Reinventing movies theatre spaces

Matteo La Porta

All too often, I read about cinemas closing down, meeting places, special architectural spaces, or even former theatres. Only in Rome, about fifty cinemas have closed in the last ten years. But the cinema, as we enjoy it today, perhaps not for the older generations, is no longer just the cinema.

Since the time of the Lumiére, the cinema economy and the places of it have evolved and changed over time, with the advent of television up to on-demand. Cinema as a place of reality and imagination reinvents itself, it is in its nature.

What is needed in our days is a greater understanding of the spectator's enjoyment of the device, and the creation and reinvention of new places full of vital culture. The importance of film culture, changes society itself and the circle of all audiovisual materials. Through the society itself, which evolves continuously, the medium also needs new cultural and recreational spaces. Places for all, sustainable places that generate economy from culture itself.

The public space for sharing the cinema device, which requires a screen, a projector, speakers and possibly microphones and chairs, does not need a particularly large space. The re-use of open, unused spaces creates a kind of economy, a reconditioning of an unused space. In the last ten years we have seen film projections everywhere: from Fjords in Norway, to cinema in the middle of the sea, to projections on buildings in Tokyo, to silent cinema raging in every city or street, as Rome or Paris.

Thanks to the internet, to all the on-demand platforms, new projections can take place anywhere and at any time of day or night. The film product itself can be considered a documentation, of a fictional or non-fictional story, of an imaginary, depending on the genre or duration. It is a story, and each story is worth telling and worth listening to. Those who make films know that making a film is more than just images, and many people benefit from that.

There is a certain need (especially in the big cities) to reclaim places and spaces and to bring people out into the streets to get to know each other and, why not, to see a good film. And it is precisely through participation that we get to witness directly the cultural importance of the media. Meeting the protagonists, having a debate in a public and safe place, create the right motivations for the machine to go in a univocal direction.

It is evident that the direct testimony with the protagonists of a film, which can be had more easily during a festival or a special public meeting, as in an arena, creates more debate (not in all spaces, the best known festivals from this point of view are the least sustainable and the most closed) and is therefore much more direct than seeing a film at home or reading a critical article online. The "cinema" as a place itself is already a place of witnessing. The cinematic space in visual theory is very often used in films themselves as a metanarrative storytelling that creates affirmation of the cinema itself within a story. Cinema creates and modifies itself through stories. The space that is used for a projection, which is not a cinema or a festival, but an outdoor projection or an unusual place, becomes an integral part of the projection itself.

The choice of an audience to move into that place brings meaning and the place becomes meaningful itself: new space, and new cinematic testimony are born so. The participation in the space is the key that creates culture, a collective visual culture. So there is more than one historical and cultural reason why I have to get off the couch and go to a show or a cinema.

In what way then does the space offer and entrust to the viewer the role of witness? The spectator is not simply a spectator, but becomes a witness and a witness to the place and the cinema space itself. Realising that cinema is place, and place is cinema: both inside the image and outside, creates a difference between the place and the witness where it is enjoyed.

The future of cinema space can therefore be seen in a broader way. Floating theatres, open-air theatres, smart theatres, so that films of all genres can be enjoyed anywhere.

The need for fluid, concrete spaces, for a new vision and a new sociality, outside the pattern of Netflixian binge watching at home that locks us in, creating a massive subculture of hype and trends. There is a need for a real economy, one that makes both the economy and a space for debate, reading and critiquing the image go round.

Reinventing the cinema space means finding new spaces for sharing, testimony and community. There is no shortage of filmmakers: in this way, film makers and good film writers can increasingly interconnect age. The cinematic territory evolves together with the audience, which is the same as those who google a film, or watch a film at home. But it is the space and the cinema presence that create all that this reinvention needs to bring new life.

Creating new, more sustainable cinemas that can be spaces not only for screenings. Intercultural spaces are the places that most attract people and keep the cinema machine going, which also because of Covid 19 continues to close. Imagining new spaces and places, having small neighbourhood screenings, to large travelling festivals, meeting people and filmmakers. Having a more fluid and less pressured space is an ingredient that is needed to bring cinema more and more into the territory.

In conclusion, it is ordinary people who create the imaginary cinema, set it up, take it to the streets, squares, parks, aeroplanes and reinvent all kinds of architecture and vision. In line with the landscape and the same stasis that creates a darkened hall, where a child's gaze can get lost among the tall grass or the steps of an ancient theatre.