Contact Artefacts please if you have any comments or more information regarding this record.	Menu Home Upfront Now Up Books Towns Structures People Firms Lexicon		Bijou Bioscope - Grand Café Bioscope Johannesburg, Gauteng KALLENBACH and KENNEDY: Architect

Date: 1910 Type: Cinema Status: Demolished Street: 165-7 Jeppe St

Café Bioscopes An American magician Carl Hertz brought silent cinema to South Africa when he first exhibited at the Empire Palace of Varieties, Johannesburg on May 9, 1896. Bioscopes first began showing silent films and from the late 1920s "talkies" sound films. The term "silent film" is a misnomer as a pianist, a theatre organist, or even a small orchestra would often play live music to accompany films in the silent era. 'Eight years after the Anglo-Boer war in 1910 my grandfather built The Bioscope Theatre with an orchestra pit in Jeppe street Johannesburg, designed by Hermann Kallenbach, later called the Bijou which he sold to IW Schlesinger in 1913. He also owned cinema-cum-tearoom bioscope cafés, which offered continuous alternating films at one price with a free glass of water-diluted cold drinks.' [1] 'The Greeks in South Africa in the 1920s. One of the first activities of the Greeks in SA was the operation of tea rooms. This is the business of Phitidis in Johannesburg.' [2] the Grand Café Bioscope. In 1922, the Grand Café Bioscope featured the silent serial: The Jungle Goddess. 'Synopsis.[3] A young girl is abducted and thrown in the empty basket of a hot-air balloon. The balloon is accidentally cut loose drifting into darkest Africa. Cannibals captured the young girl, but instead of eating her, the tribe turned her into a goddess. Years later, a young man, her childhood friend mounts an expedition into the jungle to find and rescue her.' Telephone interview recollection of Hero Dresser, née Falas, his eldest grandchild at London on October 12, 2019. Facebook Page: Greeks of Africa – Grecs de L' Afrique, posted by Greek historian and writer Antonis Chaldeos, on September 23, 2020. (accessed on that date) IMDb website (accessed September 23, 2020) (Costa Phitidis, November 2020) Submitted by Alkis Doucakis.