Today’s Bologna Lab’s focused on communication, marketing and partnerships, with participants and invited guests presenting case studies of their approaches.
Creative content and marketing were the first topic of the day, with Züleyha Azman & Baris Azman from Kino Rotterdam, presenting ‘The cinema as the place to be: captivating audiences with custom-made content & special programming’. Kino Rotterdam, over eight years, has produced around 180 trailers for their programming, which they present across social media and on their screens, showing their recent Taiwan New Wave which captures the artistically interesting but realist approach to presenting everyday life.
Züleyha presented the diverse custom content that they create for social media, with a focus on Instagram. This included ‘snippets’, short clips of the films, which they post as a reminder of upcoming seasons. Züleyha also highlighted that their content is not just something that exists online in its own vacuum, they also host photo exhibitions in their bar area, which they can post online and use to showcase their space. The visually beautiful work Züleyha and Baris create also lives on their cinema screens as they create ‘moving wallpaper’, images from films with little movements and season branding, which they play on screen before films.
Züleyha loves to showcase the venue, events and co-workers, filming daily business videos, shooting short daily business videos, like moving postcards, showing behind the scenes and everyday life of the cinema. Baris presented their approach to creating trailers for their seasons, showing an example of their Powell and Pressburger season which they reedited to better communicate the surprise, suspense and excitement of these films for audience unfamiliar with them.
Züleyha and Baris are also creating Cinematic Days, short video snippets capturing the Lab and Il Cinema Ritrovato, over on our Instagram – check out today’s with Wim Wender!
We then moved on to the first Presentation & Surgery slot of the Lab, with Maria Salomia (Victoria, Romania), Sébastien Capette (Quai 10, Belgium) and Mariano Soto Baeza (Cines Embajadores, Spain) each presenting on their venues unique ways of engaging and reaching audiences.
Maria Salomia presented on Cinefil de Timișoara, a project creating community through the shared identity of cinemagoing. Victoria currently runs two cinemas, with a third opening later this year and two more in future, each with its own personality and visual identity. However, this presented a challenge with audiences not being aware they are run by the same team. Cinefil de Timișoara created a unified brand with t-shirts, totes, a website and a newsletter, focusing on their enthusiastic community of audiences and volunteers. This inspired spontaneous connections inside and outside the cinema and continues to help communicate to audiences the multi-cinema nature of Victoria.
Online content creation was a recurring theme of the day and Sébastien Capette addressed his approach to this in his presentation on ‘Innovating and connecting through exclusive media content’. Sébastien is ensuring that his cinema audiences, even if they can’t attend the specific event, don’t miss out on their special invited guests by filming an interview with them and turning this into videos for social media, a blog for their website and a podcast. The aim is to make these guests and the conversations they have more accessible to audiences, whilst also being a lever from communication across social media and the cinemas newsletter.
Mariano Soto Baeza presented on Cines Embajadores’ focus on their local audiences and the care they take in ensuring they are a neighbourhood-conscious cinema. Mariano explained local doesn’t mean limited, there are plenty of new audiences that can reached locally through digital marketing targeting specific audiences, newsletters and word of mouth. Cines Embajadores sends out two or even three (!) newsletters a day, with 40% open rate (!!) due to their chatting, friendly tone. Cines Embajadores’ caters to diverse audiences, including their queer-focused ‘Hairspray and Popcorn’ events which are programmed and hosted by a drag queen. The cinema ensures they are embedded in their neighbourhood and have a commitment to a circular economy, buying everything the cinema needs from local businesses.
Inspired by the morning’s presentations the participants were then tasked with their first mini workshop, discussing with each other the ways in which already plan and create content, sharing areas they are happy with and areas they might struggle, drawing support and insight from one another.
The next round of presentations offered even more inspiration. Verena Stackelberg from Wolf Kino explained ‘The Story of Wolf’, with the name being an authentic, foundational elements of everything they cinema builds, bringing to mind fairy tales, danger and the connection found within a ‘wolf gang’. Analogue marketing has been successful for Wolf, creating logos and totes inspired by wolves, alongside special monthly riso prints they commission with financing from distributors. The prints have connected with audiences who enjoy collecting them and posting them on social media. Verena urged cinemas to looking at marketing as a creative process, which makes it much easier to enjoy as a process and allows you to create sincere impact.
