Lights, camera, action: Batalha Centro de Cinema opens doors today

Later in the afternoon, the city will reunite with the Batalha. The Centro de Cinema is inaugurated today, in a day full of free activities and which party lasts until two in the morning. The special opening program, throughout the entire weekend, includes cinema, talks, exhibitions, guided tours, and DJ sets.

The audience will take their seats, lights will dim, and the session will begin. Batalha Centro de Cinema opens today at 05:30 pm, everyone will be able to walk around the building and explore its new spaces, namely the Library and Film Library, the Movie Room, the Bookshop and the Cafeteria and Bar. Earlier, the Mayor of Porto, Rui Moreira, and the Minister of Culture, Pedro Adão e Silva, open the doors of the Batalha Centro de Cinema, along with the artistic director of the Batalha, Guilherme Blanc.

There is no lack of interest, including the rediscovery of the frescoes by Júlio Pomar engraved in the 1940’s that were hidden for decades by numerous paint layers (between six to eight) that covered the frescoes.

“Our concern was to keep the Batalha as similar as possible”, underlined, in an interview with portal Porto., Alexandre Alves Costa and Sérgio Fernandez, from Atelier 15 Arquitetura, responsible for the project.

The construction contract, under the responsibility of the municipal company GO Porto – Gestão e Obras do Porto began in November 2019. The building is leased to the Municipality of Porto for a period of 25 years and is given back to the city, more than a decade after its closure, resuming its cultural function focused on cinema.

The history of the most iconic movie theatre in the city of Porto was portrayed in a documentary by the Porto resident director Pedro Lino, which establishes a dialogue between personalities linked to the history of Batalha and archive images and old movies from the Cinemateca Portuguesa and RTP archives.

See more information and detailed scheduled here.