The boom in streaming services is usually cited as the main cause of the cinema crisis. Hardly anyone would disagree, especially not after the pandemic years on the couch. That cinemas – for the generation of sofa surfers: these are buildings where you have to go and sit down in street clothes in a dark room, to watch a film on a huge screen, side by side with strange people, sometimes munching nachos – that Current examples show that cinemas do not necessarily have to compete with video-on-demand providers.
In Munich, for example, there has recently been an offer that is intended to lure subscribers to a streaming service with free tickets to the cinema. That’s roughly as if there were vouchers for printed copies on top of the digital subscription to a daily newspaper (good idea actually).
It is about the cult and art film streamer “Mubi”, which describes itself as the “largest art house platform in the world” and claims to have more than twelve million members in 190 countries (Netflix: more than 220 million). Here, as a member, you can watch Berlinale or Cannes highlights such as Marie Kreutzer’s Sisi interpretation “Corsage” (2022) or catch up on Claude Chabrol films from the seventies. There are around 1100 different films to choose from, with different language and subtitle options. In order to strengthen the cinemas, some time should deliberately pass between the cinema and online exploitation.
The Munich Dok-Fest also remains dual
In addition, Mubi approaches cinemas in a special way, sending its own subscribers to them. One ticket for a curated current film is given away per member and week. The other day it was Christian Petzold’s wonderful drama “Red Sky”, and Brandon Cronenberg’s thriller “Infinity Pool” with Alexander Skarsgård is currently attracting attention. With the “Mubi Go” app you can get the QR code, which becomes your admission ticket in the cinema, provided there are seats available. City, Arena, Monopol, Rio and Neues Maxim are participating in Munich.
The Munich Documentary Film Festival, which begins on May 3, continues to rely on the dual solution established during the pandemic, which means that visitors can watch most of the 130 films both in the partner cinemas and online on their own laptops, with a slight time lag (3 . to May 14th in the cinema, May 8th to 21st “@Home”, as it is called at the Dok-Fest). The opposite of either-or is both-and, and that’s nice.