The Orot Cinema

The story

The Orot cinema stands in Neighborhood Gimel, abandoned since 1990. Its beginning is in the initiative of local businessmen, the brothers Hillel and Shimon Palchinsky, who wished to set up a cinema in Neighborhood Alef; following an approach by David Tuviyahu the initiative was moved to Neighborhood Gimel, and its place was fixed in the center of the neighborhood, beside the commercial center and the neighborhood garden. The plans were commissioned from the office of the architect Ze'ev Rechter, and the execution was entrusted to Yaakov Rechter, later a laureate of the Israel Prize. Rechter designed the building in basic forms — triangles and rhombi — and in exposed concrete on the main and the rear facades, and that is what gave it its appearance; the hall itself was designed simply and answered the needs of the residents throughout the years of its operation. It was dedicated under the name “Orot HaNegev”, which was soon shortened to “Orot”. In January 1960 the hall opened, eight hundred seats, with a screening of “The Bridge on the River Kwai”; at the ceremony the mayor David Tuviyahu, the Knesset member Gideon Ben-Israel and the commissioner of the Southern District Yitzhak Vardimon spoke, and the mayor's wife cut the ribbon. The economic success led its operators to set up another cinema in the city, Amphi, open and without a roof, which opened in 1963. Orot operated for thirty years less a week. The last screening was held on 31 December 1989; as a gesture they wished to screen at it the film that had opened it, but did not manage to obtain a copy in time, and the cinema closed. Afterwards it was sold to a developer, and for years a negotiation was conducted with the municipality over the price; in 2002 a compromise was reached and the developer began to advance a residential project in its place, except that the transaction did not receive approval from the Ministry of the Interior and did not come about. In February 2020 an arrangement began to take shape in which the lease rights return to the municipality for the purpose of renovating the building. Today the building stands abandoned and open, and most of the spectators' seats are destroyed, and a residents' struggle for its preservation is under way.

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• Beersheba