Outside at Cosima you can see in large letters which film was shown before the lockdown: “Poisoned Truth” – a court drama about an environmental scandal caused by contaminated mud. The title could also be a symbol of what is currently going on around the traditional cinema, which has been part of the Kiez on Varziner Platz in Friedenau for almost 90 years. It is a lesson in how supposed truths can sometimes poison a climate through means of communication such as social media or online petitions, sometimes well-intentioned but carelessly, sometimes tactically.
Termination after almost 60 years. Last week it became known that the operator of the cinema, Lothar Bellmann, had received notice of termination for the rooms. On May 31, there should be an end for him – after almost 60 years. His lease had a clause stating that it could be terminated annually at the end of November with six months’ notice. Nevertheless, Bellmann – 81 years old – is deeply injured. This happened “without justification”.
A rumor is making the rounds in the neighborhood
He objects. Even if he knows that there is obviously nothing to be done legally. In all these years there have never been any problems, he says. In the Kiez the rumor spreads by mail that the long-time Cosima operator should be pushed out, another cinema owner – Karlheinz Opitz from Wilmersdorfer Eva – wants to take over the movie theater past Bellmann.
The Friedenau SPD is quickly among the protesters. The district councilor hurricane Özdemir starts an online petition and asks the owner to withdraw the termination. The landlady and Opitz had not previously been spoken to. The petition hits a nerve. After just two days, 1,316 people signed. It will be changed that day, and it will now primarily contain an appeal to involve Bellmann in an amicable solution. Because the matter doesn’t seem to be that clear.
On the following day, on the “Open Petition” page, the petition is declared to have been successfully completed with the words: “We are pleased that we were able to help two parties to enter into joint talks again, and we hope for an amicable solution.” Similar posts can be found on Facebook. They can no longer be found on Monday. Meanwhile, signatories of the petition feel deceived.
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And an “amicable solution” is not in sight. A discussion planned by Özdemir over the weekend on how to organize a handover, Bellmann says shortly beforehand. “That wouldn’t have helped,” he told Tagesspiegel on Monday. In the meantime, Opitz had also spoken out publicly. “I was recommended by Mr Bellmann as his successor and after a few discussions both the property management and the owner gladly accepted and preferred me,” he wrote in a statement.
The fact that he was also accused in e-mails of using money from a donation campaign for a new projector in the Eva to take over the Cosima was “of course rubbish”; he sees it as slander. You can read his detailed comments here and here read.
Bellmann confirms that he has proposed Opitz as his successor, but only in the event that he can no longer and suddenly fails, under no circumstances under pressure. He would have stopped at the end of the year anyway, he says. It doesn’t seem to look like that.
How should it go on? Opitz would like to cautiously modernize the Cosima, which has had a decline in sales in recent years. He has offered Bellmann to visit the rooms together and to negotiate an appropriate replacement, as he says. That could be a problem because the two have very different ideas. The property management, who represents the landlord, does not comment on the contracts; these only concerned the contracting parties. But she confirms that the owner definitely wants to keep the cinema in the house.
The cinema was part of a little chain called Polygon
Color television caused the cinema crisis. Bellmann and the Cosima have a long history together. The cinema was owned by the family, as were five other movie theaters, including Eva. The little chain was called a polygon. Eva was parted with at the beginning of the sixties when there was a cinema crisis due to the introduction of color television. As a teenager in the fifties, Bellmann was already enthusiastic about the cinema and was constantly thinking about which film to go to. So it was inevitable that he also got into the cinema business. In the following decade he took over the Cosima from his mother.
“Play me the song of the sound” was the most successful film
Spaghetti Westerns as a blockbuster. The most successful film that was ever shown there was in the 1970s “Play Me a Song of Death” with Charles Bronson. “The hall was always full at the time,” says Bellmann. Sold out performances in the cinema, which today has 170 seats, have been out of the question in recent years. If 50 to 60 visitors came, it would be well attended.
However, there was another extremely successful film last year. “Parasite” by the South Korean director Bong Joon-ho. That was a real surprise just before Bellmann had to close because of the first lockdown. In this second lockdown, nobody knows when the Cosima will open again.
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