What movie-going will look like in post-coronavirus era

Popcorn, Coca-Cola and disinfectant-gel.

By HANNAH BROWN
CINEMA CITY in Jerusalem. Will it once again be filled with movie-goers? (photo credit: WIKIPEDIA)
CINEMA CITY in Jerusalem. Will it once again be filled with movie-goers?
(photo credit: WIKIPEDIA)
Movie-going in Israel post-virus will be a very different experience from what it was in the past, but just how different is still up for debate, according to a diverse group of film professionals.
Movie theaters were among the first to be hit by the coronavirus restrictions in mid-March. For about four days, until full restrictions were in place, only 100 people were allowed into any one theater at a time, then they were completely closed down. On Tuesday, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Culture and Sport announced that on June 14 theaters would be allowed to reopen with no more than 100 people in the audience and with two chairs between each viewer. Further details were not immediately available.
This was good news for movie buffs, for whom no amount of Netflix or other television fare can be a substitute for seeing movies on the big screen. But the only partial reopening and the months of closure have taken their toll on the Israeli movie industry.
Roni Mahadav, the manager of the Jerusalem Cinematheque, said the cinematheque is more than ready to open its doors, and will comply with any restrictions imposed by the government. He noted that the brief period when theaters were allowed to operate with an audience of just 100 had been confusing, and that the cinematheque staff was waiting to see what would be decided regarding reopening.
“We’ve been fixing things around the cinematheque,” including a hard-to-open front door, and featuring online events on the website.
“We’ve been talking to our colleagues in Norway and Austria,” countries that have just opened or are about to open their movie theaters. “We’re watching to see how things go with them.”
Noting that 100 audience members is fewer than one third of the 360-seat capacity of the cinematheque’s largest auditorium, Mahadav said it wasn’t clear if even that many people would be allowed in.
“They might say you need two meters between each person – in every direction,” he said.
Guy Shani, the CEO of Lev Cinemas, Israel’s premiere arthouse chain and arthouse movie distributor, said the uncertainty is tough.
“We haven’t received anything in terms of financial help from the government.”
Lev Cinemas, which has nine theaters, some of them multi-screen, around the country, including Lev Smadar in Jerusalem, now has a VOD service through the Yes Cable Network. They have been offering special online screenings and special online meetings with filmmakers, including Talya Lavie, who spoke after a screening of her film, Zero Motivation, one of the most popular Israeli movies of the past decade.
But while Shani recognizes the value of these online alternatives, he said that the chain is facing serious financial issues because of the coronavirus lockdown.
“We still have to pay rent, not all our staff is furloughed.... We’ve been cleaning, we’ve done some refurbishing, our theaters are ready to reopen. We have movies on the shelf we are ready to release, and we are completing the acquisitions of movies from Berlin [the Berlin International Film Festival was held in February, just at the beginning of the pandemic],” said Shani, who noted that the VOD Channel will never be a substitute for theatrical releases.
“You can’t cover your costs by streaming,” he said. “And streaming will never replace the excitement of seeing a movie in the theater.”
Asked what movie he had hoped would be Lev’s biggest spring/summer release, he named an Israeli film Honeymood, a dark rom-com by Lavie about a couple in Jerusalem.
“It was supposed to be released in June, but it won’t be,” he said, adding that he would only have it streamed after a theatrical release.
Israel’s two largest theater chains, Cinema City and Yes Planet, have been hit just as hard by the lockdown restrictions. Both chains also feature shopping malls and food courts in their multiplexes, which have just begun to reopen in a limited capacity, but the dozens of screens in each location are still dark.
PEOPLE ARE looking to Moshe Edery, who founded the Cinema City chain and United King Features, a production and distribution company, with his late brother, Leon, to see how bad a hit the whole Israeli film industry will take. Against all odds, Edery has been surprisingly upbeat in recent interviews. 
“We’re in a bad movie, but the coronavirus hasn’t killed anything. Cinema will come back in a big way,” he told Calcalist in April, noting that the demise of the movie industry had been predicted many times.
Cinema City has seven locations around Israel, with recently opened branches in Hadera and Beersheba, and another planned to open in Ashdod.
“Israeli cinema has lost tens of millions of shekels,” he said in the Calcalist interview, but nonetheless predicted that the movie industry would be one of the first to recover, and said that he worried more about the future of smaller theaters than his chain.
However, the theaters themselves are only part of Edery’s empire. He produces approximately half of all the movies made in Israel, and has 130 producing credits since he started producing 15 years ago. United King produces popular features such as Maktub and Forgiveness by Hanan Savyon and Guy Amir, as well as esoteric arthouse films, and everything in between. So the fate of the theater chain is inextricably linked to the future of Israeli movies.
Said one film industry professional who preferred not to give his name, “There’s no way Edery can continue to invest so heavily in so many movies after the coronavirus. He gives some money to almost everyone who comes to him. He’s been incredibly generous. He knows that most of these movies aren’t going to make him any money, but he wants the Israeli film industry to thrive. From now on, he won’t be able to do that, at least not on the same scale.”
Avi Nesher, one of Israel’s leading filmmakers, who has worked with Edery for many years, echoes Edery’s cautious optimism.
“I’m an optimist, in that I’m looking at the glass and I see it as one-eighth full,” he said. “For the last two decades, people have been moving away from other people and more toward screens. People have been getting more selfish and distant. But this has taught us that we miss people. Everyone I know wants to sit at a  cafe with other people. And I think the places that people will flock to the most will be synagogues and movie theaters, once they’re reopened.”
Nesher has two projects that have been put on hold by the virus. One of his films, The Monkey House, which Edery is producing, is a literary mystery and drama that will be a co-production with Italy, and is “the first and only Israeli movie to get a grant from the Italian film fund.” But since Italy has been hit so hard by the virus, it’s not clear when that project will get going again.
The second film, with the working title The Face of Victory, is a look at the War of Independence from the Israeli and the Egyptian side. He has a number of young Israeli actors cast, including Joy Rieger, who starred in his previous two films, The Other Story and Past Life.
“[Producer] Ehud Bleiberg came to me with the idea, I think he’s the Israeli Sam Spiegel, and got the ball rolling. We got a grant from the Rabinovich Foundation, and we were in pre-production when the pandemic broke out.”
Holding on to that vision of the one-eighth full glass hasn’t been easy, but he – like many in the Israeli film industry – is trying.
“The last time the country faced such a catastrophe was the Yom Kippur War in ‘73. The country was all shook up, but in the aftermath, there was a cultural and political revolution. A disaster forces a restart, and this is a disaster, make no mistake about that. But I’m trying to be hopeful about the restart.”
Just about the only thing Israeli moviegoers and moviemakers can count on right now is that, “We’ve got a lot of alcogel waiting, for when people do come back,” said Mahadav.


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