Cinema LUX is an association which celebrated its 56th anniversary earlier this year. Boasting 140 members, it is independent and owns its own walls. It has had three screens since 2007 and also runs a video-club, café and shop in the foyer.
LUX’s cultural objectives adhere to a double vocation that it has always advocated: promoting access to cinematographic heritage to as many people as possible and promoting diversified and pluralistic cinema that corresponds to a variety of tastes, opinions, schools of thought, religions and social backgrounds. These principles govern its programming policy and activities within the framework of its classification (arthouse and Europa Cinemas), but also its work on the ground with audiences and the large-scale events that it organises. LUX screens almost 400 films a year and proposes over 100 other cinema-related events such as debates, concerts, shows, encounters with directors, actors, festivals, film cycles, often in cooperation with cultural partners and associations in the Caen region.
One of LUX’s originalities is that it runs an arthouse video club permitting it to expand its programming policy and activities and to arouse the public’s curiosity, which is constantly nurtured by in-house exhibitions.
Our establishment has always been conceived as a participative venue, sometimes serious, sometimes more playful, opening its doors and screens to creation and to dissemination, conceived with and for the audience.
LUX has always known how to adapt its project according to its means. Having perfectly honed its on-site activities, the team rallied together to expand off-site activities and conquer new audiences. It acquired funds and developed partnerships to organise off-site screenings, some of them in the open air. Finally, it developed its educational programme and combined screenings for young audiences with a wide variety of workshops (ranging from the creation of optical games to the making of films).
In our constant desire to innovate and explore new ways of screening films and engaging with the public, we have developed several projects:
CinéTrain: Every summer for six years now and in partnership with SNCF, LUX has improvised a cinema. For the length of a return trip and price of a ticket, passengers can embark on a journey into the universe of the cinema (with varying themes and forms each year).
PédaloCiné: The films are projected onto a screen under the stars while a dozen bicycles are put to use behind the audience. Cinephiles can become cyclists for an evening or cyclists film lovers… This initiative is urban, original, participative, inclusive, cultural and above all ecological!
CinéPiscine: The stands turn into seats for those who might have forgotten their swim suits and caps, while the pool itself welcomes other film lovers who sit in floating seats in overheated water. Placed at the edge of the pool, the screen invites swimmers and viewers alike to navigate through “water films” (Jaws, Piranha 3, Gravity…).
There are so many ways for audiences to access arthouse cinema, in a playful way, and to become aware of our existence and work.
Gautier Labrusse, Co-Director and Administrator and Didier Anne, Co-Director and Programmer
http://www.cinemalux.org/spip/
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