Autor:
Text: Fatih Özçelik
Translation: John Christensen

Cinema

Punkt 5: Cinema

The cinema in Dornbirn showed Turkish movies for the guest workers every Sunday noon. The seats were reserved for them and the cinema was regularly fully booked. The screenings were very popular and many people rode their bicycles from out of town to catch a film. It was a certain Mr. Baki who enabled the screenings by working with film distributors from Germany. He was a hard-working guest worker who recognized early on that there was a demand for more cultural offers among the migrant workers. After the screenings, the film reels were handed on to other cinemas. The cinema not only showed movies, it also hosted belly dancing. Most of the movies were about separation and pain. The viewers often left the cinema with tears in their eyes. There were always two screenings and the break in between was used by many to go over to the “Altdeutsche Stube” to get some fries. The era of Turkish films in Dornbirn’s cinema ended when video tapes became widely available.