Arts & Entertainment

Cinephiles get their fix at world’s first cinema hotel in Paris

By Marta Garde

Paris, Apr 29 (EFE).- After the coronavirus pandemic forced cinemas to shut down across France since November, movie-lovers can once again enjoy the cinema thanks to Hotel Paradiso, the world’s first cinema hotel.

The project was inaugurated just last month, but it began to take shape seven years ago, long before the lockdown took hold of Paris.

“It is not a replacement for the movie theater; it is a complement, another way to experience movies,” film producer Nathanaël Karmitz of the MK2 film company, who co-founded the project with his brother Elisha, tells Efe.

The hotel’s 34 rooms and two suites are equipped with movie projectors, with a wide variety of more than 10,000 movies.

Karmitz says he was inspired by the close relationship between the world of cinema and Hollywood hotels such as Chateau Marmont.

“You will find cinema in a thousand little details. For example, the vintage telephone that you find in each room, is an indirect tribute to Hollywood in the 50s,” he says.

The hotel’s phone number ends in 2001, a reference to the sci-fi movie masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey, and guests have to call 007 for room service, James Bond’s code number.

Due to the coronavirus-induced health restrictions, almost all the hotel’s guests have been local Parisians but Karmitz does not rule out expanding the concept in other countries.

“If there are proposals in Spain we would be delighted to hear them because we are a true French-Spanish company,” he says

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