Matakana Cinemas is one indepent cinema that has seen an increase in audience numbers in recent months. Photo: Facebook
Independent cinemas across the country that were hit hard by Covid are seeing audience numbers picking up - but the recovery is slow.
At this week's Oscars ceremony, award-winning US director Sean Baker took the opportunity to acknowledge the struggling industry during his acceptance speech for his film Anora, in an attempt to get people in seats at cinemas across the globe.
"Where did we fall in love with the movies? At the movie theatre. Watching a film in the theatre with an audience, is an experience.
"We can laugh together, cry together and scream and fight together and perhaps sit in devastated silence together and in a time in which the world can feel very divided.
"This is more important than ever, its a communal experience you simply don't get at home.
"And right now, the theatre going experience is under threat. Movie theatres, especially independently owned theatres, are struggling, and it's up to us to support them," Baker said.
Dunedin's Metro Cinema owner John Wilson agreed and said his business was still struggling to win back audiences after Covid.
"The weekends pick up - Thursday, Friday and Saturdays are sort of getting close to what it used to be, but Mondays usually I'm closed ,because Mondays have been a shocker." Wilson said.
But Christchurch's Lumiere Cinema managing director Nick Paris said while Covid was hard, things have picked up.
"I've just sensed over the last 3-4 months, a bit of a paradigm shift in our fortunes in terms of attendance numbers and what not.
"And that's driven, I think, because the writers and actors strike has finished and there seems to be a lot more content available to us."
Matakana Cinemas owner Dan Paine also said his business has improved recently and has an idea as to why that is.
"I think you can talk about people feeling a little bit more confident about having a bit more expendable income.
"People are feeling more confident coming back to cinemas in terms of sitting in a public space.
"The quality of films has actually improved because production was really affected by Covid, obviously."
Paine said streaming websites were a real threat to the industry.
"Streaming will take out a certain percentage of the audience, so we probably will never see those people come back to the cinema.
"But I do think that that percentage is probably lower than what I might have said it was a couple of years ago and that just comes down to the macro forces of the way that the industry, from a distribution and studio perspective, are thinking about the release of their films." Paine said.
Residents of a small Central Otago town were devastated after fire gutted Roxburgh's 128-year-old Town Hall and Cinema, the day after Waitangi Day.
The movie theatre was first built in 1897 and had been part of a Guinness World Records claim of "longest continuously running movie theatre in the world".
The Roxburgh Entertainment Centre and Improvements Committee's Curtis Crawford said the cinema and hall was a lifeline for locals, the heart of the community, and it was being missed.
'We haven't been able to do anything much, unfortunately, it's a 258 seat theatre and cinema complex. It's an all in one basically, you could call it.
"At the moment the district doesn't have anything in the actual centre of Roxburgh to cater for that."
Crawford said the cinema had good and bad days.
"It fluctuated a fair bit, some movies you had good patronage and then other ones you thought would be quite good, but you didn't, you got a dozen people which didn't quite pay the pay the way, but was kind of lucky in how things most of my people that look after it all volunteers.
"I think if you had to pay people then some of those movies would run at quite a loss."
Crawford said the district is not going to give up fighting for a new cinema and town hall, and says there are even plans to show a film on the old site, if it is safe to do so, later in March.
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