created by a team of some of the country’s best documentary filmmakers and cameramen, most of whom had lived through the Great Patriotic War, including Igor Bessarabov.

“It was a success and everyone liked it,” Dorofeyeva said.

At that time, the Soviet film industry was on the rise and some 22 movies were produced specially for the Kinopanorama. Only seven can still be seen today. The rest are either lost in the archives or have so deteriorated in quality as to be unusable.

“Those movies were quite costly and were produced only for big occasions,” like the May holidays or Alexander Pushkin’s birthday, Dorofeyeva said.

The short movies (most are only 20 minutes long) are plagued by dust and scratches and repeatedly fade. The old film is fragile and the quality of the seven remaining films is far from ideal. New copies should be made from the existing masters, but there is too much red tape and the cost is beyond the theater’s means.

“The quality is not good. But those are the only copies acceptable for screening,” Dorofeyeva said, fiddling with her glasses, scratching a bit of paint off the frame.

Dorofeyeva remembers when the theater had its own machine for making copies of masters. In fact, the cinema was once so popular with Soviet leaders that they brought foreign delegations here. Fidel Castro once visited. For such occasions, they rolled out special, better-quality copies.

Dorofeyeva and her classmate Natalya Vashchyokina have been working at the Kinopanorama since 1990, with only one shutdown for renovations.

“The theater reopened after reconstruction. New staff was being recruited and people thought it would be the same cinema. But it was a very different time...” Vashchyokina recalled.

In the 1990s, Russia was already a different country. VHS films, especially foreign-made ones, were booming. Many of the VVTs exhibition pavilions were used as small VHS video cinemas. During reconstruction, even the Kinopanorama was used for this, Vashchyokina said.

Today, Dorofeyeva and Vashchyokina run the theater mostly on their own, from selling tickets to bussing tables at the cafe.

When the movies play, one of them sits in the circular hall, making sure all films are projected evenly onto the screens, while the other one monitors the projectors.

In better times the cinema had a larger staff and worked twelve hours a day: from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. But as visitors declined, staff and showing times were cut. Today the theater is open just four days a week, with five screenings of the same movie each day. Films have to be loaded onto the projectors manually.

In Soviet times, there were lines around the building. “Thanks to those long lines, some couples met and got married. Now they come sometimes to watch their past,” Dorofeyeva smiled. “It was an extremely popular place.”

Old pictures from the theater show hundreds of people standing shoulder to shoulder, staring up in awe at the screens.

“Back then, a lot of groups came to visit the Exhibition, and the Kinopanorama was a must-see part of the tour,” Vashchyokina said. “And foreign tourists, too. But now there are only a few of them.”

The last picture produced for the theater, This is What We Call Motherland, by Yevgeny Legat, was made in 1993.

In the 1990s the documentary studio where all the panoramic movies were produced was raided and destroyed. “There was some criminal story that the cameras were stolen by gangsters and we were called to pay a ransom,” Dorofeyeva said. “As a result, the equipment was lost.”

Special Technology

Walt Disney’s Circarama also had a circular construction with eleven screens. Its first movie, A Tour of the West was shown at the park’s opening in 1955. But while Circarama was equipped for 16mm movies, the Russian Kinopanorama used 35mm film. Journalist and movie director Nikolai Mayorov observed in his book on Russian cinema that Soviet engineers concluded that, for the desired 360º effect, nine screens would suffice, but in order that they might one day exchange copies with the Americans, they would install eleven. Yet no movies were ever exchanged. Circarama was closed in 1961. Later, in 1967,
Disney opened Circle Vision 360, which functioned until 1997.

During the 1960s circular theaters were displayed at various exhibitions around the globe, distributing the entertaining technology. Kinopanorama appeared in Paris and enjoyed considerable success (operating until the summer of 2002). Prague opened a circular cinema in 1960, and a Circlorama Theatre was installed in London’s Piccadilly Circus in 1963. A year later, a fourth cinema in the round appeared in Tokyo and ran Soviet-made movies for about 15 years until its closure. Today, Moscow’s Kinopanorama is the only theater of its kind still functioning.

