Journalist: Will there be some international presence?
Daniel Maron: Normally there is, but this edition is quite limited by travel and the effects of the pandemic. This caused that all the fairs worked differently. Costs also had an influence: we were all visited by all of the cinemas in Uruguay, Paraguay, both exhibitors and distributors, and that is diminished. Later, for a matter of international policy that Disney has of not participating in any event, it will not do so in Vista either, although national majors do appear, such as Patagonik, which will screen its great title in January, and other international majors will come. , Warner, Universal, Paramount and Sony. There will also be another major national distributor, Impacto, which has many new French cinema releases.
Q .: Good deals have always been closed at Vista. How is the situation now with the issue of imports?
D.M.: Before the pandemic, large companies in the country and abroad either closed businesses here, or started and concluded them later. Companies like Barco, Dolby, projection, sound, are firms that were always present, beyond the fact that now the import is blocked. But anyway, for me that is nothing new. I’m used to it, but it is difficult to put together an international event, which has to be seductive, so that firms and producers come to present their novelties, and then everything becomes complicated at the time of doing the operations. At the time of digitization it was really difficult to import new projectors, because the celluloid ones had obviously become obsolete.
Q .: It’s like showing the brochure and not being able to sell the product.
D. M.: Well, that is why that year there is no fair but rather meetings, only streaming, not only because the product cannot be imported, because sometimes there is a sample of the same product, but because after the pandemic we were not yet sure of being able to do so. Just four months ago there were sanitary restrictions and we did not know how we were going to be at the end of the year; and secondly, due to pocket restrictions: the economy was badly hit, especially on the cinema side.
Q .: Last week we published a report on Pablo Galli from Patagonik, from Mar del Plata, where he said that just as people had returned to the theater, they had not yet returned to the cinema. And that although they have a back to save high-production films for a while, they cannot do it indefinitely because they expire, as if it were food. That is why they either release the same, at a loss, or they go to the platform.
D.M.: The cinema will never be replaced by staying at home, but things have changed. It is absurd to continue doing the calculation of the type of middle class family that goes to the movies, to eat out, who buys candy and even pays for parking. That no longer exists. Today everyone is looking for the discount day, the 2×1 coupon, etc. Thinking otherwise is old-fashioned. Many of the people who went to the movies, older people, are still scared by the pandemic, and because in many cases they are in a war economy. Do not tell me that the platform kills the cinema because it is not like that. Let’s see a streaming like Disney +, which has at most one premiere per week. Does that kill cinema? And the platforms, as sanitary conditions improve, have fallen. And there is also a satiety.
Q: Did Vista ever include product for platforms, devices?
D.M.: No, it’s all for the movies. It is almost an ethical discussion that we had with many. I refuse to allow platforms to participate in Vista, unless they also premiere in cinema, like Netflix.
P .: It’s the same position in Cannes.
D.M.: It is to side with the distributor. If someone goes out simultaneously and charges it, that’s fine. But if it is free on the platform it is killing the dealer.
P .: This year Vista physically meets with Ventana Sur, the great film market organized by Incaa.
D.M.: Yes, we had been talking to Bernardo Bergeret for a long time to do it together. They moved from the CCK to the Cinemark in Puerto Madero, and of course there is synergy. Ventana Sur is a huge market, although it is also restricted as everything is, globally
Q. What’s next? Once the celluloid was finished came the digital, the 4K and later?
D.M.: First we are going to have an impasse before a novelty. A time where technologies that are not yet used will be used. Because they are two divergent paths: although technology never stops evolving, the industry is hard hit to invest money in new devices, in new audiovisual sensations. Cinematography was never a fast-moving industry: we had the same projector for a hundred years. Yes it may be that many rooms make innovations on what they did not have, improve the sound, the armchair, but with current technology. At this time, making a technological revolution that forces cinemas, as was digitization, I do not see it as viable if it is not through a leasing system, that someone finances it. There was such a project before the pandemic with projectors, but it was left to nothing because of the pandemic. Let us remember that Argentina was the last country in the world to join digitization. Abroad there are projectors that are already 20 years old, here none. Everyone has half or a little more because digitization began here in 2009, with the premiere of “Avatar”, which was the first to be screened digitally.
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