Movie nights to start from April 30 Adendorfer Drehwerk opens drive-in cinema in Rheinbach
Wachtberg/Rheinbach · The Adendorf Drehwerk opens a drive-in cinema on a company site in Rheinbach together with a Rheinbach event manager. It is scheduled to start as early as next week.
For weeks, cultural and leisure facilities have been paralysed, and public life is not allowed to take place because of the Corona pandemic. Since mid-March, event organisers have been looking for creative ways out of the crisis - one of them is the filming location in Adendorf, which, as a company with a cinema, cabaret stage and restaurant, had to shut down all areas at once.
Together with event manager Oliver Wolf of Wotec in Rheinbach and Moving Movies, a service provider for open-air cinema, Rudi Knorr and his team invite people to a drive-in cinema in Rheinbach from 30 April. "We've been planning this for a long time," Knorr said in an interview, "but the necessary applications that have to be made for this take time. At the moment we are still waiting for the frequency for the audio channel from the Federal Network Agency, so we cannot start until April 30," Knorr continues.
The cooperation with the other two partners was quick to come about and is – in part – nothing new: Wolf was born in Adendorf and has often worked with the filming company as an event technician. The attempt to find a suitable location for a drive-in cinema in Wachtberg failed, however. With the permission of the city of Rheinbach, the organisers are now allowed to use the meadow in front of the premises of the company Wotec on Zeissstraße.
City gives permission "very gladly“
"We were very happy to give the go-ahead for this great project. We support such creative ideas in order to make the current situation more bearable", says Norbert Sauren, press spokesman of the city of Rheinbach. In order to be able to implement the project, each of the three partners is contributing the funds available to them free of charge: Moving Movies provides the cinema and screen technology free of charge, while Wotec takes care of the screen and audio technology as well as the staff for the outdoor area.
The Drehwerk takes care of everything that has to do with the film bookings as well as the controls in the evening with its staff. "We all contribute whatever we can, and if there is anything left at the end, the profit is divided by three," Knorr explains the finances.
Up to 100 cars per evening
From 30 April, cinema fans can enjoy a film in up to 100 cars every evening on the Rheinbach grounds. The program will not be released until next week, but according to Knorr, it will be a mixture of art house cinema and mainstream: "We will of course be showing very current films, but also films that had to be discontinued due to the pandemic and which were running quite well at our cinema before that". Booking and the course of the cinema evening are contactless: the ticket purchased online (it costs 22 euros per car) is scanned through the closed window at the entrance and snacks and drinks are also ordered and paid for in advance. These are then placed on a table for the customer to take with them as they drive by.
For Knorr, who knows many customers personally in his family-run cultural business, this is a somewhat strange situation, but it doesn't work without compliance with these requirements. For example, only two people are allowed in each car - the organisers do not expect whole families to go to the cinema.
As reported, a group of organisers in Bonn is also planning to open a drive-in cinema in Dottendorf together with the technology service company Sound and Light. However, they are still waiting for a permit. As the municipal press office announced on Tuesday, no decision has yet been made.
Further information on the Rheinbach programme will soon be available on the website www.autokino-rheinbach.de.
Original text: Verena Düren
Translation: Mareike Graepel
