I know this is an ancient post (electronically speaking) and I came across it by accident googleing something else, but I still would like to share my knowledge of Sofia's shabbiest cinema. 
Mr. Vlaykov was a rich man in the 1920s in Sofia and his wife, who was a cinema fan, decided to build a building with a cinema saloon. Before they died (mid 1920s) they donated the building to a cultural institution and the Ministry of Education with the sole condition that the cinema would be kept running no matter what. Today the building belongs to a neighbourhood cultural institution/library. They are terribly underfunded and running a cinema saloon is the last thing on their mind, yet they have to keep it going. That's why they screen the minimum amount of films necessary by law to maintain cinema status. Of course this is no excuse for everything being so shabby. Considering that all of the downtown neighbourhood cinemas closed to make space for shops and the like and that we go to watch films in the cineplexes, multiplexes and malls nowadays, I could see it renovated in a 1920s style and becoming a bijoux screening old films, documentaries and so on.