Why streaming services are only enhancing opportunities for young cinephiles

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Why streaming services are only enhancing opportunities for young cinephiles

If you truly love cinema, who doesn't want to have as many options as possible?

James Calver

Jun 25, 2021

This month’s edition is written by James Calver. He is currently the Projects & Events Officer at the Independent Cinema Office, predominantly working in their training team. Starting his career at the one-screen multi-arts venue Kino-Teatr in St. Leonards-on-Sea, he is also a credited extra in a Bollywood film.

Due to the success of the last recording, if you’d prefer to listen to this month’s article you can. The audio is available above (3 mins) and is read by its author. Happy listening! 😄🎧

Another week rolls by, and another major British newspaper has released an article demeaning young cinema audiences who may not have had the opportunity to watch films that they deem to be “classics”. They go as far to say “if you have a passing interest in films yet have reached 2021 without seeing Billy Wilder’s classic Some Like It Hot, chances are you never will”, which is a ludicrous statement.

I’m happy to admit I haven’t seen Some Like It Hot yet. Do I want to? Yes, at some point. Do I feel like I can’t say I have an interest in film just because I haven’t seen it? Not in the slightest. During my studies, I once had a lecturer tell me if I hadn’t watched Goodfellas then I was on the wrong course. I was 18 at the time, I was born 5 years after the film came out, my family weren’t the most cinematically engaged, and to top that off we didn’t have the money to be buying new VHS’s/DVD’s whenever we wanted them. All that being said, it still gave me this sense of imposter syndrome, that maybe I shouldn’t be doing the course.

This gatekeeping of cinema is another form of cultural classism that will only continue to disillusion young audiences from an artform which has always been intended to be accessible by everyone. If they actually cared about “the death of cinema” they wouldn’t turn young audiences away from these films so callously.

Whenever anybody discusses the future of cinema exhibition, the one doom-mongering comment that you’ll always hear is that streaming is bringing about the death of cinema as we know it. Why would anyone want to go to the cinema when they could watch any movie they wanted from the comfort of their own living room?

Therein lies a huge issue though – when you can watch anything you want, how do you decide? The algorithms from Netflix and Amazon and the like are very complicated and efficient to a point, but they only really give you access to a very small section of what is actually available.

Considering how many films are being released at the cinema now, deciding on what to watch with my mates can sometimes take some convincing. Knowing that most of them watch a lot of content on these streaming platforms though, it’s very easy for me to make comparisons to those titles, and instantly give them an idea of what to expect when they head out to the cinema.

This is exactly how streaming services are cultivating cinephilia, rather than hindering it. Especially over the course of the last year, people have been able to consume so much more content than normal, and there’s only so much of The Office or It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia a person can watch, so they’ve started to branch out. And now, not just with cinemas reopening but also more and more films that were being held back for so long being released, people do want to go back.

The same way in which I have been recommending films to my mates can also be used as part of a cinema programme. We are always making comparisons in our head when programming, so why not share that information with an audience. If a film is available on a streaming platform, let the audience know. They may have already seen it, so will be more inclined to watch some similar. On the other hand, they may watch it first to see if it’s something they’ll like.

This may seem like a lot of work, but as our friend at The Times says, “there is a lot to distract these days”. If you’re going to recommend something to someone and expect them to do the digging themselves, they’re simply not going to do it. If we want younger audiences to engage with cinema from before their time, help point them in the right direction, rather than presenting them with a list of “films nobody should do without” whilst giving them no guidance on how to find them.

So on that note, here is the list of films recommended to readers in the original article in The Times, with some information on where you can find them. This took me about ten minutes to find:

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) – Amazon (Rent - £3.49)

Metropolis (1927) – BFI Player (Subscription) / Amazon (Rent - £2.49)

Duck Soup (1933) – Amazon (Rent - £2.49)

A Matter of Life and Death (1946) – BritBox (Subscription)

À bout de souffle (Breathless) (1960) – BFI Player (Subscription) / Amazon (Rent - £2.49)

Lawrence of Arabia (1962) – NOW TV (Subscription) / Amazon (Rent - £2.49)

The French Connection (1971) – Disney+ (Subsciption) / Amazon (Rent - £2.49)

Some Like It Hot (1959) – Amazon (Rent - £2.49)

West Side Story (1961) – Amazon (Rent - £3.49)

The Third Man (1949) – BFI Player (Subscription) / Amazon (Rent - £2.49)

The Wizard of Oz (1939) – NOW TV (Subscription) / Amazon (Rent - £3.49)

Chinatown (1974) – Amazon (Rent - £2.49)