Before the success of the Cinema in the square in the heart of Rome but also in the suburbs, then the primacy conquered by Troisi Cinema, awarded a few weeks ago as the hall with the highest number of spectators in Italy (over 60) of the 2021-2022 season. The boys and girls of the Piccolo America Association, which a few days ago became Little America Foundation, seem to have found the right recipe to bring viewers back to the cinema. What's their secret? We asked Valerio Carocci, president of Piccolo America, who has contributed to the growth of the project since its origins, which began with the battle to safeguard Cinema America.
One year after its opening, the Sala Troisi in Rome won the Italian Cinema Golden Ticket, promoted by Anec and Anica at the Sorrento Cinema Days, for having obtained the highest number of spectators of the 2021-2022 film season in the absolute category of single-screen cinemas with over 60 admissions: it is a result in stark contrast with respect to other Italian cinemas. What is the key to your success?
«The project stems from the conception of a place that can be used not only for the cinematographic work, but also as an all-round cultural space. There are a foyer-bar, a terrace and a multifunctional space for exhibitions and events. The presence of a study room open twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year and completely free was also important for the results we have achieved this year. It is the only study room in Italy not linked to a university, you can enter even at three in the morning and leave at six in the morning as if it were an emergency room. It is always accessible. Features like this create a great sense of community around the hall and help build a solid relationship with the local area. At the same time, it is a room that programs from morning to evening, every day».
Show different films and at different times…
«Exactly, there is a matinee at 11 in the middle of the week with first run films, while on Saturdays and Sundays there are retrospective films. Attending a first-run film costs 7 euros, a fairly low figure compared to the average price of cinema tickets. We also offer the possibility of making a subscription at a price of 45 euros for 10 entries, 4,5 euros each. On Saturdays and Sundays, attending the retrospectives costs 3 euros. The choice is therefore very wide, there is a diversification of the possibility of accessing the big screen and the cultural offer that is aimed at all social classes of the city. The other element to consider is the programming: we show ten to eleven different films in a week. There is multiprogramming and a huge variety on offer. Furthermore, many of the events are accompanied by a strong communication and marketing activity on social networks that we have been carrying out for years, since we started the Cinema in Piazza adventure. A related culinary offer is often built on the basis of the projection in the foyer. For example, for Woody Allen's films we organized an American brunch or for Miyazaki's films a Japanese breakfast».
In addition to the winning formula of the Sala Troisi, don't you think that the long wave of the Cinema in Piazza that you organize every year in Rome is also the basis of your success?
«Cinema in the Piazza is a project in which we have invested a lot. It is a large open-air event in three squares located in the center and on the outskirts of Rome: San Cosimato in Trastevere, the Casale della Cervelletta in Tor Sapienza and Monte Ciocci in the Aurelia. These are 60-day summer screenings with free admission that have reaccustomed the public to enjoying cinema on the big screen. The same audience that then came to the Sala Troisi and paid for the ticket. We have double the induced compared to the rest of the industry, deriving both from the free summer screenings and from Cinema Troisi».
Is the identikit of the Sala Troisi audience the same as that of the Cinema in Piazza?
“We can say that they have mixed and strengthened each other. In general, at Troisi we have a young and active audience: 70 percent are under 35 and of this 70 percent, 60 percent are under 29 years old. These figures go against the trend of the traditional type of audience that goes to see a film in cinemas. Since we opened the Cinema Troisi we have also noticed a strong turnover within the Cinema in Piazza, but also a coherence of audience that from the first experience has followed us into the second. We can say that they are two projects that have positively infected each other».
Do you plan to attract an older audience to the cinema as well?
«Yes, we aim at a heterogeneous and varied audience like programming. We think of every type of audience, of taste, but also of those who usually don't go to the cinema. In recent years exhibitors and distributors have worked to divide up that portion of the audience that went to the cinema. We started from a different assumption: we work on those who don't go to the cinema and we encourage them to come. We train and create spectators who didn't exist before, so much so that our theater is frequented by a different audience than the one that goes to neighboring theaters. With many films, such as "Drought" by Paolo Virzì, both we and the Cinema Greenwich in Testaccio have had excellent results. We have attracted a younger audience, they have more adults, but the two cinemas have been complementary in the area. Then obviously the age of the audience also depends on the type of screening we offer».
And then there are the personalities of culture and cinema who have never failed to give you their support…
«We are an experience that arises from the battle to safeguard a cinema that was Cinema America. It is in that context that a relationship with these personalities was created and it is on the promotion of their retrospective films and not only on the first visions that we have built bonds. Because in the Cinema in Piazza they came to show films that many others had forgotten. This baggage of relationship has continued to grow, it has become international and now we are also developing it within a first-run programming with national and international guests at Cinema Troisi».
There has been a bitter dispute between cinemas and streaming for some time now: your success shows that, if the right formula is right, it is by no means certain that the future of cinema will only have streaming and that cinemas can still do their part?
«We don't think that streaming is a problem if cinemas have comfortable seats, if the viewing quality is high, if the cinema becomes a community and collective space. Of course, if cinemas are managed like the Italian post office and become just a space where you go, buy a ticket, sit alone and then leave, then you might as well stay at home. It is the community vision, the sense of belonging to the territory, the identity one feels when participating in a film viewing within a cultural space that cannot be defeated by a platform. Cinema will resist if there is a way to work with ever greater creativity. We don't have the presumption of thinking that we have found the perfect recipe or solution, we work every day to improve it because, even if we have become the cinema with the most spectators in Italy, we always need to raise the bar. Once upon a time, however, cinema had a much higher number of spectators, but if you work well, even if you go in different directions, it is possible to survive streaming platforms».
