Faced with the lack of cinemas in Picardie Verte, cinema comes to the residents

It’s better not to be a movie buff when you live in Picardie Verte. In the surrounding area, fixed cinemas can be counted on the fingers of one hand. They are located in Beauvais or even in Amiens. In the past, a cinema was open in Grandvilliers. But it ceased its activity in the 1980s.

To counter this cinematic desert, the traveling cinema association, Ciné rural 60, was created in 1984 and organizes numerous activities.

Film screenings, indoors or outdoors, sessions during school hours, educational workshops, live broadcasts of sporting events, video game competitions or even thematic sessions. The association wishes to offer various cultural events in communities that do not have access to cinema culture.

Dozens of member municipalities

Registered as one of the cultural actors, the association today has 85 member municipalities. In Picardie Verte, Grandvilliers, Formerie, Fouilloy, Campeaux, Sommereux, Feuquières and Songeons are members of the association.

Each year, the latter organizes more than 1,000 screenings and brings together around 45,000 spectators, making it the most rural traveling cinema in France.  In terms of age, we have the two extremes. We either have a very old audience or a very young audience thanks to films for children. Otherwise, we have sessions for the whole family,” says Uri Romero, director of Ciné rural 60 since February 2024.

The cinema program is focused on entertainment in order to satisfy the greatest number of people.  We tour a lot with comedies and young audiences too. We also have a small section »Other genre–in the monthly programming, where we offer other films that are not pure entertainment. »

An audience that never goes to the cinema

The success of the traveling cinema lies in the fact that this initiative makes it possible to attract people who never go to the cinema because of the distance.

We shoot at a time offset from the fixed cinemas. These are films that have been out for at least four weeks.

Before adding: “So obviously, the people who come to our screenings are not very fond of cinema and these films because they waited a month or more to go see it. It’s not a very movie-loving population. It’s a practice that is taking hold little by little as we pass through the communities,” explains Uri Romero.

The association offers municipalities different periodicity formulas.  We can come once a month, once every two or even three months. Others rotate twice a month,” concludes the director of the association.

To continue to attract more people, Uri Romero is banking on communicating sessions on social networks.

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