My name is Dani,
I have been working at Colosseum cinema,
in Berlin Prenzlauer Berg, for 20 years.
My name is Thomas.
I have been working for Colosseum cinema since 1997.
I am Michael, I've been working at the cinema for four years now, since 2016.
On march 14, the cinema was temporarily closed,
due to the coronavirus. Just like all other cinemas in Berlin.
But while most of the other cinemas reopened, ours filed for bankruptcy.
That is of course handled a bit differently
than a dismissal for operational reasons, after 20 years.
In this case, there is no money to spend,
supposedly, and we get nothing.
Save the Colosseum Who will pay my rent?
No wages since May!
Sammy Brauner, who was managing the business—
people may have heard of the Brauners,
the father, Arthur Brauner, was a legend in cinema,
famous producer, died last year.
The inheritors own the real estate,
and the son Sammy is our manager since 2006.
When they declared insolvency, we had a meeting
to discuss what we should do,
will we all just go home and apply for unemployment money,
and never see each other again. We decided, no.
We are not going to make it so easy.
We want to fight.
We started by writing letters,
we appealed to the Brauner family,
we said, please don't do it, please keep the cinema open,
we need it, not only us but the neighborhood too.
Berlin needs this culture and so on.
We wrote letters to politicians,
to the culture minister and we became active.
We wrote to many governmental administrations,
we approached politicians.
We contacted the people in charge,
but we feel completely let down.
To this day we haven't seen Sammy Brauner once.
He doesn't feel responsible for giving us the proper papers
so that all of our coworkers would be able to assert their claims—
with the authorities for example,
so people can get their unemployment money.
I still haven't gotten unemployment, I only receive welfare.
At this point even the unemployment office is telling me to get a lawyer.
I've worked there for 20 years, not only me
and of course we don't get any compensation.
In my case, as I don't work full time anymore,
it would be 10-15 thousand Euro.
For me that is a lot of money.
That would have been at least very helpful to get through the first months.
Or, I don't know, maybe to start my own business, or something.
That is a large amount of money for me.
I'm not that young anymore,
I have to say, it got so hard for me to find a job
in hospitality, which is my field—
All things considered, it's basically too late for me.
The boss could have just said "We don't want to do a cinema here anymore,
it's not profitable for me anymore."
That would have been his decision.
We would have received a proper notice of termination,
we would have gotten compensation,
I've worked there for 20 years and I'm not the only one.
We would have had time to say goodbye to our job
and our coworkers.
It still would have been very sad for us,
but it would have been fair.
And the way they've done it now is not only unfair,
but ultimately we got lied to.
We were told that we are bankrupt,
which don't think we are.
The cinema supposedly has no money anymore.
According to the family Brauner, or specifically Sammy Brauner,
Supposedly because of the coronavirus, the funds ran out,
it is not sustainable and carrying on would not make sense.
Sebastian Laboga, the liquidator, confirmed this,
although we are pretty sure that there was never a proper review.
This cinema is not broke, because in 2019
we were still in the black.
It's really hard to believe that because a cinema has to close for 2 months,
from March to May because of COVID,
a cinema this big would go broke
and be unable to continue.
We had 350,000 guests per year,
and we know the figures.
It's really hard to believe.
We don't believe it.
We as works council had a closer look at the figures,
we also called in an expert, Hr.Dr. Kramer.
He also thinks it is possible to keep this business running properly.
In March 2019 an architect corporation from Hamburg
apparently made inquiries at the district authority
whether it would be possible to build on the Colosseum site.
They would like to build there and turn it into an office block, or an office campus.
Mrs. Linstedt, who is in charge of historic preservation,
gave them a tour of the building, and checked if their ideas are
in accordance with the preservation laws.
I think they had to revise their plans somewhat,
but in the end they got an outline building permit in November last year.
Mr Kuhn also played a role in this decision,
insofar as he never even looked at the papers.
Mr. Kuhn is a member of the District Council of Pankow
and on the Urban Planning Committee, as far as I know.
Usually all these kind of projects should be reviewed by him,
and he should make sure, that these kind of major projects get reported,
also the District Assembly has to be notified.
None of this ever happened.
It should also have been registered on some list,
there are several protection measures that are supposed to ensure,
that these kind of essential changes to the city really get examined,
and don't get waved through with no review.
His statement was that it got lost in the shuffle somewhere,
he didn't pick up on it, or something.
He said this several times in the media.
And this was of course another slap in face for us.
Because of the positive decision on the building permit
the value of the property increased drastically.
We're talking in the region of 40 to 50 billion Euros.
That also makes it impossible for the city to take it back on as public property,
as the city obviously can't afford that kind of price.
-Talk with us, not about us! -Take responsibility
Of course there are ideas about the employees taking over the business.
We are looking into founding a cooperative
for example.
We already worked out a concept
and we understand that it's possible to do things better.
And that it is possible to keep the cinema running.
We imagine that we will also host other cultural events
like readings and music events,
that we also
go to the retirement homes
run a program of older movies,
and try to get these people to the cinema.
Or that we would rent out rooms for events.
My wish would obviously be that we can all can keep our jobs there.
It would be great if it could keep operating in the same way.
We all felt comfortable there,
there's a good atmosphere,
our guests are a good fit.
We would like to keep it that way. That's what we really want.
That we can somehow get in touch with the Brauner family,
ideally through politicians,
it would be great if especially the top politicians make a move
to make the contacts or pick them up again,
and we could get in contact through them.
And find a way to keep going from where we left off.
We do a lot of actions,
we organized two big demonstrations.
We're out the front of the cinema every Thursday,
to show that we are there.
Everyone is welcome, we are there every Thursday from 5.30 pm.
We talk to people, explain what we're doing there and what we want.
Everyone is invited.
Next week we're doing a Kiezspaziergang,
where we walk through the neighborhood, together with other groups who are affected—
the birth center Maja, we linked up with them,
they are also just around the corner.
In the end it's always the same issues,
expulsion, expropriation, displacement.
We need as many people as possible to support us, to give us a voice,
so that we get heard, and create the pressure
to force Mr. Brauner to talk to us,
enter into a dialog with us,
until he has no other option than to give us the cinema.