ANALYSIS
The confinement has plunged many fans of the 7th art into disarray. But it was also the occasion for certain professionals of the sector to reinvent the modes of consumption of the cinema. They redoubled their inventiveness to imagine alternatives so as not to sink. Can these solutions be renewed in the future? And can they reinvent the way of consuming films in the cinema? Elements of answers while the French cinemas reopen this Monday.
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Drive-in cinema has never really disappeared
Gauthier Labrusse is director of the Caennais cinema, Lux. For ten years already, he had set up the drive-in cinema, a practice drawn from American culture in the 1960s. "People buy a dematerialized ticket and arrive by car in the car park of the Parc des Expos. When the night falls, the projection is sent to a screen and the sound comes out of the car radio via an FM frequency, "he explains.
If the operation was a great success, Gauthier Labrusse does not think of renewing it immediately but keeps it in a corner of his head in the future. "We will always propose playful proposals like this. We will have to learn the lessons of confinement", he underlines before listing other alternatives. "We have our own VOD (video on demand) platform, NetfLux, which worked very well during the confinement. We also proposed conferences in e-cinema and then had discussions around the film. We will have to continue there above."
Virtual cinema, an alternative that is gaining ground
The e-cinema, Pierre-Emmanuel Le Goff intends to continue surfing this new wave. From March 15, even before the confinement started, he founded 25ème heure, a virtual cinema site. The site works with several partner theaters and distributes new films every week to residents who connect near these theaters. Interactive meetings are even possible with certain directors.
"I was very reactive by looking very closely at the situation in China even before the confinement. We then thought that this could, in the long term, have several effects on our rooms with a few closings. We had not imagined all and so quickly. We thought we needed a tool and that's how we created this virtual cinema, from March 15, "summarizes the director.
As the sessions are only accessible by people living next to partner rooms, some sessions still brought together 700 to 800 people. "We can imagine that there were several people on the same screen, so possibly more than a thousand people who, for example, had the chance to see Cuban Network and then chat with the director Olivier Assayas."
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"Cinema must be a place for debate"
It is on this point that Pierre-Emmanuel Le Goff wants to continue working. At the end of each virtual session, certain spectators could enter into an exchange with the director or an actor of the film. "For me, the future of cinema must be what it has been for many years, a place of debate. It is an agora. Films allow us to share the world views of directors. We think that in the current context, the room must really become a place of exchange to think of the next world. This can be done in physics, but also very well in virtual. The virtual can even multiply these possibilities of exchanges ", advance- he.
In the meantime, its broadcasting service site will be there "to support theaters during the recovery." Before that, he hopes to repeat his sessions via a screen.