User: Seag

Seag

July 14

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I wanted to chime in with a bit of an outside perspective, as someone who recently started going to the movie theater very often. For reference, I have moved around Europe a lot in the last few...

I wanted to chime in with a bit of an outside perspective, as someone who recently started going to the movie theater very often. For reference, I have moved around Europe a lot in the last few years, but I am currently living in Spain.

Before coming here, I rarely ever went to the cinema, if not for big blockbuster movies which felt like they had to be watched on the big screen. The experience was never bad per se, but never felt worth the cost, which between snacks and tickets was never below ~25€.

Now, I live close to an old school privately run movie theater. Think flat seats with the screen high up so that everyone can see type of old school. I first started going there because every Monday they sell tickets to any movie for 5€ each, so with my girlfriend we made it a tradition to watch something every Monday night. Why not, right?

While the offer brought is in, it's the experience that kept us there. The theater has a lot of screens, albeit most rooms are quite small. This gives it huge variety, screening both blockbusters and small indie movies from all over; furthermore, movies stay at the theater for longer, giving you more chances to check them out. All the movies are in their original language with Spanish captions. The lobby is full of memorabilia such as props from movies, rare DVDs that you can purchase, and black and white printed "movie cards" for every movie being screened with a description, an interview to the director/actors and/or some reviews that you can take home. The place just seeps passion for cinema from every corner.

And that passion is contagious. Nowadays we never miss our one movie of the week, and even if we don't go on a Monday, we don't mind paying the full ticket price (which is still affordable compared to big cinemas). We often go more than once a week. We are looking to start participating in their weekly sessions where they screen older movies and then host a discussion about them with some (included) wine and snacks. Our house is filled with movie cards, which lead us to often reminisce and talk about the movies that we watched this year. We watched movies that we would probably never have without this, and those became some of our favorites for the year (an example: Past Lives, great movie from last year!).

All of this to say, I think a lot of it is down to the theater itself. For me it made all the difference. This theater is one of my favorite things about living here, and I soon want to start donating to support it. It feels like a little oasis of passion and appreciation for the art, and has made me truly passionate about movies, which have never before occupied so much of my thoughts.

I don't know how the economics behind all of it work exactly, but to me this is proof that it is still possible (at least here) to still make the movie theater an unforgettable and unreplaceable experience, when passion, and not profit, is what is fuelling the project. The latter will follow suit (and again, I am proof of that - never in my life have I spent so much money on a movie theater before!).

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