News

News

Karghin “Cinematograph “Ideal” is 105

105 years ago, in 1911, Karghin “Cinematograph “Ideal”, one of the first cinemas built in the Upper Don region, opened its doors for the viewers. It can be the only object of the “great silent” cinematograph preserved at present in the south of Russia.

The “Cinematograph “Ideal” with light advertising was built in Karghin Village (from 1918 it was Stanitsa Karghinskaya) by a Cossack sergeant Timofey Andreyevich Karghin. Being an educated and enterprising person enthusiastic about everything new and progressive he built in 1905, in his farmstead, a mill complex and in 1911– a cinema house.

Visitors came to watch a miracle of “how people run on the wall” from distant villages. In 1911–1916, “Cinematograph “Ideal” showed “animated pictures” by means of a small manually operated film projector, then it showed soundless (“silent”) films.

During the first years they used a film projector of the French “Pathé Company”, where a candle served a source of light for the beam. In 1917, when the mill complex acquired a dynamo powered by oil engine, there was purchased a second generation projector with electric power of the same company.

In the back rows of the cinema house there were boxes for wealthy and honoured guests (with the tickets for 50 kopecks), nearer to the screen there were rows of bentwood chairs – for the lower rank audience (for 10 kopecks), just by the screen there were wooden bench seats cost “a pyatak” (5 kopecks). Deliverers, who came to the mill to have their grain ground, could watch films for free. The house could hold up to 100 people seated.

In the 1920–1930s, the cinema house was turned into a local club, where performances, plays and vaudevilles were staged. The spectacles were actively participated by young Misha Sholokhov, who skillfully performed the main roles always inventing something of his own while acting. Here, for the first time he showed to his countrymen his first literary experiments – small plays and humorous sketches.

In 1985, the farmstead of Timofey Karghin, the mill and the cinema became a structure of the Museum-Reserve as an object of cultural heritage connected with the start of literary career of M.A.Sholokhov. There were carried out the works on conservation and strengthening of the building design, and in 2016, the Year of

Russian Cinema, the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation allocated funds from the federal budget for restoration of “Cinematograph “Ideal”, a unique historical monument.

The restoration works of the mill have been implemented on the brick façades, window frames and the hipped roof; wooden elements, a film projector booth, illuminated advertising and interior design have been recovered to preserve a historical look of the object.

This October, “Cinematograph “Ideal” marking its 105th anniversary will be put into operation.

Tamara Gribanova