Cinema and Digital Turn: A Disrupting Scenario ? a Comparative Approach (USA/Quebec/France)
The digital turn in cinema diffusion corresponds to the dematerialisation of traditional 35 mm prints to digital film copies. This new technology begun to spread worldwide in the 2000’s when US major film studios edicted the “DCI Specification” which describes overall system requirements for digital cinema. This unprecedented rupture with the way of showing films since the beginnings of the Cinematographer raised some interrogations about the ability of cinema diffusion sectors to survive this technological revolution. Scholars and professionals proposed several and often contradictory scenarios. Some of them forecast a significant increase in opportunities for the release of all types of movies and for all kinds of movie theatres (multiplexes and independent movie theatres), thereby promoting cultural diversity. Others predict an increase in the industrial concentration of the sector, allowing a wider diffusion to the highest budgets films and significant economies of scale for the multiplex companies. As a consequence, public policies designed to monitor the digital turn incrementally emerged in the last 10 years.
If the US represent the source of this technological innovation, the effects of the digital turn depend very strongly on the national configurations in which it develops, such as the film industry structure, the independent actors’ capacity for mobilization, and, above all, the importance of State intervention in industrial and cultural matters. For instance, a two-tier system progressively emerged in the USA with DCI- equipped movie theatres on the one hand and smaller cinemas that could not afford this new technology on the other hand. In Europe, France has converted its cinemas through strong public support and has maintained – so far – the diversity of cinematographic offer that existed in the 35 mm era, although the current regulation on digital diffusion hesitates between several rationales, notably constrained by the European Commission recommendations. In Italy or Spain, many movie theatres were forced to close down as they could not afford such investments in a context of public expenditures decrease. In Great Britain, public funding was distributed on the basis of the cultural quality of the movie programming.
This presentation aims to highlight the role of public policies in the digitalisation of movie theatres screens. The current compromise, still not stabilized, reveals concurrent principles of public action legitimacy in this field, between free play of competition, promotion of cultural diversity, or support to independent diffusion companies. It also aims at tackling a topic that would be less discussed than the platforms emergence one, despite its material aspects, which imply also important symbolic dimensions (as shown, for instance, by the importance given by Tarantino to the 70mm projection for his latest movie, The Hateful Eights). This proposal relies on a field study (archives and interviews) that I am currently carrying out in the US, Québec and France, in order to analyse how, and in which extent, digital turn in the movie diffusion challenges the market coordination in this sector.