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OPERATORS Italy

Art house vs. multi-screens

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Art house cinemas have been shown to be an essential part of cinematographic distribution in Italy. The data has emerged in a survey of the market published in the ‘Giornale dello Spettacolo’, which has shown that according to the type of film, the results at the art-house box office can even be better than those registered for the same film shown in a multi-screen cinema. The research cites 2 excellent examples: the first is the German film Good Bye Lenin which registered an audience of more than 135,000 at art-house cinemas, whereas when it was screened in the multi-screen cinemas it didn’t register an audience greater than 20,000, in spite of the number of days it was shown, which were more than the programming at the art house cinemas.
The other example was the film by Marco Bellocchio, Good Morning, Night. It was distributed in a total of 159 prints, 48 of which were shown at art house cinemas, 58 at multi-screens and 53 in single screen or traditional multi-screen cinemas. The figures recorded went against the expected tendency to favour large scale or traditional multi-screens: the art-house cinema audience was 194,000 as opposed to the 158,000 for the traditional multi-screen cinemas (and single screen theatres) and 119,000 for the new style multi-screens.

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The conclusion that can be reached is that even though the large multi-screens do well for the commercial exploitation of spectacular or popular films, they are considerably weak in their promotion of author-led films, as opposed to the art house cinemas, which arouse the curiosity of the audience, showing unknown or little known productions.
The issue will be discussed further during the next series of Art house meetings organised by FICE in Ravenna on October 15 to 17.

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(Translated from Italian)

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