In recent decades there have been some attempts to recreate theaters with a similar circular presentation principle, but devoted to a single movie or exhibition. In Normandy, France, for instance, a circular theater opened in 1994 at Arromanches, where it features a single movie, The Price of Freedom, about the WWII invasion at Normandy in 1944.

Present Day

Moscow’s Kinopanorama is unique because it is the only circular cinema of the first generation that still shows old movies made on film.

Other Soviet-era cinemas in Moscow have gained modern sound and video equipment and now show the latest 3D films. Meanwhile, the workers at Kinopanorama (barely still a plural) have to piece together their remaining films to keep the theater
running.

“The most difficult part is to check the copies for cracks,” Dorofeyeva said, “so that the film won’t tear apart during a screening.”

This explains the small number of screenings. Five of the movies exist in two or three copies, while two have only one copy left, and it is not clear how long they will last.

There is a film archive in the town of Krasnogorsk, outside the capital, which stores some masters of the panoramic movies, but its only film copying machine has been destroyed. And since the movies have special historic status, they cannot leave the archive’s building to be copied elsewhere. Dead end.

Even if new panoramic movies have been made somewhere else they have yet to reach Kinopanorama. “We should be in the Guinness Book of Records,” Dorofeyeva said. “I don’t know any other cinema showing the same movies for so long.”

During bad weather, sometimes no one shows for a screening. But usually a few people turn up: some for the first time, others to relive past memories.

“The young people always like our theater...” Dorofeyeva recalled with a smile. “Once a young man who had made a film about us was getting married, and he and his bride watched a film here, drank champagne and then drove on to their wedding. It was very nice...”

Today Kinopanorama is a small island of positive Soviet heritage, where one can feel and see the past. It is the only pavilion of dozens remaining at VVTs that has preserved its original purpose of enlightenment; the rest have been transformed into a bevy of stores, cafes and amusements parlors.

“We have become a museum of the Soviet past,” Voshchyokina said.

Part of Kinopanorama’s lobby is rented by a Chinese teashop, which seems to have more visitors than the theater and contributes to its survival.

“It’s a wonder that Kinopanorama is still functioning... Just when it seems that everything is coming to an end, salvation arrives,” Dorofeyeva said. She said that two enthusiasts sometimes volunteer to fix the old and complicated equipment just because they like the place.

“It’s interesting to work as a projectionist here, very different to the modern cinemas,” Dorofeyeva said. But the process of screening “is not just complex, but nerve wracking,” she explained. After the interview Dorofeyeva goes though the teashop collecting the trays.

“When we launch a movie we don’t know whether it will run or not. Because the devices are very old and we don’t know what might break down in the process.”

They realize that the cinema could be more popular and better equipped, if only the facility had a serious investor. Yet the future of Kinopanorama remains unclear, especially given that city authorities are planning major changes at the All-Russia Exhibition Center, or VVTs, as a whole, seeking to make it profitable.

“Life stands still here at VVTs, at Kinopanorama included,” Voshchyokina said, looking up at the eleven blank screens. Only seven people came to watch a movie here in the afternoon of March 8, International Women’s Day. “The public is so sated now, that it’s unclear: do they really need a circular cinema?” she asked. She said she knows the administration is planning big changes for the place, but they haven’t been told any details.

Alexei Mikushko, the new director of VVTs appointed last fall, promised a “rebirth” of VVTs, raising concerns among preservation groups. The proposed redevelopment foresees creation of five zones and the construction of an innovation campus, a large leisure complex, an underground parking lot and four-star hotels. And Kinopanorama will become a 5D cinema and part of the leisure zone, according to Mikushko.

“Technologies are changing. You might drive a clunker, but would you want to?” he told The Moscow News in January. The rebirth is likely to get underway as soon as next year.

Meanwhile, Dorofeyeva and Voshchyokina both have just under two years until they retire. They sincerely hope they won’t have to look for new jobs anytime before then. RL

Kinopanorama is open every day except Mondays and Fridays. Tickets cost 100 rubles. For the list of movies on offer and to view videoclips, visit bit.ly/krugorama

* Currently it is called the VVTs, but in the Soviet times the abbreviation was VDNKh.