“We don’t go there too much”, recognizes Cassandra. “It’s very rareadds his companion, like once a month now, and again…”. The path to the cinema, Cassandra and Walid, a couple in their twenties who live in Valence (Drôme), have lost sight of it for several months. About a third of viewers are still missing in cinemas, which experienced a black month of September with 7.32 million admissions, the lowest since the 1980s and the start of statistics – at the exception of 2020.
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“It plays Disney+, Amazon Prime, Netflix… almost apologizes Walid. There, we are at home. In addition, these films come out a few months later”, he pleads. A new agreement concerning the release of a film on the big screen was indeed signed on January 24th. From now on, Canal+ can broadcast a film six months after its theatrical release and the platforms only wait 15 or 17 months instead of 36 previously.
Cassandra and Walid, however, live in a city that has two cinemas, one classified as an Arthouse in the center, and the Pathé multiplex at the exit of Valence, which acknowledges, through the voice of its director Alexandre Flubacker, having lost part of the pre-Covid clientele.
“A full year, we were on 650,000 admissions. Over this year, we are on an attendance of around 300,000 admissions at the end of August.”
Alexandre Flubacker, director of the Pathé Valence multiplexat franceinfo
For Alexandre Flubacker, “People have to get used to coming to the cinema again”. But he does not despair. “We will see it in 2023 because there is still a very good year ahead with a lot of interesting films. We will be able to see if people are coming back completely or at what level we can be.
The changes in cultural habits, customers, even loyal ones, crossed in the hall of the multiplex of Valence, can only note them. “Once, we were only both in the room”explain two women. “We still go there quite often because we like it. But my father, for example, who liked it a lot, goes there less and less because he has everything available at home, so it must be a big hit at the cinema “fits a teenager. “You have to fight effectively to maintain your cinemas. You have to promote cinema”launches an elderly man.
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At the Arthouse cinema, Le Navire, five screens in the city center, the boss and programmer Rémi Labé is stepping up his efforts to bring in customers. His weapon, the organization of evening-events around films. “Since the beginning of September, we have already filled up several times, which is good and had not happened for a while. For example, for an event around a film like À la folie, with the psychiatric hospital center , with associations around psychiatry coming, coming to the room can really bring something more”, he defends.
The Valencia city center cinema hopes to end the year with a counter of 84,000 admissions, compared to 117,000 in 2019. It will still be a third fewer spectators compared to a year which was certainly a record year where there was no talk then of viruses or inflation.