Demolishing Ali Baba Movie Theater: The last Terso Cinema in Egypt
It has been a while since I last blogged on Cairo Walks, but it was personally triggering for me to write about it. Yesterday I was walking on the 26th of July street in Boulaq Abou Elela and I witnessed the last day in the demolishing process of “Ali Baba” Cinema hall, which is considered the last third-degree cinema in Egypt (1).
Some 70 years ago exactly in 1946, a group of foreigners established The Ali Baba movie theater, where they recruited the pioneer modernist Egyptian Architect with Lebanese origins Naoum Chébib. Chébib was famous by his fascination with invention and modernizing the methods of construction engineering in Egypt and the Middle East, where he is considered as an Avant Guard in this field. In order to build a huge screening hall with an area of 800 square meters Chébib specifically invented this reinforced concrete thin vault which was considered as a breakthrough in this time. The vault was only supported by columns at its periphery creating a column-free space to house a movie theater. The architect, later on, patented this construction invention and named it Voûte Chébib (Chebib Vault). It worth mentioning that Naom Chébib is the same Architect who later built the first and second skyscraper in Egypt inventing more techniques of construction in them one of them is the very famous 1958 Belmont Building located on Nile Corniche, Garden City. Moreover, he also built the Cairo Tower in Zamalek in 1961 (2).
Aly Baba Cinema or El Corsal was one of the most famous Third Degree cinemas or what was named Terso back then where it was screening three or four movies in a row with the same very cheap ticket. This cinema typology was famous until the late 90′s where they were widely existing in the poor and middle-class neighborhoods such as Boulaq, Zatoon, A'ataba, etc. El Corsal Cinema was considered as the largest Terso cinema with 700 seats.
Today we, unfortunately, witnessed the extension of a whole architecture typology that was very famous one day in Egypt which was the reason for the popular spread of the cinema art in the poor Egyptian classes for decades. And the demolishing of one of the important architectural examples of modern architecture in Egypt.
References:
(1) https://goo.gl/CyZgts
(2) https://goo.gl/tmdLpD
