Louis Hartlooper Complex

You're standing in front of a building that was never supposed to show films. The Louis Hartlooper Complex started life as a police station, built in 1927 by city architect J.I. Planjer. He designed it as a single composition together with the adjacent bridge, quay wall, and tram stop, all in the style of the Amsterdam School. That bold, expressive brickwork you see is almost unique in Utrecht.

The transformation into a cinema was essentially an act of defiance. Filmmaker Jos Stelling already ran the nearby Springhaver cinema, but the city wanted to demolish it for a multiplex. Stelling simply refused, bought this empty police station in 2001, and turned it into a film and theatre venue on his own terms.

The complex is named after Louis Hartlooper, an Amsterdam diamond cutter who discovered, during quiet times in the trade, that he had a gift for entertaining people. He became an explicateur, someone who narrated silent films live with voice and gesture. A newspaper wrote that his commentary "strips a cinema screening of its deadness and turns film into living art." He died in 1922, right here on the Ledig Erf. If he'd glanced out the window, he'd have watched workers laying the foundations of the police station that would one day carry his name.