New York (AFP)

The creators of the Tribeca film festival will organize this summer a screening tour in drive-in cinemas in the United States, places now popular not only with moviegoers but also by churches or musical groups, due to coronavirus .

The organizers, who have teamed up with the Canadian IMAX and the American cable operator AT&T, indicated that the screenings would take place in existing drive-in cinemas but also in other places, without further details for the moment.

The program will be announced before the tour starts on June 25. It will include new films and classics, as well as recordings of musical and sporting events, according to a press release published Wednesday.

After having organized a dematerialized version of its festival, which ended at the end of April, Tribeca has already made a name for itself by setting up a virtual event on YouTube in collaboration with most of the major festivals in the world, from May 29 to June 7 .

"We are excited to give people something to look forward to this summer and also to reinvent a way of watching films that people can enjoy in safety," commented the festival's co-founder, Tribeca. actor Robert De Niro, quoted in the press release.

Drive-in cinema is one of the references of American popular culture. The first space of this type, with spectators in cars parked in front of an outdoor screen, was inaugurated in 1933 in Camden, New Jersey.

At their peak after the war, the United States numbered several thousand.

Since then, the increase in the price of land in peripheral urban areas, the number of cinemas and the growing popularity of video have made it a rarity.

There are only 305 left in the United States, according to the association of drive-in movie theater owners.

Several of them remained open at the height of confinement and today benefit from a renewed interest, most of the covered cinemas remaining closed.

Raleigh Road Outdoor in Henderson, North Carolina, reopened in the first days of May, after about a month of closure.

Open 7 days a week, it only operates at half capacity, one parking space in two being left free to respect social distancing.

Business, which was doing well before the virus arrived, immediately resumed, and the cinema sold out on weekends.

"No one seems to be afraid," says owner Mike Frank, whose space is in high demand for uses other than cinema.

From the end of March, it made its place available to two parishes which celebrate from their masses in a drive-in way.

He will also organize several high school graduation ceremonies as well as concerts, always with spectators in their cars or next to them.

"We even think of a laser show," he says.

© 2020 AFP