Why go
A film visit can connect a current screening to the city’s role in cinema’s early public history. Le Grand Rex preserves the scale of a grand picture house, while cinema complexes around Les Halles, Bibliothèque and Bercy show how the experience shifted toward multiple smaller screens.
The full story
Paris entered film history on 28 December 1895, when Auguste and Louis Lumière projected motion pictures for a paying audience at the Grand Café. The new medium changed the city’s entertainment spaces: concert and dance halls were converted into cinemas as filmgoing spread in the 1930s, and many large auditoriums were later subdivided into smaller rooms. Le Grand Rex remains a landmark for the older large-hall model, while the multi-screen cinemas at Les Halles, Bibliothèque and Bercy represent the later multiplex era. Paris programming has long combined Hollywood releases with French, European and Asian cinema, giving the city’s screen culture a broader frame than one national tradition. Its technical history also continued into the digital era, with Europe’s first digital cinema projection using DLP technology held in Paris in 2000. Choose a venue for its programme and format, then use the occasion to notice whether the building belongs to the city’s older entertainment architecture or its newer cinema networks.