University Cinema Scala

It is located at Moravské náměstí (Moravian Square) in the basement of building 127/3, city quarter Brno-střed and neighbourhood Brno-město.

[1] Besides regular film screenings, it also serves as a representative space and a lecture and conference hall used for academic purposes.

[4] Though the cinema was originally called Bio Dopz, it was not run by the cooperative, but by a foundation designed to support university students in Moravia and Silesia named after T. G. Masaryk ("Masarykův fond na podporu studentstva vysokých škol na Moravě a ve Slezsku").

However, the foundation found it difficult to acquire the premises needed to run a cinema and so it kept looking at other places – such as the cinema Universum in Lidická (then called Nová) street or a hall in the new Nový domov building in Gorkého (Folkensteinerova) street – until the licence expired.

[6] The cinema opened on 28 December 1929 with a screening of the American sound film romance White Shadows in the South Seas[7][8] which received an Oscar for best cinematography.

The foundation asked for the licence to be extended in February 1936; the application was refused on 31 March 1936 and the local authorities requested that the cinema should be closed by the end of 1936.

In October 1937, the Scala licence was granted to a police headquarters association "Jubilejní ozdravovna policejního ředitelství v Brně".

[3] A government decree from 16 January 1957 assigned the management of cinemas to "national committees" (local authority councils).

Brno established "Správa městských kin", an organisation tasked with managing the city cinemas and led by Antonín Kalášek as its first director, which took over all 29 cinemas in Brno including Moskva from the previous organisation, Krajský filmový podnik.

[24] In October 1999, the first multiplex opened in the Olympia shopping mall in Brno: the second in the Czech Republic (Galaxie in Prague was the first) and the first one that met European standards.

[26] The second multiplex in Brno, Velký Špalíček, opened in 2001 and single-screen cinemas started closing one by one during the next five years.

[27][28] The operator of the city cinemas filed a complaint to the Office for the Protection of Competition against the preferential treatment that multiplexes received from distributors, but was not successful.

[33][34] Besides a less attractive dramaturgy[33] and the policies of film distributors, the head manager of the city cinemas Daniel Zásměta claimed the cinema needed a large-scale reconstruction, which was made impossible by an action to ascertain the ownership of the building that had been filed by the city of Brno and was of many years' standing.

It changed its name to "Turistické informační centrum" (Tourist Information Centre) and accordingly, the main focus of its activities shifted from culture towards tourism and marketing.

The repairs were paid for by the city of Brno, which then received the money back from the university in the form of rent.

Moreover, the university began to use the cinema for academic purposes as a lecture and conference hall and space for graduation and matriculation ceremonies.

The cinema opened for the public on 14 October 2013 with a ceremony that included the screening of a unique interactive film project Kinoautomat: Člověk a jeho dům.

[3] The basement location was originally a problem, as the lowest point in the auditorium was more than 7 metres (23 ft) below the pavement level by the main entrance at Moravské náměstí (then called Lažanského náměstí), while the then-applicable ministerial decree only allowed a depth of 6 metres (20 ft).

The smoking lounge was turned into a bar; the cash desks were moved opposite the entrance staircase and an office took their place.