For well over a year, the official website of the third oldest cinema (the Gabriel and the Museum Lichtspiele are a few years older) of the Bavarian capital, the Maxim-Filmtheater (Landshuter Alee 33, Munich-Neuhausen), has asked its visitors to sign a petition on Change.org for its survival. It didn’t help and Siegfried Daiber had to close it down, sueddeutsche.de reported yesterday, July 16, 2016. The main reason for the closing of the cinema was a substantial rent increase, a development characteristic for many of Munich’s well-known establishments over the past decade. Munich’s square metre prices are becoming too high for cinematic enthusiasts and cinemas such as the Türkendolch, Lupe, Filmcasino and the Eldorado had to close as well.

Luckily, it looks as if the Maxim is going to be saved by four Munich based cinema and film enthusiasts. Anne Harder (a cinema and event manager), Regine Stoiber (architect) and the spouses Beate Muschler and Bernd Krause, who describe themselves as cineastes, are renovating the cinema and are going to reopen it as the Neues Maxim in October as an art cinema, but one showing films which they hope are going to attract many viewers. The screenings will occasionally be accompanied by a concert, a reading and the like. There is also going to be a new 30 seat capacity room for special screenings. The films shown at the Neues Maxim won’t be the usual blockbusters of the season, but intriguing hand-picked films.

The quartet is also hoping to engage the community in Munich-Neuhausen into the life of the cinema in various ways. The Neues Maxim, as the borough’s only cinema, is set to open on Thursday, October 6.