The “11×20+14” cinema, hidden for years in an old farmhouse in a small village in Île-de-France, did not resist. Despite the passion of its owner and a fundraiser launched by regulars, it closed its doors for good.
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The smallest cinema in France, the 11×20+14, has closed its doors. As noted, during the weekend of Saturday October 7 and Sunday October 8, the film critic Emmanuel Raspiengeas on X.
This cinema like no other was launched almost 25 years ago by a former France TV director, Michel Le Clerc, now 93 years old. The 11×20+14 broadcast five to six films each week in a single 50-seat room set up in an old farmhouse in Mons-en-Montois in Seine-et-Marne. A farmhouse where 234 people were massacred by the English during the Hundred Years’ War, hence its funny name 11×20+14. In this cinema these inhabitants of the town of just over 400 inhabitants gathered, but also cinema lovers capable of coming from far away to take refuge in a timeless place, created by a man from another time , who upon retirement had the desire to show films. “I was told it would never work”, he declared. Ultimately the adventure lasted almost 25 years.
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Very small rooms have difficulty resisting
It was from 2017 that the small cinema began to encounter difficulties. With the abolition of subsidized contracts, Michel Le Clerc, the owner, is no longer able to pay his projectionist, Benoit, another lover of cinema, and the stained glass windows that he renovates in his workshop in another part of the farmhouse, between two sessions. Initially, the projectionist had agreed to continue working on a voluntary basis, then came the pandemic and the erosion of spectators. Despite a prize pool which had collected 13,000 euros, the 11×20+14 could not be saved.
However, arthouse cinema is not doing so badly in France. With admissions up almost 40% last year in certified cinemas, which continue to show demanding films, cultivate social connections, and which hold up because they just offer something else. But the very small so-called “single screen” rooms are having a hard time resisting. According to the results of the National Center for Animated Cinema and Image (the CNC), five disappeared last year, leaving an empty room to cry, and sometimes an old man crying in a corner because his cinema closed.