Portal:African cinema/Selected article/13
Cinémathèque de Tanger (CDT) is an art house movie theater in Tangier, Morocco, and the only non-profit movie theater in the country. CDT was founded in 2007 by the Moroccan visual artist Yto Barrada, French producer Cyriac Auriol, and Moroccan director Latif Lahlou and located in the renovated Cinéma Rif building in the Casbah district.
CDT’s mission to promote Moroccan and independent film and is North Africa's first art house cinema and film archive. CDT offers screenings of contemporary and classic films from over 20 countries, as well as workshops, masterclasses, a café, and an archive. The nonprofit institution is also a founding partner of the Beirut-based Network of Arab Arthouse Screens (NAAS), and is an Associate of the International Federation of Film Archives.
Fallen into disrepair, the iconic Cinéma Rif building built in 1937, was purchased by Barrada and Auriol in 2004. The French architect Jean-Marc Lalo was hired to renovate the building, and created two screening rooms, one of 300 seats and another of 50 seats, at a cost of over a million euros financed by the Moroccan government, the Ford Foundation, and the Europa Cinemas network, among others. A cafe and restaurant were added in 2020.
Today, CDT receives about 1000 cinema-goers a month.