Art house cinema, as with the publics’ interest in Botox injections, has been dying for a while. Haven’t you noticed? And, while the bigger cinemas are clearly responsible for this happening, some might say that the art house cinemas themselves have brought this on themselves. It’s not their fault, of course. They are just doing what they’ve always done. And that’s precisely the problem. It used to work, but now it doesn’t.
In Great Britain, which is hardly the most versed country language and culture-wise, art house cinema has always struggled hard and true to its cause. Favouring the showing of the smaller, more culturally diverse movies of the world (as opposed to the films which the general public desire) has always meant that art house has had a small but determined following. But everything has changed with the advent of downloading. While the bigger cinemas have enjoyed a constant success, the availability of movies via the world-wide-web has led to a decrease in visitors to both venues, affecting art house venues substantially more. But, putting all that aside, there is a bigger problem: generally speaking, art house venues just aren’t run as efficiently as the bigger places. And not only do they show less films that people really want to see, but they are just as expensive as the larger establishments.
If art house cinema is going to survive in this country then drastic changes will need to be made: incentives need to happen to encourage people back in, to discover what is on offer. It remains to be seen if this will happen, or if they will go the way of many pubs, becoming obsolete and part of a once thriving industry.
