They asked for a cinema licence as early as on 2 June 1941 and received it on 7 April 1944. With the arrival of the battlefront on 15 April 1945, the cinema was forced to suspend its operation. The cinema building burned out, as well as the neighbouring buildings, but the basement premises of the cinema were left untouched. After the most necessary repairs of the entrance, the cinema opened for provisional screenings on 9 May 1945 and normal operation resumed on 2 June, after foyer refurbishments, with the screening of a film by Martin Frič The Second Shift. Kino Moskva (1948–1991) A nationalization decree from 11 September 1945 nationalized the film industry, production, and distribution including all cinemas. The state-owned enterprise Československý státní film became the authority that supervised the whole industry. On 25 September 1946, Lažanského náměstí (Lažanský Square) was renamed náměstí Rudé armády (Red Army Square) and the cinema later followed suit: on 15 October 1948, it was renamed Moskva (Moscow). In the early 1950s, the fire-damaged building as well as the adjacent houses were reconstructed and the former DOPZ Palace was replaced by an ostentatious building of Hutní projekt built in the style of socialist realism by a Brno architect Lubor Lacina. A government decree from 16 January 1957 assigned the management of cinemas to "national committees" (local authority councils). Brno established "Správa městských kin", an organisation tasked with managing the city cinemas and led by Antonín Kalášek as its first director, which took over all 29 cinemas in Brno including Moskva from the previous organisation, Krajský filmový podnik. As the cinema was also being reconstructed in 1957, it was closed between 16 June and 21 November that year. It opened on 21 November with a screening of a French-Italian film The Best Part (La Meilleure part) starring Gérard Philipe. From 21 September 1968, the cinema was renamed back to Scala for a short period of time, but after 26 September 1969 it was called Moskva again. The cinema was closed for repairs between 1971 and 1973, when it was adapted for 70mm films and stereophonic sound. The cinema opened again on 22 November 1973 with a ceremony that included the screening of the movie The Siberian Woman (Сибирячка) by director Aleksei Saltykov to invited guests; regular screenings for the public began on the following day. In the 1980s, the Moskva cinema was one of the