{"id":33920,"date":"2024-06-20T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-06-20T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.boxofficepro.com\/?p=33920"},"modified":"2024-06-23T13:47:56","modified_gmt":"2024-06-23T17:47:56","slug":"cineeurope-2024-unic-achievement-award-picturehouse-cinemas-clare-binns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.boxofficepro.com\/cineeurope-2024-unic-achievement-award-picturehouse-cinemas-clare-binns\/","title":{"rendered":"CineEurope 2024 UNIC Achievement Award: Picturehouse Cinemas\u2019 Clare Binns"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Clare Binns has contributed immeasurably to the culture of film in the U.K. As the managing director of Picturehouse Cinemas\u2014a chain of neighborhood theaters owned by exhibition giant Cineworld\u2014as well as its distribution arm, Picturehouse Entertainment, Binns and the rest of the Picturehouse family have introduced audiences to thought-provoking titles\u2014like <em>Anatomy of a Fall<\/em>, which Picturehouse Entertainment distributed in the U.K. \u2014in a comfortable, community-oriented cinema environment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For her service to the European cinema industry, Binns will receive the UNIC\u2019s Achievement Award at this year\u2019s CineEurope. \u201cWe are absolutely delighted to honor Clare at CineEurope 2024,\u201d said Phil Clapp, president of UNIC. \u201cThe award recognizes her incredible passion for the big screen, her outstanding career, and her key role in developing not just the U.K. cinema sector, but an influence that goes far beyond the boundaries of her home nation. Clare\u2019s contribution to cinema programming and audience development have been widely recognized, and her leadership continues to shape the industry.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In advance of this year\u2019s CineEurope, Binns took the time to speak with Boxoffice Pro about her thoughts on the state of the film industry today.<\/p>\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/share.transistor.fm\/e\/c8ad1192\" width=\"800px\" height=\"600px\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n\n\n<p><strong>Between the pandemic and the strikes, it\u2019s been a rough few years, but we\u2019re finally getting back to a more robust film schedule. Can you talk a bit about the importance of midrange titles as part of a well-rounded film slate? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Blockbusters are one thing, and small art house films are another. But there are absolutely those midrange films that cinemas need, and audiences do also. If you look at the way a director gets a career now\u2014take the example of Rose Glass, who started off with a small arthouse film, [2019\u2019s] <em>Saint Maud<\/em>, and now has made a bigger film, <em>Love Lies Bleeding<\/em>, which fits into that middle band. It\u2019s a way for directors to grow. It\u2019s a way for audiences to grow. It\u2019s a way for cinemas to have enough films and [to ensure] that there\u2019s something for everyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There\u2019s been a real loss of those midrange films, but I believe they\u2019re coming back. The writers\u2019 and directors\u2019 strikes obviously had an impact on that. A lot of those films that were canceled or delayed will be coming through in 2025. I believe we do need those films. Those films are out there. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>There was some concern after the pandemic arose that moviegoers would get used to watching midbudget movies on streaming. I think everyone\u2019s kind of realized that\u2019s not the case, that most movies that go directly to streaming platforms struggle to find long-term cultural relevance.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cinema has been through so much transition, from silents to sound, TV coming in, DVD coming in, digital coming in. It\u2019s been a constantly changing environment. What everybody knows is, people will always want to gather together to see films, to see theater, to see music. It\u2019s not the same [when you\u2019re at] home. Being at home is very nice, but it\u2019s a different experience. I\u2019m feeling very positive about the future of cinema. When you look at the big Hollywood directors working today, they\u2019ve always, by and large, come up by making small and midrange films. And directors make films to be seen in the cinema. That\u2019s where they want their films to be shown. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Those early, reputation-making films you see from directors are so important, but they\u2019re more difficult to market. The world of cinema marketing is going through such a change now, with severe downsizing of print publications and the rising importance of social media. How do you approach marketing some of those tougher titles?