Film and Cinema in Berlin

‘Yorck operates 14 cinemas in Berlin. What does it mean to be a “Yorck Kino”? How and why do they differ from one another?’

They are as diverse as Berlin is. Each cinema is attuned to its surroundings. Berlin has very distinct neighbourhoods: you have a completely different audience  in Kreuzberg than in Dahlem. We try to be there for those local communities. Delphi Filmpalast in the affluent Charlottenburg, for example, is a very traditional, stand-alone venue. Its audiences grew along with it. They were students in the 70s, they had family in the 80s and now they are 80-, 90-year-olds.

They still like arthouse – maybe Tarantino or Lanthimos because they are relevant – but they’re not necessarily after the most ground-breaking experimental stuff anymore. And they’re mostly German, which means more dubbed versions and less subtitles. On the other end of the spectrum, you have Rollberg, located in international Neukölln. We’ve been playing original language versions there for 15 years now – with and even without subtitles when it’s an English-language movie. That’s the place where we’ll show a new horror like MaXXXine in the original version – which we’d never do in Charlottenburg. We adapt to the audience: it’s about embracing the local communities.

Speaking of community, do you see Yorck cinemas as meeting places?

Definitely. Every year, we organise hundreds of events where people come together, meet and interact. There are premieres with guests, and regular events. Series such as our MonGay – which currently takes place at Babylon the time we’re renovating International Kino –  have become hugely popular.  We also host a lot of discussions like the monthly series on UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. I think that cinema will always be a place of interaction among audiences and an essential “marketplace” for a democratic society, especially in times like these. Like in the theatre, people don’t have to talk to each other, but there’s a common discourse in their heads.

How do you decide which movies are shown in the original version or with English subtitles? I was looking through the current program and Crossing, for example, has the English subtitle version, but My Favourite Cake doesn’t.

We’ve been committed to screening OVs for decades: they reflect the creators’ artistic visions. Still, concrete programming decisions are made with respect to the cinema’s specific audiences and needs – it’s driven by demand.

Popular comedies or movies aimed at an elderly audience are shown in German or dubbed.

When aimed at younger people, on the other hand, it’s sometimes possible to screen movies without subtitles. For most films, we offer both subtitled and dubbed versions. Plus, nowadays in Berlin, we see a lot of audiences who don’t know German, and still want to watch the new Almadovar or a new French film like Titane. To accommodate that, we’ve started playing foreign films with English subtitles. Sometimes we have four versions of the same movie – dubbed and with OV with English or German subtitles!

Besides offering subtitles and original versions, are there other ways you cater to Berlin’s International community?  The small Yorcker magazine is more for Germans, right? Why is that?

The Yorcker is hugely popular with the long-standing audiences, that’s why it’s in German. But  we have social media channels exclusively in English, like our Instagram profile. We opened a second German-language account, but the main and most successful one is the English one. We know that most of our German followers speak English well enough. But every now and then we get complaints from the older audiences!

Talking about demographics, how has the Yorck audience evolved over the years?

The big change is how we’ve succeeded to win over young audiences, especially since COVID. Traditionally, arthouse audiences in the country are older, but not in Berlin. Today, we see that a third of our audience is made up of students and young people under 27. Digitising all our channels and pushing our subscription have been a big factor.

Could you tell us more about the “Yorck Unlimited” subscription scheme?

We fine-tuned our deals over the 15 years it’s been on offer. We introduced a monthly payment option, we added discounts for friends and concessions, and we digitised all the payment and sign-up processes. We’ve seen a huge boom since  – the number of subscribers has been doubling almost every two years. Today about 20% of our ticket sales come through Unlimited.  Small movies have been hugely profiting from it, sometimes as much as 60% of their  audience comes from Unlimited.

You mentioned box office sales – what’s the current picture and what is the future looking like for Yorck?

The past 15 years brought us on a good path. The two decades following reunification were very tough with multiplexes opening in each district of the city. When they started playing art house and OVs, it killed a lot of independent cinemas. We had to close some, too. But from 2008-2009 up to COVID, we started exceeding the market average on a yearly basis. Then, COVID happened and older audiences didn’t really come back as before. But the younger ones did, very quickly, attracted by the Unlimited membership and digitalisation.

How does the picture compare to other German cities?

Arthouse is generally doing better in big major German cities than in the countryside, where theatres have been struggling, especially after COVID. But, here, in Berlin, cinema plays a very special role. There are over 90 movie theatres in the city – and Berlin’s International Film Festival is one of the biggest audience festivals in the world, with four hundred thousand tickets sold in 10 days!

What is Yorck’s strategy for the coming years?

One very big challenge for us is becoming more sustainable. In 2011, we were among the first to switch to renewable energy. It’s much more complex though; obviously, you have to deal with heating and air conditioning. There’s also recycling. We  switched to reusable glasses and dishes.  Currently we are working on sustainable popcorn packaging Another of our priorities is accessibility. Delphi Lux, our newest cinema, is fully wheelchair accessible. We’re now committed to getting rid of barriers at our cinemas. One of the main challenges is that a lot of our movie theatres are protected monuments. Take, Filmtheater am Friedrichshain. It has been made accessible – but people who use wheelchairs have to go around the building. So it can get quite challenging, but we’re getting there!