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Although it may seem strange, at the beginning of the 1980s the company Els cines del Passeig de Gràcia had the idea of ??opening a cinema with two cinemas at number 115 of this promenade, in front of Jardines de Salvador Espriu.
For its decoration, the new entrepreneurs hired the decorator Gisbert, to whom they expressed the desire that both rooms have a modern decoration, but that extravagance be avoided and that the comfort of the viewer be prioritized.
Gisbert carried out a project of bright colors that were different for each of the premises and that had soft tones:
The two rooms were completed by joint services and a small bar, Rick’s Café, and a small exchange space between spectators.
The Casablanca Cinemas were presented to the press and representatives of the cinematographic world as Casablanca 1 and Casablanca 2, in honor of the mythical name of the film directed by Michael Curtis, Casablanca, based on the play Everybody Comes to Rick’s, starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman.
A few days before its premiere, the owners of the Casablanca cinemas held a private session for the media, influential personalities and regular film buffs, to show how the two theaters worked and scheduled a short session of fragments of the film Casablanca. After the event, all attendees were invited to have a spectacular refreshment.
The company Els cines del Passeig de Gràcia had hired to control the programming of the two theaters the company Círculo A, specialized in Art and Rehearsal theaters, together with the film critic Jaume Figueras, director and presenter of Cinema 3 on TV3 and collaborator of Frames.
The Casablanca cinemas were inaugurated on December 13, 1980. In room 1, Ekraserhea (Eraserhead), by David Lynch, and the short film Asparagus were screened. In room 2, Johnny Guitar, by Nicholas Ray, and the short film Memory by Jean Seberg.
The highest point of the programming at that time directed by Jaume Figueras took place at Christmas 1989, with the premiere of the film Bagdad Café, by Percy Adlon. It premiered on December 22 and ran until July 31, 1992.
Soon the rosy beginnings of the cinema became a headache for the owners when they realized that both rooms had a serious soundproofing defect that was difficult to solve, which caused the spectators to hear the outside noises of cars and buses coming down the street during the screenings. the Riera de San Miguel.
The competition from nearby theaters and the subsequent programming with a lack of quality of the projections contributed to the decrease in spectators, a consequence of the fact that, in December 1991, the cinemas became the property of businessman Julián Mateos.
On Friday, July 28, 1995, to commemorate 100 years of the invention of cinema, the film A Matter of Life and Death was released in Spain. A life or death, a film made in 1946 by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger and performed by David Niven.
In 2005, the cinemas were acquired by Salomón Shang, writer, director and film producer who, together with his partner Alberto del Val, took advantage of the opportunity to release their own films.
They hired film critic Alejandro G. Calvo, director of the magazine Miradas de cine, as a programmer and added the name Casablanca Kaplan to the cinemas.
The economic crisis suffered by cinemas and the appearance of multiplexes in hypermarkets were the causes of the closure, on April 5, 2011, of the Casablanca Kaplan, with the screening of Black Swan by Darren Aronofsky and the documentary Hammada by Anna Bofarull.
Salomón Shang, plagued by debts and non-payments, abandoned everything that had to do with the world of the seventh art. He moved to live in Mallorca, where he died on May 22, 2014.
