Pongrácz Erzsébet: The Cinemas of Budapest - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1998)

the silent film, to introduce the new technology of the talkies, which gave another boost to the quality operation of this “most elegant" of all Pest’s cinemas.

The Fórum made every effort to carry on during the war years and fortunately the building sustained no serious damage, which is why it became, once again, a popular, inner-city cinema almost immediately after the war. It only changed its name - since 1952 this most precious gem of Pest cinema life has been known by the name of Puskin. On the ground floor a small boutique, a florist’s, a cloakroom and a modern buffet have replaced the original American-style, self-service buffet, which represented catering at its most advanced when the cinema first opened. Upstairs the magic souvenir shop, Kelet Kincse (Treasures of the Orient), offers its wares to prospective shoppers, the film-going public.

Metro (1900s, 1925)

62 Teréz körút, district VI

As early as the 1910s, there was a tiny little cinema screening scraps of a just few metre long films in a small building belonging to MAV (Hungarian State Railways) opposite the Nyugati (Western) Railway Station on Teréz körút. It was on the site of this two-storey building that the German film company UFA opened its new cine palace in 1925. This new Pest picture house, called UFA Theatre at the time, was meant to operate “in Hungarian spirit but with American technology and German thoroughness”. This is how Az Est Hármaskönyue enthused about the establishment: “The UFA cinema has been in operation for three years now... and these three years have already opened a new era in the history of Hungarian cinematography. Its appearance in itself makes this theatre a major attraction of the capital city, catching the eye of every tourist arriving at the Nyugati Railway Station. Its multicoloured posters lend daylight brightness to the Teréz körút. The UFA is only three years old, but its past rich in tradition and its popularity oblige the management to present its audience with brand new works of the best the cinematographic art has to offer week after week. [...] That is why the local public, an audience with refined tastes, has become so fond of this genuinely American-style cine palace of Budapest, the UFA.”

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