Traditionally, cinemas have been the primary place where audience and films meet, but their power has eroded with the rise of TV and VOD – what if there were new ways for audiences to experience films? What if we imagined a true cinema of the future, one that is more sustainable, more adaptable than our struggling current model?
In order to provoke a disruptive change in thinking about the cinema setting, Cinemathon organized a Design Thinking Workshop in collaboration with design and innovation consultancy firm Ideo in early April 2016. Over two intense, productive days, international participants worked in interdisciplinary teams to develop prototypes for the cinema-going experience of the future.
The 25 participants chosen for this workshop were highly qualified business strategists, technologists, architects, festival organizers, designers, artists, food entrepreneurs, and VR creators, to name but a few of their professional roles. They brought with them years of expertise working at Sony, Arri, Deutsche Telekom, Oxera, Studiocanal, Arte, SVT, CPH:DOX, MK2, IDFA, BuzzFeed, MIT media lab, among many other innovators.
They were united by Cinemathon, a Berlin-based open-source initiative translating innovation strategies from the start-up world to the film industry. Cinemathon was founded in December 2015 by producers Susanne Marian and Erwin M. Schmidt.
The premiere presentation of these prototypes will take place in Cannes on Saturday May 14 from 10 am to 12pm @ NEXT Conference Room, Pavilion 201, Village International, within the NEXT program, “the hub for creative business and visionary thinking” of the Marché du Film. Attendees are invited to discuss the prototypes and respond to Cinemathon’s call for a future cinema.
Erwin Schmidt: “We see a real need for renewal and change in the film industry; for most films produced in the EU the old business models no longer work. Yet the cataclysmic changes the industry is currently undergoing also offer great new possibilities to rethink the current value chain and to develop new business models. Cinemathon is part of this rethinking process.”
Susanne Marian: “In an age where virtual and real reality converge, people have different expectations of whatever they do in REAL reality – it needs to feel different, it needs to connect them to other people in a different way, it needs to be a special EXPERIENCE. We are interested in translating this desire to the cinema setting.”
To share the thought-provoking results of the workshop, Cinemathon will present the prototypes in a series of international and national events – at festivals, conferences, and in feedback sessions hosted by the partners of the project.
The Cinemathon Workshop is financed in a private/public partnership and is supported by: 3IT Innovation Center, Arri, Arte, Avid, Berliner Senat, BosePark Produktion, CinemaxX, Coca Cola, Deutsche Filmakademie, Filmförderungsanstalt, Filmförderung Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein, HDF Kino, Honig Studios, Lab Concepts, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, Mer Film, Mischief, Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung, Neue Road Movies, Rommel Film, Scholz & Friends, Science2Public, Union Internationales des Cinémas, UniFrance, Verband Deutscher Filmproduzenten, and the Wim Wenders Stiftung.
The presentation at NEXT is supported by Creative Europe Desk Berlin-Brandenburg.
The website of Cinemathon will go online during the presentation on May 14.