KULTURA / CULTURE
EXPERIENCE CINEMA The cinematic spectacle’s great comeback Hollywood is today realising that streaming didn’t destroy audiences’ desire to go to the cinema – only “normal” cinema experiences, while the audience is still eager for spectacle T hroughout the majori- ty of the 2010s, the buzz around Hollywood was that cinemas were out- dated institutions, expen- sive relics waging a long-lost war against comfort. Streaming promised infinite access, personalised algorithms and in- stant availability. And then something unexpected happened: audiences start- ed returning to movie theatres – not necessarily for the films alone, but for the actual experience of going to the cinema.
Around Los Angeles and across the U.S., historic movie theatres that were once considered endangered are sudden- ly being restored, rebranded and cultur- ally rediscovered. Studios and cinema chains are today selling film screenings as “events” through premium IMAX pro- jections, 70mm screenings, exclusive premieres, specially created repertoires, nostalgia spectacles and luxurious cin- ematic experiences. Cinemas are sur- viving and thriving today by offering something that’s simply impossible to digitalise: scale, atmosphere, architec- ture, social ritual, exclusivity and collec- tive emotional energy. Watching a film in the comfort of the home might be practical, but practicality rarely creates memories. Event cinema does. That’s why special cinema screen- ings have exploded in popularity among younger audiences who were thought to have abandoned cinemas. Many mem- bers of generation Z didn’t discover film culture through new films, but through revival screenings of classics that they’d never seen before in the cinema, such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Godfather, Psycho, The Exorcist, Sunset Boule- vard etc. In an effort to attract true cinephiles, cinemas often offer retro- spectives of directors like David Lynch, Christopher Nolan, Alfred Hitchcock or Wong Karwai, shown on celluloid as op-
posed to digital projections.
Meanwhile, these venues have evolved into social ecosystems. Q&A talks, film auteur guest appearanc- es, themed watch marathons, roof- top screenings, collectible merchan- dise, secret screenings and carefully curated smaller festivals that create an active community of viewers. Los Angeles is the epicentre of this trans- formation, as a city that still treats film like mythology. Its cinemas are physical monuments to the cultural memory of Hollywood. In this era of streaming, cinemas survive thanks to their emotional irreplaceability. No- where is this phenomenon more evi- dent than in Los Angeles, where the city’s traditional movie theatres have become cultural cathedrals of sorts for cinephiles. What once seemed like nostalgic preservation today looks more and more like the future of the cinematic experience. The quality of screenings has suddenly become in- separable from the cultural value of film itself. Modern audiences can watch al- most anything at home, but they can’t reproduce the collective tension of a sold-out screening, the grandiosity of a restored movie theatre or the pres- tige associated with watching a film in its “true” format.
58 | Filmovi » Movies
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator