L'Alcazar cinema

Between 1861 and 1862, Henri Édouard Berryer, a café owner at 1 rue de la Station, built a public house on land owned by the Chemins de fer de l'Ouest railway company.

In 1886, Guillaume Édouard Bical took over the business as a subtenant. Balls and concerts were held there. In 1890, the old buildings were demolished and rebuilt by Francis Ernest Rosset, the new lessee of the Compagnie des Chemins de fer de l'Ouest, and in 1893, Guillaume Édouard Bical, a wine and spirits merchant, became the owner of the buildings and land.

The Alcazar became a cinema on 1 June 1915. Jean-Marc Lescure became its director and, 3 years later, its owner. In 1919 he had a 1,500-seat cinema-concert hall built, where films were shown accompanied by a full symphony orchestra.

The cinema, to which a new facade was added, was reopened to a full house on 28 January 1921. In 1959, a film club was created and the first meeting of the Ciné-Club des Amis de l'Alcazar (Friends of the Alcazar film club) was held with the screening of 'Que Viva Mexico'.

Art house cinema

The Alcazar was officially classified as an 'art house' cinema on 26 March 1962 by the Centre National de la Cinématographie (French National Cinematography Centre).

To survive the decline in attendance in the early 70s, the large auditorium was radically transformed in 1971 into a 3-screen complex, which in 1973 was given the curious name of "Tricycle"!

On 3 February 1992, an expropriation order was issued in favour of the semi-public company SEM92, as part of the development zone of the station. On 1 September 1992, Patrick Brouiller, president of the Association française des cinémas d'art et d'essai (French Association of Art Cinemas), took over the management of the cinema.

The Alcazar was bought by the town of Asnières-sur-Seine in September 1993 for 30 francs, with the agreement that it would be put at the disposal of the Asnières Cinema Management Association free of charge.

It was known as the "Ciné d'Asnières" until 1997, when the new establishment, with an additional screen, reverted to its original name. Renovated in 1996, the complex now has 4 state-of-the-art screens with a total capacity of 700 seats, allowing it to expand its programming to include arthouse films, films for schoolchildren, and all the cultural activities that are the hallmark of a local cinema.

The Alcazar cinema regularly organises premieres and special evenings with well-known directors and actors. The Town Council also organises trips to the cinema for schools during term time, with a special 'art house' programme for young audiences, to give them a taste of cinema from an early age. The council pays a contribution of €1.60 per cinema ticket.

The Alcazar also organises other programmes for all ages, such as "School at the Cinema", "College at the Cinema", "Students and Apprentices at the Cinema" and the "Festival of Schools Making Films", which allow a wide audience to discover "auteur cinema" and make this local cinema their own.

Since March 2012, the cinema has fully moved from a film-based medium into the digital age.

A portrait of Jean Lescure

French writer, poet and screenwriter Jean Lescure was born on 14 September 1912 in Asnières-sur-Seine, where his parents had converted their ballroom into the Alcazar cinema. He attended boarding school in Saint-Germain-en-Laye before studying philosophy at the Sorbonne and psychopathology at Sainte-Anne.

After a series of literary collaborations, including with the Cahiers du Contadour and the poetic review Messages, he published his first collection, Le voyage immobile, in 1939.

In 1956, together with his father, he ran the Alcazar cinema, one of the first suburban cinemas dedicated to art films. With the help of André Malraux, whom he had met in 1944, he helped to set up the Association française des cinémas d'art et d'essai (AFCAE), of which he was president from 1966 to 1992. He was also president of the Confédération internationale des cinémas d'art et d'essai (CICAE), private advisor to the president of the INA, and honorary member of the AFCAE and the CICAE...

After a busy life and several awards, including the Grand Prix Poncetton of the Société des gens de lettres in 1992 for his body of work, Jean Lescure died in Paris on 17 October 2005 at the age of 93.

Séances sur Seine

It is an association set up under the law of 1901 to contribute to the organisation of cultural, linguistic, and cinematographic events in Asnières.

With the Alcazar, the association works to promote art house cinema and its exhibitors, organising film club evenings (with a focus on cultural heritage films), publicising premieres and meetings with film directors. The association has also produced a film paying special tribute to this cinema.