Cinema São Jorge opened to the public 71 years ago, on 24 February, with the film “The Red Shoes” by the directing duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.
The cinema was built in the late 1940s by the Sociedade Anglo-Portuguesa de Cinemas and designed by the architect Fernando Silva. It opened in 1950 and is still one of Lisbon’s most emblematic cinemas. Its innovation and boldness earned it that year’s unanimous award of the Municipal Architecture Prize. Considered a “modern work”, departing from the nationalist model then in force, it adopted new construction techniques, namely concrete, which allowed for novel structural and decorative solutions.
