Critics and naysayers alike have been crying about the death of film for decades now. Most have scoffed as nothing more than silly doomsday talk. Well, now here we are in the middle of 2012, and it looks as if all those doomsdayers were right after all.
With the announcement by Fox late last year that they would stop producing film by the end of this year, and with all the other studios running after them like lemmings toward the proverbial cliff, it would seem that film truly is dead – or at least in its death throes, nearing its final hour.
Beginning at the start of 2013, studios will begin exclusively distributing movies digitally. No more film will be made available to movie theatres. Many of the bigger cinema chains have already begun the forced transfer over to digital, and in order to stay alive and stay in business, all the smaller ones must now follow suit. What does this mean for small indie cinemas such as New Cumberland’s West Shore Theatre, Annville’s Allen Theatre and Harrisburg’s very own bastion of foreign and indie movies, Midtown Cinema? Well, it means making the costly convergence to digital projection (estimates are well into six figures) or closing their doors forever.
That’s right my faithful readers and true believers – either these theatres make the transfer or they will cease to exist. No more film prints will be available. All those ancient whirring film projectors will be sent off to the scrap piles to make room for either new digital replacements or locked doors and empty seats. There is no third option. No plan C. This is do or die, folks. Movies will go on, but the way they are distributed and shown will change forever. Conservative estimates are that 20 to 25 percent of independent cinemas will be forced to close their doors by year’s end. It is dire indeed.
Not only will this put many small businesses out of business and force many to look for other employment, it will also be a blow to you, the filmgoer. Many indie cinemas, like the aforementioned Midtown Cinema, are often the only places one can see foreign films or documentaries, and, other than those lucky enough to be nominated for Oscars, American independent productions. The remaining multiplexes, all corporate owned, will not be showing such fare at their overpriced and overstuffed facilities. The days of the best and brightest in foreign and indie cinema making it to central PA may just be over, if these places fail to survive.
That’s why we as filmgoers must try to save these smaller art house cinemas before it is too late. How? It’s simple. Between your multiplex outings this summer to see things like “The Dark Knight Rises” or “The Amazing Spider-Man,” check out some smaller, and oft-times more intriguing, fare at a place like The Allen or Midtown Cinema or The West Shore Theatre. And when something like Wes Anderson’s “Moonrise Kingdom” or Woody Allen’s “To Rome with Love” come to our shores, don’t see it at a faceless corporate multiplex. See it at an independent cinema. And do it before it is too late.
Trivia Time: In our last issue, you were asked to name the only other French director, prior to Michel Hazanivicius this past year, to win the Best Director Oscar. That would have been the Parisian-born Roman Polanski, who took home the prize in 2002 for The Pianist. And now here is this month’s question. What was the first movie to be made and distributed digitally? See you next time with the answer.
