Studio des Ursulines, a cinema on rue des Ursulines since 1926

The Studio des Ursulines, a Latin Quarter cinema, opened in 1926 at 10 rue des Ursulines, in the former concert hall of the Concerts Colonne. The actors Armand Tallier and Laurence Myrga created a new kind of cinema there, devoted to avant-garde film: the first “specialised” cinema in France.

The first screening took place on 21 January 1926, with René Clair’s Entr’acte and Pabst’s The Joyless Street. In the audience sat André Breton, Man Ray, Fernand Léger and Robert Desnos. On 9 February 1928, the premiere of Germaine Dulac’s The Seashell and the Clergyman, written by Antonin Artaud, was heckled by the Surrealists and ended in a brawl.

Tallier did not call the police and screened the film again a few weeks later. In the 1950s he helped found the arthouse movement: in 1955 the cinema was one of the first five members of the French association of arthouse cinemas. Its façade has kept its original design.

Since 2003 its single screen has shown children’s films by day, animation and film clubs at night. Truffaut shot one of the last scenes of Jules et Jim here. It stands in the 5th arrondissement, a short walk from Luxembourg station.