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DISTRIBUTION France

Transition to digital: Pyramide sounds alarm

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A negative opinion was delivered at the start of February by the Competition Authority on the National Film and Moving Image Centre - CNC’s project for a mutualisation fund aimed at helping French cinemas equip themselves with digital technology, alongside existing funding mechanisms on the market. Eric Lagesse, head of Pyramide Distribution, expresses his concern about this situation.

Cineuropa: Will digital projection be a source of savings for independent distributors?
Eric Lagesse: Not at all. It will benefit those who release films on 700 prints, which are then swept up and hardly budge from theatres. Independent distributors have a reasonable number of prints, which they then circulate. The intention of the CNC’s mutualisation fund was to set up a group including a large proportion of theatres. We would have gained access to it by paying a Virtual Print Fee (VPF) per print and afterwards the film could have moved round extensively, from theatre to theatre, as much as we liked. This is how we work and garner admissions.

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After the Competition Authority’s negative opinion – third-party investors considered it unfair competition due to the public intervention of the CNC – we’re back to the shocking proposal from third-party investors: every time we move theatre, we’ll pay a VPF: €600 to get into one theatre, €300 two weeks later to get into another, €200 one week later for a third theatre, and so forth. In the end, the print would cost us between €1,600-1,800. We can’t afford this price and producers will also suffer indirectly.

What would the consequences be for film circulation?
VPF is based on a principle of solidarity. Distributors pledge to pay a VPF of around €600-650 over a seven-year period, as well as transport, i.e. the current average cost of a print, or thereabouts. Our release costs are not going to decrease for seven years: the money will help theatres equip themselves with digital.
But with this third-party investor system, we’ll also be fattening the coffers of Arts Alliance and Ymagis. And there will be theatres to which we no longer go, which no longer have any films, because distributors will not be willing to re-pay €200 every time the print circulates.

If the authorities, the Minister of Culture and the CNC let this happen, we’ll have a real problem in terms of cultural diversity. We’ll end up doing the same as the Americans, releasing a film in one theatre, maybe a second, then we’ll stop circulation of the print. It will spell the end for directors like Tony Gatlif, Philippe Faucon and all those auteurs whose work circulates in theatres over one, two or three months. And their films will no longer amass 100,000 admissions, but 50,000.

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(Translated from French)

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