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Picturehouse has] a film distribution arm, and we have our cinemas. And we have our marketing team [that works with] both. There\u2019s much more cross-pollination with the marketing. We work very closely with distributors on smaller films. We have to find ways to reach our audiences directly, which we do. Of course, it would be great if we had huge budgets [to market] smaller films. But people are finding their information very differently than they did 10 or 15 years ago. Digital is just another way of being able to reach audiences. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What we\u2019re finding more and more is that repertory is becoming quite important because there are people who are in their 20s who have not seen a lot of the classic films in cinemas. There are audiences who want to see a Martin Scorsese film like <em>Taxi Driver<\/em> [in the cinema]\u2014or just a film they may have only ever seen on Netflix or Amazon. They actually want to come and see [it on] the big screen, and [that\u2019s why] we are showing probably more repertory films than we\u2019ve ever shown. Younger people want to see [older] films in cinemas, so we\u2019re making them available. You have to market them. You have to make sure that people know those films are out there, but there\u2019s a huge appetite for cinema among younger people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>It\u2019s refreshing. There\u2019s been all this hand-wringing about younger generations and getting them into cinemas, and it turns out they just want good movies.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Which has always been the case. That hasn\u2019t changed. You show good movies. You show them in a comfortable environment, on a nice, big screen. You can have as great an experience watching a film with 10 people at noon on a Tuesday afternoon as you can on the opening night of a big film that is completely sold out. It\u2019s more that you\u2019re sharing a space. The lights have gone down, you\u2019ve turned your phone off, you\u2019re concentrating on the film. There may be only a few of you in there. But it is a shared experience like no other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>What have you found effective in marketing smaller films so that customers will take a chance on them, even if they don\u2019t look like the typical sort of thing they\u2019d go see?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At Picturehouse we have a strand called Discover, and we also have our Film Club [membership program]. The Film Club is [set at] an affordable price, as is Discover. In Discover, we preview smaller films, and in Film Club it could be a classic [film] or [a current release]. What I\u2019m very proud of at Picturehouse is that we have our audience\u2019s trust. When they come to a Discover film, [they know] we will have programmed something that\u2014I mean, they may not say, \u201cIt\u2019s the best film I\u2019ve ever seen.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>But they\u2019ll come away saying, \u201cThat was worth watching.\u201d <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was worth seeing. And maybe they will say it\u2019s the best film they\u2019ve ever seen. We curate our cinemas. [We don\u2019t just program] the biggest films out that week. It\u2019s a mixture of all sorts of things so that our audiences will feel that we are doing a job for them, that we are saying, \u201cThese are the films that we think will entertain you, that will challenge you, that will inform you.\u201d We\u2019ve been doing that for a very long time, and it\u2019s absolutely [what defines us] as a group of cinemas. Every cinema is slightly different in terms of what it\u2019s playing and when it\u2019s playing it, because we try to tailor [our programming] for the audience that comes to our sites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The films we bought at Picturehouse Entertainment last year in Cannes were <em>Anatomy of a Fall<\/em>, which turned out to be a huge success, and <em>The Taste of Things<\/em> with Juliette Binoche. We bought [Hirokazu] Kore-eda\u2019s <em>Monster<\/em>. And [St\u00e9phanie Di Giusto\u2019s historical drama] <em>Rosalie<\/em>, which [opened in the U.K. on June 7]. We\u2019ve always made sure to have a very diverse, interesting range of films that audiences will be keen to see. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>I know you started in the film industry young, working as an usher. Do you remember the first film you saw in a cinema?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Not really. I know that there were films that had a big impact on me. <em>West Side Story<\/em> had a big impact on me. <em>The Red Shoes<\/em> had a big impact on me. The thing about when I first started working at a cinema\u2014it was at the Ritzy in Brixton\u2014is that we were mainly showing repertory cinema. We showed between 10 and 14 different films a week, and I would catch as many of them as I possibly could. Tarkovsky, Herzog, Wenders. And all those amazing American directors, like John Waters [with] Divine. That was my film education, being able to see all those amazing films. It\u2019s what I\u2019ve always wanted our cinemas to do. If [people] want to see great films that are being made now or have been made in the past, [give them] an opportunity to see them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>How do you approach films once they\u2019re in their follow-up weeks? Some movies, they come out and they just don\u2019t hit with audiences and that\u2019s it. But with others, you know they just need a bit of time to find their audience.