Where have all the movie goers gone?

As Calgarians enjoy the Calgary International Film Festival, U of C professor says new technologies make movies more convenient, but can diminish the experience of watching.

While movies are as popular as ever, a cultural shift has occurred in how we experience them. Watching movies on DVD, the Internet and iPods has dramatically increased, while attendance at movie theatres and film festivals is down across North America. Dr. Charles Tepperman, film studies professor in the Faculty of Communication and Culture, says new film-viewing technologies mean we are increasingly watching movies in isolation, and this lessens our experience and our engagement with the issues movies represent.

In a public talk on September 19, Tepperman asked: Why did we stop going to the movies and what do we lose when we don't watch together?

"Our emotional and aesthetic experience of a film is heightened when people watch movies together. This contributes to our engagement with the subject matter and with our fellow audience-members," says Tepperman.

Tepperman says historically, travelling movie exhibitions were an opportunity to bring people, even in small rural places, together, creating important social encounters for communities. With new technologies, this public dimension of film has diminished. 

He argues that when people experience movies together, they are more likely to have conversations about the issues represented and this can impact public debate.

"This is particularly relevant with movies on pressing current issues, such as Michael Moore's films or An Inconvenient Truth," he says. "People who go out into the world and encounter works about social issues in a public forum are perhaps more likely to engage in the debate and in creating solutions to these problems. When people say the cinema is dying it is because audiences are not having the communal experience we historically associate with it."

Know Before You Go: Is the cinema dead? is part of a speaker series providing opportunities for Calgarians to think differently about themes relating to key cultural events in our city and to learn about related scholarship in the Faculty of Communication and Culture. Watch for the next one in winter, 2008.