It was more than eight years ago that a friend from Rome said that a group of young people our age had occupied a dilapidated cinema.

Cinema America was in Trastevere and had been empty for a long time.

Even outside it smelled musty, inside it was damp and cold.

In this rainy March we were almost the only guests, it was dripping from above.

Some experimental film was shown on the screen, we froze, smelled mold and thought: A visit here cannot be healthy.

We left before the end of the movie and never came back.

Anna Vollmer

Editor in the features section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung in Berlin.

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Two years later, colleagues raved about their evenings in the Piazza San Cosimato in Trastevere, just a few streets away from Cinema America. A group in their early twenties is showing films there and the whole neighborhood is watching. The colleagues, around fifty and not necessarily known for hanging around Rome's occupation scene, were delighted. The group, it turned out, was the same that had cast Cinema America a few years earlier. The gray horse had won there, but the club called "Piccolo America" ​​still existed. He had set up a screen in the piazza, on which there was something to see every evening: In that summer of 2015, mainly films by Disney, the Cohen brothers and everything by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Entry was free and the piazza was full every evening.Once we came too late to a performance of Pasolini's “Mamma Roma” and hardly found a place.

Everything from anime to documentation

Cinema America is now an institution and has perfected the mix of pop and so-called high culture.

Thousands of viewers come every summer to see works by Celine Sciamma or Wim Wenders, as well as anime and Harry Potter films, as was the case this year.

The cinema, it turns out, still works - if you only dare to do something.

On a Sunday evening in early July, the program is “La mafia non è più quella di una volta”, “The mafia is no longer who it used to be” - a bizarre documentary by Italian director Franco Maresco.

In it, Letizia Battaglia, world-famous photographer and anti-mafia fighter, meets Ciccio Mira, a Palermo entrepreneur who organizes folk music concerts in the suburbs.

At eight the Piazza San Cosimato starts to fill up, and in the afternoon all the seats that have been reserved since the pandemic were taken. A barrier tape limits the open-air hall, the places are marked as round stickers on the paving stones. A fever is measured at the entrance. The number of spectators is limited, but whoever walks past can still watch. There's a cart that sells beer and popcorn, and many bring folding chairs and blankets or their dog. There is smoking and whispering.

Letizia Battaglia, 86 years old and, as always, with a pink bob and cigarette in hand, is connected via video, Goffredo Fofi, writer and film critic, personally present.

This summer alone, not only two of Italy's most popular directors, Carlo Verdone and Ferzan Oztepek, were guests at Cinema America, but also Edgar Reitz and Oliver Stone.

Wim Wenders and Ken Loach are still to come.

Which gives an idea of ​​how well-known the cinema is now, but also shows the range of films that can be seen here until August 1st.

Not only in Trastevere, but also in other places, even in the Roman suburbs, there are now performances with hundreds of spectators.

In addition, the association is renovating the Cinema Troisi, another abandoned cinema.

The cinema and politics

Valerio Carocci, chairman of “Piccolo America”, is getting a lot despite his success. Two years ago, he and his colleagues were beaten up by right-wing extremists, and the left-wing scene repeatedly criticized the founder: he had become an entrepreneur who sold himself as a savior of culture and flirted with politics and business, they say. Hundreds of film projections eventually want to get paid, and BNL Bank is one of the main sponsors. Politicians like to show themselves in the cinema - Giuseppe Conte visited last summer and sat down on the stone floor with the rest of the audience.

It may be true that Carocci is a brilliant networker with personal ambitions. But what doesn’t detract from his performance: Who would have thought that people would flock to see what is being sold as a niche interest in many places or simply declared dead? That politicians hope for votes because they go to the cinema? And that it was all thanks to a group of volunteers under thirty? Perhaps the success of Cinema America comes from the fact that its makers firmly believe in the possibilities of cinema. And know its limits: On this Sunday, Cinema America will cancel its usual program in all three locations and instead show the European Championship final between Italy and England.