Early Cinema | Smyrna

1894 Sporting Club opens
1908 Cine de Paris, Cine Pallas[1]
1910 Astiron on Evangelista Street
1912 Finixs on Ekaterini Street
1913 Melis

Mavi Boncuk |

Postcard view of the ‘Cinema Palace’ a 700 capacity cinema and in 1920 its owners were Said Bey and Pierre Depollo and it was in the location where later the ‘Tayyare Cinema’ would operate. 


According to the book by Bülent Şenocak this venue was later the Kraemer Theatre, later Pathé Cinema and today the site is occupied by the Izmir Cinema.

Left: Sporting Club and Scuola D’Ivrea Centrale, run by the Italian Sisters under the order of ‘Suore dell’Immacolata di Ivrea’, Alsancak, Izmir

The cafe Alambra with an ongoing celebration. The variety of European flags suggests not the Greek landing of 1919 but possibly the 1908 Constitution. The building stood immediately to the north of the Sporting Club.

[1] According to a report from 1920, “Industry in Smyrna” written by George P. Trakakis, a Banque Nationale de Grece employ, there was no electricity factory in Smyrna pre-1922.
There existed then only a number of small-scale electricity production facilities at various buildings, mainly producing electricity for their own use.
Their locations were:
1. Theatre de Smyrne
2. Club des Chasseurs (Pantazopoulos residence)
3. Cine de Paris
4. Cine Pallas
5. Cafe Fotis Stefanopoulos
6. Hotel Kraemer
7. Banque Nationale de Grece
8. Banque d’Athenes
9. Banque Credit Foncier d’Algerie et de Tunisie
10. Banca di Roma

In addition, there were also 3 other facilities, providing electricity also to nearby houses and shops. These were:
1. Xanthias and Stefanopoulos
2. Vidori printing shop
3. Turkish National Library

Belgian operated Electricity Company ‘Societe Generale de Tramways de Transports et d’Electricite a Smyrne’ in Darağaç district of Izmir. The company was established in Brussels in 1909 with the purpose of setting up an electricity network, of selling electricity to the subscribers and of operating electric trams in Izmir. It was only in 1913 that the authorization to supply electricity to the city but it appears a combination of lack of real interest and the intervention of WWI halted developments and the main activity of the Company remained with the tramways, the electricification project only started in the republican period. The foundations for this factory were laid in 1926, the first electricity generation in 1928, 1944 the works passed from the Belgian Company to the Municipality