The Legendary Cinemas of Tel Aviv – Poster Collection

Tel Aviv, the “White City,” the first Hebrew city and the vibrant capital of Israeli culture, cinema, and art. For decades, neighborhood cinemas were the city’s most popular buildings, serving as a cultural bridge between the small, evolving Tel Aviv and the rest of the world. These cinemas played a crucial role in the city’s emergence as a global cultural center. Over the years, many of these cinemas vanished from the urban landscape. However, they are being revived in contemporary Tel Aviv, and for that, we have curated a collection of posters from Tel Aviv’s most legendary cinemas over the last century.

In 1914, Tel Aviv’s first cinema, “Eden,” was established by Akiva Aryeh Weiss, one of the city’s architectural pioneers and a Zionist activist. The cinema was built in Neve Tzedek at the intersection of Lilienblum and Pines streets. During World War I, the Turks closed the cinema, fearing its generator could be used to send messages to enemy submarines. Under the British Mandate, Eden reopened and became a cultural hub in the burgeoning city. It operated until 1974, and its building has been preserved as a heritage site.

In 1928, the Ophir Cinema was founded, followed by the Moghrabi Cinema in 1930. These cinemas quickly became major centers in the White City. The Moghrabi Cinema, located in Moghrabi Square at the corner of Allenby and Ben Yehuda streets, will forever be remembered as the place where the results of the vote on the partition plan were celebrated in 1947.

By the 1960s and 1970s, Tel Aviv boasted over 60 cinemas. Despite most of these iconic cinemas closing over the years, the Tel Aviv community has recently sought to revive this tradition. Neighborhood and community cinemas have begun to appear in charming corners of the city. In Florentin, the Canada Cinema has opened, and on the outskirts of Jaffa, the beautifully designed Jaffa Cinema has emerged. In the Shapira neighborhood, a different documentary film is screened each week in the community yard, and these are just a few.

These posters capture Tel Aviv’s journey to a magnificent cultural hub. In the face of artistic bans on Israel and Israeli artists, we aim to shed light on and strengthen Israeli culture, continuing to fight for our voices to be heard.