European Arthouse Cinema Day

ended

The European Arthouse Cinema Day is the only international joint initiative undertaken by cinema exhibitors to promote European films, boost the cinema experience and innovate on audience reach in collaboration with different stakeholders of the film industry including distributors, sales agents, festivals, producers, filmmakers and institutions. Launched in 2016, the initiative is organised by the CICAE and its national associations members, in partnership with Europa Cinemas. It is open to all arthouse exhibitors globally. Through a common activity, the EACD has become a platform where professionals can explore innovative strategies and implement them through concrete actions. Up to date the initiative brings together more than thousand exhibitors and other professionals from over 40 countries across the world. Every participating cinema can choose from a large variety of ideas pooled from their peers and try them out or suggest new ones. It is also a chance for cinemas to jointly cooperate with foreign colleagues and act to enhance their work but also to boost the international visibility of European works and their circulation. Although there is a number of films that are on focus, cinemas have complete freedom to participate at any level and to create their own programme on the condition that it includes European films, bringing a great pan-European dimension to the initiative with a programme composed by 100% of European productions or coproductions. The cinemas engage their audience through events, promote their membership of the arthouse movement by their choice of programming and activities, and probe new digital promotional activities. The day consists of previews, guest participation, debates with audiences, children and young programmes, retrospectives and classics, exhibitions, culinary specialties, and other creative ideas. Before the pandemic, it managed to reunite more than 80.000 spectators in over 600 cinemas in one single day.