New pop-up cinema in Ixelles Barracks planned for spring

A pop-up cinema screening accessible and daring films will open in Ixelles’ former military barracks in May 2019. To help finance the purchase of professional audiovisual equipment, a crowdfunding campaign is to be launched in January.

Cinema cooperative CinéCité has launched the project – named Kinograph – to revive neighbourhood screenings in Brussels. It plans on programming quality films of varying genres and periods at affordable prices.

The films would be screened at evenings and weekends, targetting local residents and students. “The ambition is to expand the current poor cultural offering in the university quarter of Ixelles,” said CinéCité in a press release on Wednesday.

Kinograph was selected as a project by the Urban Development Corporation of the Brussels-Capital Region (SAU/MSI), which had called for bids to temporarily occupy Ixelles Barracks. The pop-up cinema would remain in place until 2020 before the start of refurbishment work for the future university campus USquare.

CinéCité’s proposal was based on similar initiatives abroad, including a pop-up cinema/bar in the French city of Toulouse.

In the long-term, CinéCité aims to be the first cooperative cinema in the capital. Over the past months it has organised screenings in Saint Mary’s Royal Church in Schaerbeek and the dome of the Brussels Planetarium in Laeken. It’s next event is planned for 14 December at city-centre swimming pool Bains de Bruxelles.

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