Kinoorgel Babylon | Prix Marulic

Prix Marulic Selection

A finalist in the 2023 prestigious Prix Marulic Festival, Hvar. Kinoorgel Bablyon, is a snapshot into the modern-golden age of silent movies.

Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, GDR - and an instrument that has lived through it all.

Made in Germany in 1929 to accompany silent movies. The cinema organ in Berlin Mitte’s Babylon Kino is the only cinema organ in Germany that is still played in its original location. With 913 pipes and 66 registers, it was the biggest cinema organ in Germany. But the organ’s grandeur wasn’t celebrated for long. Soon after its construction, sound film took over and the organ soon became superfluous.

Now, almost a century later, the organ is living its best life, thanks to a dedicated cinema director and a passionate organist.

The organ now stands as a relic of the past, offering audiences an opportunity to travel back in time to magical black and white worlds of music and heightened emotion. But to really conjure up the past, it takes more than just a screen, an instrument and an old movie reel. Accompanying silent movies is a unique art that requires quick fingers and a limitless ability to improvise on a myriad of keys and buttons - all while the story unfolds in real time.

As with any lost or fading tradition, to bring it back to life requires passion and a living human presence. Someone to embody a bridge between the past and the present. And for the Babylon cinema in Berlin Mitte, Russian organist Anna Vavilkina is that bridge.