What will remain of French cinema after the pandemic ? The figures published by the National Center of French Cinema promise many sleepless nights to those who until now have resisted the rolling mill of the American “majors” and globalization, thanks to an original policy of support for creation. For a long time now, there has been no Italian, German or Spanish cinema, even if there are still some great Italian, German, Spanish directors …
The balance sheet for 2020 speaks for itself: 65.10 million admissions, against 213.3 the previous year, a drop of 69.4%. A figure to be related to the last six years when we counted, each time, more than 200 million spectators (the record dates from 1966 with 234.2 million).
The closure of the rooms imposed during the two confinements is all the more expensive as, in the meantime, only a third of the spectators returned, to the point that there was often only one screening per evening – without then talk about the effects of the curfew… During this time, the streaming platforms – starting with Netflix, Disney +, Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV… – were triumphant. Netflix has gained 27 million subscribers in 9 months to reach 195 million, while Disney + has collected 60 million (to reach 73.7 million a year after its launch).
A turning point could well be taking place, the one that bypasses the projection in the theater. Several French films have already taken the shortcut, including Bronx. At the World level, Disney made the choice to go out Mulan directly on its platform … However, the French exception is largely due to the allocation of part of the ticketing to support production.
Planetary profitability
If the films no longer come out on the big screen, not only the cinema network is in danger, but also production support, especially since the current system makes it possible to capture part of the revenue from the distribution in France of “blockbusters”. American. Admittedly, the transposition of the European SMA directive (audiovisual media services) will force platforms to invest 20 to 25% of their turnover in French and European creations (not just cinematographic). However, assuming the big bucks are not lacking, the question remains who holds the purse strings.
The platforms think in terms of the global market. As such, they can offer considerable budgets for profitable projects on a global scale. But, while the competition between them promises to be severe, the risk is great that this planetary profitability is their main criterion of selection. What will remain of auteur cinema linked to national or regional cultures?
What is at stake are our imaginations and their peculiarities, our unique ways of representing not only the world, but also our personal lives, our passions, our desires, our fears, our landscapes … What is threatened is is the possibility of an authentic “cultural biodiversity” (in which French cinema also plays a large part, through the interplay of international co-productions), as necessary as the preservation of species. It would be disastrous if one of the effects of the pandemic was to dynamise the means of resisting the emergence of a planetary “cultural fast food” where Americans and Chinese (as we have seen with Mulan carefully smoothed so as not to offend Beijing) will rule.
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