Cinema arrived in Badalona in 1898 with street projections and by 1904 the city had already its first stable movie theater. Thus began the intense relationship between the seventh art and the people of Badalona.
This close link that runs through the exhibition The Great Illusion. The cinema in Badalona 1898-1975, that invites us to discover the history, the advances, the anecdotes, and the countless episodes of shared memory that are hidden in the darkness of a cinema room.
The exhibition is structured in different thematic sections that combine local aspects, such as showrooms, programming or critics, with more general aspects such as technological evolution, the phenomenon of the star-system or the impact that the omnipresent censorship had on the cinematographic production in the Franco’s Spain.
The exhibition, which is completed by the publication of a book of the same title by the historian Núria Casals, is also a tribute to the cinema and to all those people who, in difficult times, they were able to find a window into the world and a way out of everyday life.
The show is about to begin! The lights turn off. Silence.