#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. One of the oldest cultural institutions – Rodina – was opened in 1953, but it is not known in spring or autumn. Rodina can be considered the first real cinema, located in a specially designed room. It was the second cultural institution built in the town’s new district after the scientific and technical library. The cinema turned out to be elegant, with two halls – Red and Blue, designed for 441 spectators.
Rodina immediately became popular – tickets were sold out instantly. It was traditionally believed that the first screening there took place on October 16, 1953, and the first picture was The Star based on the novel by Emmanuil Kazakevich.
But Rodina employees, in search of documentary evidence, conducted a real investigation and discovered new facts: the Stalinets newspaper wrote back in the spring of 1953 that a new stationary cinema had opened and on May 1 there was the first screening – The Freeloader by Turgenev.
In the summer of 1953, Antonina Smolkova, the first director of Rodina, was appointed, and the same Stalinets newspaper again wrote that the last flaws were being eliminated in the cinema and preparing for the opening in early September.
It can be assumed that in the spring there was only a trial show, in honor of May Day, and officially they began to work in the fall. But still, today there is no official document with the exact date when Rodina opened as a cinema. In the meantime, according to tradition, the birthday of the oldest cinema is celebrated on October 16th.
In the first year of Rodina’s operation, Norilsk residents watched films: Admiral Ushakov, Alyosha Ptitsyn develops character, Outpost in the mountains, Ships storm the bastions, Lyubov Yarovaya, Wedding with a Dowry. But the audience remembered more such movies as Fanfan the Tulip and Indian melodramas that appeared later.
In the History Spot photo project previous publication, we told that the first Norilsk buses carried passengers to the industrial site and out of town: in the 1950s, the main difficulty in the work of passenger transport in Norilsk was the remoteness of destinations – factories, mines, construction sites.
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Text: Svetlana Ferapontova, Photo: Nornickel Polar Branch archive