In Belgium movies are shown in the original language and are subtitled for the local public, so there’s no reason why you should not go to the movies on Saturday night.

Antwerp has always had a fascination for cinema. Already early in 1896 performances were offered to an eager public, barely months after the first performances by the Lumière brothers in Paris. Already in 1908 Antwerp had its own cinemas and in the era immediately before and immediately after World War II the city housed more than 100 cinemas. But then television came and cinema lost much of its appeal and in 1973 the main cinema mogul in Antwerp went bankrupt.

Fortunately the multiplex took over and Antwerp now has two large cinema centres: one in the Central Station area (historically the place where the main cinemas were situated) run by UGC, the other north of the city along Noorderlaan, on a former GMC-plant run by Kinepolis. Both offer a varied programme of mostly English spoken movies.

Independent productions are shown in Cartoon’s, which is situated in Kaasstraat, bordering on the quays of the river Scheldt.