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Cinema in action

This Thursday morning, the day opened on prospective, ideas, the future. On how the room is moving and adapting to new audiences and, at this time, to an unprecedented health crisis. It was moderated by Sylvain Devarieux, journalist at Le Film français. 

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Organized within the framework of the Afcae-ADRC Exhibitors Course, this round table brought together Pierre-Emmanuel Le Goff, CEO of La 25e Heure, Joséphine Letang, Managing director of La Toile, Christophe Maffi, Managing Director of the SCOP Le Navire, Cerise Jouinot, Head of Cinema at the Cité Internationale de la Bande-Dessinée et de l'Image in Angoulême, Stéphane Goudet, Artistic Director of Le Méliès cinema in Montreuil, Seine-Saint-Denis, Nathanaël Karmitz, Chairman of the Board of MK2 and a major witness at the MIFC 2020 and Pedro Borges, Director of MIDAS Filmes and Cinema Ideal, guest of honor as part of the focus on Portugal. 

This round table opened with the Lusitanian guest who returned to the Portuguese case. A rather complex case in relation to heritage, so much, as he explained, access to works is difficult. A complexity due in particular to the lack of digitization of local heritage as already explained by the speakers of yesterday's round tables. In addition to this, as Nathanaël Karmitz points out, there is a rather limited network of cinemas in the country, and above all a concentration of them mostly owned by telephone companies that are also distributors and that distribute their own online catalog. But the initiatives are developing, boosted by the health emergency: "We have the project to create a platform Cinema Ideal Online, which will make it possible to diffuse at the same time in the theaters and in VoD simultaneously the screenings of the films as of their second week of exploitation. The idea is to apply the same admission price. To catch the audience where it is. "explains Pedro Borges. 

Several of the French panelists have also experimented with this hybridization of distribution before and especially during confinement, and intend to extend it. Two representatives of these possibilities were present. First of all, La Toile. Launched in 2017, with 5 member cinemas, it has risen to 230 in the light of the state of emergency last March. The principle of this solution is to propose a specific programming for each partner cinema. Each one decides which films it wants in the aim to complement the programming of the cinema. This leads the platform to have an average of 45% of classic films available. The goal is to maintain the link between the spectators and their cinema, as explained by its managing director, Joséphine Letang. During the confinement, each cinema was thus able to organize its own film club, as it were. This is what Cerise Jouinot, head of cinema at the Cité Internationale de la Bande-Dessinée et de l'Image in Angoulême, has done, and she is in favor of the concept even if, in purely digital terms, it is not a great success, neither in terms of takings nor in terms of spectators. However, she wishes to develop it further in order to increase the loyalty of its spectators.  

La 25e heure, another initiative, was launched in March shortly after confinement. "The idea at that time was to bridge the gap between the closing of the theaters and the reopening of the show," explained Pierre-Emmanuel Le Goff, CEO of the young company. The idea is simple: geolocalized sessions at fixed times with a revenue-sharing partnership with each venue. After June 22nd, La 25e heure wanted to perpetuate this concept with hybrid sessions, both indoors and online, but also to give a stronger share to the heritage. This idea was supported in particular by Stéphane Goudet, artistic director of the Le Méliès cinema in Montreuil.  

For the latter, it was a real asset, even if numerically too, it was not quite significant at the time. But it remains an idea to be developed for the future, especially in the context of accompanied screenings that could be distributed more widely, even in collaboration with other cinemas in the rest of France to share their events. For the exhibitor, this accompaniment of works, especially heritage works, is essential to bring audiences together, especially new audiences. He gave the example of a screening of David Golder, a relatively unknown film by Julien Duvivier, which was sold out, with young audiences, thanks in particular to a conversation about the film with Wes Anderson. 

Nathanaël Karmitz brought a slight downside to this enthusiasm about the hybridization of the cinema and digital technology: "In the context of this relationship between the cinema and digital, we cannot generalize what has happened since the confinement, nor can we apply it to what our future life will be like," Nathanaël Karmitz relativized. "Our job as exhibitors is to get people out of their homes, to create and manage our communities of spectators in our cities and neighborhoods. Linking theaters to digital is a necessity today, even if it remains complicated, technical and costly. But the innovative devices we are talking about cannot replace the activity of the cinema. "he recalled. For its part, MK2 has also developed its digital aspect with the creation of MK2 Curiosity, during the confinement, so that cinema "remains an activity that is well anchored in people's daily lives". For the great witness of the MIFC 2020, it is above all a cataloguers' approach to make exist and give even works from their catalog that have, a priori, no commercial value. A new version will be launched on November 25, with the ambition of opening its program to other catalogs and publishers.

Finally, the round table ended with a final, rather original and retrofuturistic initiative to bring cinema to life: the drive-in. This was the idea of Christophe Maffi, managing director of the SCOP Le Navire, which operates four cinemas between the Drôme and Ardèche regions. He too subscribed to La 25e heure and La Toile, but through a contest of circumstance, this small circuit, originally born in the 80's from the itinerant cinema and of which it is still one of the core businesses, has launched into the revival of the drive-in. What was originally a very local and, above all, unique idea took on a rather crazy scale during the confinement and the summer thanks to an immediate success, more than 300 vehicles at the first screening, and a big press relay. As a still astonished Christophe Maffi says: "It was an incredible experience. At first it was a simple Facebook post to announce the session, then it became a feature in the French Film. And we ended up on the national News on TV! ».

 

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