Megan Mitchell, of Matchbox Cine, presented a strategic approach to social media, consisting of three words: who, why, how. Megan encouraged cinemas to think of their audience first, as they usually do with everything else, when it comes to social media and not over stretch themselves. Being specific in ‘who’ you want to engage and ‘why’ allows for the ‘how’, what platforms and content, to be decided based on where and how that specific audience use social media. Megan offered the reassurance, ‘do a little, do it well, and then maybe grow.’
Rianne Demmers of Concordia, presented a project is that doing well and growing, Cineville, which has supported Concordia in developing recurring monthly visitors, with Cineville members visiting on average 2 ½ times a month. Rianne says it has encouraged audiences to be more adventurous with their cinema going.
After lunch and some fresh Italian air, the participants settled into the afternoon which covered diversifying your audience through community building and partnerships. Mustafa El Mesaoudi explained Cinema & Rex Filmtheater Wuppertal’s approach to working with Von der Heydt Museum. Aiming to highlight cinemas as a relevant art and targeting young audiences, their partnership with strengthen by the addition of Wuppertal University. Increasing young audiences is beneficial to both the cinema and the museum, with young people enjoying the cross-pollination.
Natalie Meeusen & Joyce Palmers of De Cinema explained how their collaborations with various partners has allowed them to create unique collective experiences for their audiences. These partners have included the Museum of Contemporary Art, enhanced with artists talks, Girls on Film, with March being a month of all women-directed cinema and Send In The Clows, a drag collecting co-programming interactive events. Natalie and Joyce cautioned against underestimating how much time partnership conversations take, but said it is beneficial to really understand who the partner audience are and the best ways to support each other through these conversations.
Sylvie van Dijk of Filmhuis shared their partnership ‘New Image Makers’ with the Art Library in Alkmar. Aiming to make cinema accessible and engage young regional talent, Sylvie said that both the cinema and Library were excited to offer a platform to young makers and help deepened skillsets, working together on an open call for 16-27 year old filmmakers and artists. Six creators will be chosen and paired together to make and artwork and film on the theme of climate, drawing inspiration from each other’s works and guided by a personal coach. The cinema and library will then showcase these works.
Part two of the afternoon explored events. Andy Sellitto & Anna Caterina Dichio of Luminor in Paris present on their events driven philosophy which grew from their threat of closure and their acts of resistance against this. Luminor, due to their landlord, faces closure, initially beginning a petition to garner support (with over 40,000 signatures) but soon harnessed the energy of their audiences to build party atmosphere events. The cinema now has a membership system, which also grants access to their bar, which also inspired their Le Cine-Bar programme, a feel-good cine club to save the cinema with a mix of popular and arthouse cinema geared towards younger audiences. They want to give audiences the chance to enjoy the cinema and to speak up against the closure, representing the cinema with tshirts. Anna said that from a complicated situation they brought a new energy to their programming and aim to continue creating events to make their space a dynamic cinema.
Anna Ramzerová of Kino Aero, addressed another recurring topic of the Lab, young audiences, with their project ‘(re)freshing the film canon’. (Re)fresh looks to revitalising the canon, building a programme focused on and dedicated to younger audiences, presenting a mix of arthouse films, nostalgic gems and guilty pleasures. Ann encouraged cinemas to experiment and embrace new things.
Anca Caramelea of Arta, Romania, addressed ‘Turning a screening into an event’, giving some examples of their approach. Their programme focusing on film music, What’s The Score? stimulate attendance during weekdays and brought new audiences as the cinema guided audiences on a journey through film music and history of cinema. Arta also runs Green Film Days, educational screenings around environmental topics which bring people together around common concerns and Blind Date with a Film, allowing people to collectively discover films together, keeping the film secret until the screening. The cinema aims to attract older audinces, as their audience is mainly under 40 years old, with their programme MatineuARTA, matinees relating to visual art and architecture.
The day was wrapped up with another break-out sessions, with participants reflecting together on ideas and inspirations shared which they could act upon once back at their own cinema. Tomorrow’s sessions will offer even more food for thought, with sessions on cinema spaces, experiences audiences from 10.45 am CEST over on our YouTube.