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s looking at the numbers. What digital has allowed us to do is to be very flexible. A film like [Ry\u00fbsuke] Hamaguchi\u2019s <em>Evil Does Not Exist<\/em>, which is a tiny little film\u2014if you pick the right shows each week, there\u2019s an audience for it. When it was 35mm, it was much more difficult, but now you can slot things in and keep things going. <em>Anatomy of a Fall<\/em> played at [Picturehouse Central in London] for 26 weeks. All the people who work at Picturehouse say, \u201cOkay, this [film] does particularly well with this audience. We can play it at 9 p.m. on a Tuesday and it will get 30 or 40 people in. And that\u2019s worth it.\u201d You\u2019re much more able to keep films on [longer], which we do. We\u2019re very much about letting films breathe and not just taking them off if they\u2019re working, and [finding a way to] thread them through all the other films.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>All the programmers at Picturehouse are very adept at [putting a slate] together like a jigsaw puzzle. <em>Poor Things<\/em> [had a long run during Oscar season]\u2014people kept that going for ages. Or even the Bob Marley film [<em>Bob Marley: One Love<\/em>]. Some cinemas had odd shows here and there for weeks and weeks and weeks. Audiences do seek them out. Particularly for the smaller films, people don\u2019t rush out and see them, so you have to find a way to thread them through so people can still find them when they want to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>You play a bit of everything at Picturehouse\u2014first run, big-budget actioners, the festival hits, the smaller indie films. Would you say there\u2019s a typical Picturehouse audience?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It depends on the film. I would say the audience that we probably don\u2019t have is the 15- to 20-year-olds. But then we have the older audiences. But, again, we\u2019ve seen that older audience get younger. After the pandemic, the older audience was quite reluctant to come out again. They were much more nervous. Then our audience got younger, and our audience has continued to get younger. And now, the older audience has come back again! The people who come to us just like the Picturehouse experience. They like to be in a building that\u2019s showing <em>Furiosa<\/em> and also <em>Hit Man<\/em>, the Richard Linklater film. They can get a lovely cup of coffee and have a nice piece of cake and some mochi ice cream. Pizza, if they want it. Wine. People love the fact that they get really good beer and wine with us, and they can take it [into the auditorium] and enjoy the film with a nice glass of merlot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>What are some of the films coming up that you\u2019re excited about?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019m looking forward to <em>A Quiet Place: Day One<\/em> and <em>MaXXXine<\/em>. The Yorgos Lanthimos film <em>Kinds of Kindness<\/em>. Our own film, <em>Rosalie<\/em>, which we\u2019re releasing. We\u2019re releasing the [Nuri Bilge] Ceylan film <em>About Dry Grasses<\/em>, which we bought at Cannes last year. It\u2019s an amazing film. And then there\u2019s <em>The Bikeriders<\/em>, <em>Deadpool &amp; Wolverine<\/em>, and <em>Sasquatch Sunset<\/em>. There\u2019s lots and lots to look forward to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Clare Binns has contributed immeasurably to the culture of film in the U.K. As the managing director of Picturehouse Cinemas\u2014a chain of neighborhood theaters owned by exhibition giant Cineworld\u2014as well as its distribution arm, Picturehouse Entertainment, Binns and the rest of the Picturehouse family have introduced audiences to thought-provoking titles\u2014like Anatomy of a Fall, which [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":33921,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,22],"tags":[99,5550],"class_list":["post-33920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exhibition-features","category-from-the-magazine","tag-cineeurope","tag-cineeurope-2024"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boxofficepro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boxofficepro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boxofficepro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boxofficepro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boxofficepro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.boxofficepro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33920\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boxofficepro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boxofficepro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boxofficepro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boxofficepro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}