Summarising the four major workshops and the overall themes of the conference, Irene Musumeci and Michael Gubbins talked about the overwhelming message that time is the most important and scarce resource available to both exhibitors and their audiences. Finding smart ways to work with this challenge through research, data analysis, streamlining workflows and active listening emerged as the dominant modes through which local and wider, diverse communities can collaborate and grow.
Speaking about the presentations given from both cinemas and non-physical cinemas such as a Minecraft virtual world project, Musumeci said that the appetite for cinema-going has returned in recent years following the Covid-19 pandemic.
A major general trend that emerged throughout the conference is the growth and success of screening of classic and repertory cinema, something that younger audiences in particular are excited about experiencing for the first time. Furthermore, involving young audiences in shaping programming has also proved valuable in engaging them with venues. Responding to the needs of communities is key and active listening can also provide creative ways to help shape – but not replace – cinema curation. “It doesn’t mean doing what you’re told,” Musumeci said, “but paying attention to what is happening around you.” Musumeci also talked about the importance of understanding audiences as more than just a fixed block – that they have different interests and are layered, “We shouldn’t make assumptions,” she emphasised, saying that paying attention to data and even more casual customer conversations is key to building loyal communities around cinema venues.
“People need reasons to come out,” Musumeci said, highlighting how exhibitors know that their offer is important, but that the most importance issue for audiences is time and how they spend it. As such, understanding what is unique and special about cinema in the community is key.
The conference also demonstrated the importance of cinemas communicating effectively, including showing the internal workings and personal identity of their venues. Finding resources where the pipeline for celebrities and talent-led Q&As don’t exist means being creative and understanding the need for local partnerships. This is especially important where financial resources are low as it can create unique selling points for the audience.
Play was another theme to emerge, in ensuring the cinema is a welcoming place. While it may be a space where issues can be discussed, it can also be a space where fun takes place. “Don’t be afraid to challenge yourself and try new things,” Musumeci said, quoting François Truffaut:
“Film lovers are sick people and cinephilia is a highly contagious disease.”
Michael Gubbins spoke about subscription models and how the take-up from people in their 20s and 30s is big, with the figures dropping significantly among people in their 40s who seem to then return to cinema in their 50s and 60s. Cineville has shown that younger people are price-motivated and, as Gubbins said, “the numbers are astonishing.” The subscription model gives the younger audiences space to explore and see films they wouldn’t otherwise go to see. There is a marketing challenge, however, in addressing the two very disparate audience age demographics. There is a long-term economic issue, which is about not cannibalising your audience, but which hasn’t been evidenced as much of an issue thus far. Distributors have, on the whole, been enthusiastic about the model as success has been seen in the Netherlands, Austria, Germany, and Belgium, with Sweden due to launch the Cineville model next.
Collaborate to Innovate is a ground-breaking model and fund from Europa Cinemas that has supported many of these iterations and adaptations of the Cineville model from the Netherlands as it launched in the above mentioned new markets. The fund allows you to adapt and change according to local needs and is essential for developing new projects in new geographic locations. “Someone has already done this,” Gubbins said, “[and] the people who have gone before want to collaborate and share with you. In each case, what we’ve found is that the fear factor is reduced owing to that support.”
“Not only is Cineville an extraordinary achievement, it’s extraordinarily transferrable and can be adapted to your area,” Gubbins said. He also pointed to the Network’s new initiative of Boot Camps. “Differences in marketing and technology mean there may be skills development needs, but the new Boot Camps initiative from Europa Cinemas also enables you to build your skills and engage with staff training and to work with each other,” he said.
Musumeci spoke about the updating and upgrading marketing processes workshop and said that what they hit on was the significance of an organisation’s identity and how its workflows function. “External communication has a lot to do with those two factors and is so much more than just having a good night out,” she said. “Communication is unavoidable: it’s both what’s intentional and unintentional. What a brand is, is a story,” Musumeci emphasised, pointing to an instance of speakers at the conference having learnt from each other and been inspired by each other’s presentations at past conferences. Taking time to understand your mission, she said, what your stand for and working towards clarity will ultimately save on resources, especially when time has proved to be the most important and scarce resource and when budget is an issue. “It is imperative that organisations create the most effective workflows and processes to ensure that everyone buys into the mission as a collective,” she said.
Some tools can be difficult to get into and AI came up as a daunting but useful tool; some presentations at the conference were even generated with the use of AI. Instead of being scared of it, we might like to think about how we can make it work for us and how it can bolster our skills rather than replace us. Using AI for the more functional elements of our work that are time consuming could then free us up to be more creative and innovative in our work. AI can help us in many ways but will still need a human corrective.
“Cinemas are not just containers for content,” Musumeci said, “they should be content-generators; incubators for ideas and debates; and are powerful spaces because they are collective spaces.”
Technology, Michael Gubbins said, will increasingly enable people who are feeling isolated to come back into cinemas. “We have been hearing that people are coming back to cinemas – [but] there is an aging population,” Gubbins said, and taking care to be more inclusive in our work is key if we want to engage a wide range of diverse audiences with diverse needs.
“People don’t want to give up on cinema so cinema can’t give up on them,” he said.
In an environment where costs are increasing, time is a scarcity and making inroads to environmental sustainability, and to improving access and inclusion in venues can feel like a huge challenge, we are seeing cinemas find ways to add-on to their programmes. It is incredibly difficult and a number of projects in these spaces tend to be one-offs. “Support tends to be for one-off projects,” Gubbins said, “but the impetus from the network is to integrate these ideas into your work. You need to be able to do something; but it’s a step-by-step processes that needs to be integrated. And that is not small in the aggregate. Sharing and collaborating will help you to grow,” he concluded.
Finally, we have a task: the positive and the negative that drives the conference is that “everyone wants cinema,” these, Gubbins said, are what the various surveys and research presented shows. Every demographic wants the cinema and what Ben Luxford from the BFI was saying is that it’s a “special treat” for many – a form of ‘escapism’ for ‘special occasions’. “But the dichotomy doesn’t need to be so wide between the “challenging” cinema and the escapism,” Gubbins said, “The reality is going into a darkened room with strangers to watch images on a giant screen, which is an escape in itself. Escapism is already engaging with a world that isn’t your world.”
Ultimately, we are competing for time, so we need awareness and need to build that awareness. “Data,” Gubbins said, “is the tool we need to use,” whether that’s big data or more anecdotal and conversational or observational data. “We’ve heard about partnerships, engaging our audiences, knowing our audiences and that everyone here is doing really exciting things but,” Gubbins said, “if everything is an event, it’s very tiring.” Taking care of staff is as important as taking care of the audience in building sustainable communities in our cinemas. “The challenges change and we need to adapt to those realities but that adaptation has always happened. “You need a mixture of passion, workflow logistics and self care,” Gubbins said, “our job, in terms of curation, and in relation to the audience, is to turn the treat – if it is a treat – into a habit. All of that is in engagement… It’s an active process.”
Photos courtesy of Gediminas Gražys.