Opening in 2020 seems like an act only reserved for the brave. A heroic act if you analyze the latest statistics of the Institute of Cinematography and Audiovisual Arts (ICAA), with several dozen rooms closed every year in the face of the push of platforms and depopulation in Spain. According to the last census, of 2019, there are about 723 cinemas in our country, 635 conventional and 88 in the summer. The good news for 2020 records is that at least they will have to add one opening, that of the new Ambassadors Cinema in Madrid.
Those responsible for distribuidora Surtsey Films they make the leap to the exhibition with a venue in the south of the capital, an area with a lot of cultural life but, until now, orphaned by theaters. “Any movie dealer who says he doesn’t feel like opening a theater, lies. We all have it in our heads and I really wanted it. Opening a cinema should cost between one and two million euros, a cinema like anybody knows, with seven or eight rooms, hundreds of seats … I thought that if I did something smaller, with author’s cinema and in its original version in Madrid center, it would not be so expensive. And here we are ”, explains excited Ángel Miguel Pérez, promoter of the project.
Half a million euros and a year or so later, there they are. With the works finished, with the first movie posters in the Glorieta de Santa María de la Cabeza and a neighborhood eager to have a new cultural and leisure center. The whims of fate have also caused it to rise above a bank office closed after the crisis. “We needed a very special place and this one was intended for me. Since it was a bank branch, I was sure that it was not going to have high ceilings, and the commercial was determined. He pushed me a lot and in the end I agreed to visit him. When I did, I ruled it out at first, there was only a false ceiling, but suddenly, in one of the branch offices there was a hole in the ceiling due to a flood and it was seen that the ceilings were almost six meters high. And then I said: God, god, god. Is this. I had been looking for almost a year, it seems that this was an old mechanical workshop because when we have been opening and scratching, we have seen the lines on the walls ”.
The owner of the cinemas, Miguel Ángel Pérez, poses for the photographer during the open day at the Cinemas Embajadores prior to its opening to the public on July 3, this Sunday in Madrid / Mariscal (EFE)
The search for the premises was what took them the longest. They always had in mind the neighborhood of Embajadores and also that of Chueca. The southern neighborhoods of the capital had run out of cinemas many years ago. “In this area was Candilejas, I lived in Carabanchel, but here there were three or four, there were more cinemas than bars in the 70s. In fact, Candilejas has been busy until a while ago and doing pirate projections. It is an area in which, in addition to La Casa Encendida, Reina Sofía or Matadero, there are alternative theaters, a street only dedicated to art galleries in Lavapiés… Only one cinema was missing with premiere films, ”adds Pérez.
To mount a cinema in Spain there are no subsidies or direct aid. The intermediation of AvalMadrid to request the credits, the exemption of the local IBI, and nothing else. From Europe, some money does come, between 10,000 and 15,000 euros per year from a program to promote film exhibition. If the road was long and stony, the pandemic crossed their plans to open in March, when they had everything almost ready. They have lived months of uncertainty and fear for a project that they feared that this new crisis would take ahead. “At first many doubts arose, there were people who said that cinema, as we knew it, was not going to exist again, that he would see himself alone at home, that until three years from now he will not find a vaccine … All these obstacles have been solved. And we opened at 60% and a week later, at 75%. Given the seen, I can not complain at all.
The heads of the Ambassadors Cinema, now, see the light at the end of the tunnel. Day 3 opens its doors with three tiered rooms, one of 93 seats, and another two of approximately fifty. To take advantage of each space, they have digital equipment inside each room – there is no longer a need for booths -, large screens and 7.0 sound. “We will only program films in original but independent versions and also from multinationals, we will try to make them quality films that have gone through festivals. We are going to do children’s movies for the time being, except for some experience. We are in the neighborhood, there are many parents with children and we also have to adapt to what people expect of us ”.
–View of the facade of the Cinemas Embajadores during the open day prior to its opening to the public on July 3, this Sunday in Madrid. / Marshal (EFE)
The novelty will be that the cinema also it will house a bar, with a bar inside and a large terrace outside. “I would like it to be the cultural nerve center of the area, many actors, directors, journalists live here… We want it to be a meeting point. And also that the parents come to bring their children and they stay outside having a drink with their friends. ” Time will tell how the accounts balance, but for those responsible, the expectations are rosy. “In the medium and short term, July and August are catastrophic for cinema attendance, half of which is done in December, which is the best time. But it seems that there is a predisposition of people to return, with very little, we will be able to meet expectations. The key is to make 25% of average attendance per week, the problem is that the rooms only fill up on weekend afternoons and spectator’s day, that’s why we want to do many activities and, for example, we are going to letting bottles of beer pass in the last session for young people to come to the cinema ”, concludes Miguel Ángel Pérez.
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