Cinema Vox in Casablanca / Morocco

 

Cinema Vox was a movie theater in Casablanca. It was designed by Marius Boyer and opened in 1935.  With 2.000 seats, it was considered one of the largest movie theaters in Africa.

The building could also serve as a huge theatre, opera house and above all as a hall for grandiose shows. It had three superimposed balconies (a rare case in the architecture of the genre) in a room that stood out above all for its sobriety. One of the major points of innovation in the monument was its indirect lighting. A discovery for the time which attested to the avant-garde character of the architect and of the city of Casablanca which already in the 1930s could boast of having one of the largest cinemas in the world. Another strong point of this monumental architecture: the ceiling which was retractable and which allowed, at the same time, in the absence of air conditioning at the time (another genius find) to enjoy the freshness of Casablanca summer evenings. 

The cinema was closed in 1979 and demolished.

On the postcard, you can see advertisement for the movie Agent Special with Laurel & Hardy. It is a little riddle, because there isn't such a movie in the Laurel & Hardy-filmography. Maybe it is their 1942 movie A-Haunting We Will Go, also known in Germany under the titel Laurel & Hardy: Die Geheimagenten.

Casablanca is better known for the film Casablanca, which was shot exclusively in Hollywood. In the 1990s, I have worked sometimes as a projectionist in a very small cinema called Casablanca in Dresden. We used to show Casablanca on Saturday 10 p.m. in a very bad 35mm-copy. It were hard times for projectionists ... 

I still love this movie. Even if I always wonder what beautiful clothes Ilsa Lund wears on her escape.

But there are also movies made in Casablanca. I saw the remarkable movie Adam (2019), directed by Maryam Touzani, about two powerful women with their untold secrets and tasty baked goods.

Café Cinema du centre in Taourirt / Morocco

 

Taourirt is located on the eastern outskirts of Ouarzazate. Its biggest attractions: The Kasbah and the Cinema Museum. The Kasbah is one of the largest Kasbahs in Morocco, built by Pasha Glaoui in 19th century. The Cinema Museum is located opposite Taourirt Kasbah and has collected memories of the films that were shot here.
Did you know, the Ouarzazate area is a noted film-making location, with Morocco's biggest studios inviting many international companies to work here. Among them films like Lawrence of Arabia (1962), The Man Who Would Be King (1975), The Living Daylights (1987), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), The Mummy (1999), Gladiator (2000), Kingdom of Heaven (2005), Kundun (1997), Legionnaire (1998), Babel (2006) Hanna (2011), The Hills Have Eyes (2006), and Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (2011)
It was also the location of an episode of the television series The Amazing Race 10, Game of Thrones (Season 3), Prison Break (Season 5).

But I couldn't know anything about this Café Cinema du Centre on the right. The postcard is maybe from the 1920s.

L'Empire Cinéma in Fès / Morocco

 

The construction of the L'Empire Cinéma in Fès began in the summer of 1931 with the Empire-Jardin, an outdoor cinema venue. The architect of the cinema with 1800seats was François Robert (born in 1902 in Charleville), who worked for the company Balima and designed for it the Balima hotels in Rabat and Ifrane, as well as other buildings on avenue Mohammed V in Rabat and around it. 
Mr. Joseph Seiberras from Malta (1886-1942) was the owner not only of this emblematic cinema of the colonial period in Morocco, but also of forty other cinemas built at the time in Algeria and Morocco.
The cinema was closed in 2012, demolished and replaced by the Mégarama Fès, a multiplex cinema.

About the history of cinemas in Fès look here.