University Cinema Scala is a cinema in Brno in the Czech Republic. It is located at Moravské náměstí (Moravian Square) in the basement of building 127/3, city quarter Brno-střed and neighbourhood Brno-město. It has been in operation since 1929 and was at times also called Bio Dopz and Kino Moskva (Moscow Cinema). Since the autumn of 2013, it has been run by Masaryk University and the Aeropolis company as the first university cinema in the Czech Republic. Besides regular film screenings, it also serves as a representative space and a lecture and conference hall used for academic purposes. History Bio Dopz (1929–1935) The first mobile cinematographs appear edin Brno in 1896 and the first permanent cinema opened in 1907. However, the current University Cinema Scala only opened about 20 years later, when there were already a number of other cinemas in the city: Centrál (the first cinema, that opened in 1907), Edison (1908), Varieté (later turned into the Divadlo Radost theatre), Oránia (1911), Lidový biograf (1911), and other ones. Scala opened in a new building called the DOPZ Palace, which was built at Moravské náměstí (then called Lažanského náměstí) probably between 1927 and 1928. DOPZ was an acronym of the cooperative society "Družstvo obchodních a průmyslových zaměstnanců" (full name "Stavební a obchodní družstvo zaměstnanců obchodu a průmyslu, zapsaná společnost s ručením omezeným") that had owned the whole building since September 1927. Though the cinema was originally called Bio Dopz, it was not run by the cooperative, but by a foundation designed to support university students in Moravia and Silesia named after T. G. Masaryk ("Masarykův fond na podporu studentstva vysokých škol na Moravě a ve Slezsku"). The foundation asked for a licence to operate a cinematograph as early as on 11 July 1922, and on 28 December 1923 it was granted a licence to operate the Bristol cinema in Křenová street valid until the end of 1926. However, the foundation found it difficult to acquire the premises needed to run a cinema and so it kept looking at other places – such as the cinema Universum in Lidická (then called Nová) street or a hall in the new Nový domov building in Gorkého (Folkensteinerova) street – until the licence expired. The foundation was promised a new licence in April 1927 and in June 1928, it was offered by DOPZ to run a cinema in its building (DOPZ Palace) located between