MOSCOW, October 30 (RIA Novosti) – Cinema Zhovten, a landmark building in Kiev, burned down late Wednesday after an unknown person hurled a smoke grenade into the audience hall during the screening of an LGBT-movie, the State Emergency Service of Ukraine reports.
The fire broke out at approximately 21:41 local time (19:41 GMT). It raged for five hours until 22 fire department units extinguished it. No one was injured in the incident, the State Emergency Service stated.
At the time of the incident French drama “Summer Nights” (Les Nuits d’ete), directed by Mario Fanfani, was screened in the theater as part of the "Molodist" film festival, which aims at promote novice filmmakers.
A witness recalled that people rushed out of the cinema, when the smoke grenade detonated. “I run out, cry “turn on the fire alarm to get people out”, the cashier, the security guards don’t know where it is. I yell at the guard to grab the fire extinguisher and put out the fire while only a couple of chairs are burning. He answers: “I don’t know how.” It gets better, together with a barman we run around the cinema to alert the people on the fire. They laugh and think we are kidding,” Eugen Zelman wrote on his Facebook page. “All-in-all, the oldest and the most beloved Kiev cinema has burned down,” he added.
It is not hard to guess who is behind the act of arson, considering an LGBT-movie was screened in the cinema that day, asserted another Facebook user Alexei Blyuminov. “In a country, where street Nazis have become police officers, no one will investigate a crime, committed by the far-right. One hand washes the other,” he opined.
According to another plausible explanation, circulating the internet, the cinema may have been burned down to clear the land it occupied. “If after the arson yet another business center or elite housing is built on this place, shame on us!” lamented Katerina Shkalenko.
The Zhovten cinema is a monument of Constructivism, a unique architectural style that originated in Soviet Russia in the 1920s. The cinema had undergone several restorations since its inauguration in 1931. For instance, it was one of the first in the Soviet Union to introduce a sound system and widescreen format.
