THE SPREAD of DVD piracy is posing a very serious threat to the future of the cinema business, industry insiders have warned. In the last couple of years, cinemas have been forced to close down in all towns, and more are set to follow suit in the very near future. One Nicosia cinema owner was reported as saying the following in the last issue of the Sunday Mail: “Piracy has really hit us hard. Something has to be done, because I don’t know if I am going to make it until Christmas.”
Could we be witnessing a repetition of what had happened in the early 1980s when video piracy was rampant and led to the closure of most of the island’s cinemas? At the time, there were shops renting pirate video-tapes on every street corner; even the neighbourhood grocer was renting out tapes. Eventually, the affected parties, which also included record shops, hit back. Copyright laws were tightened and the police clamped down on the pirates. By the mid-nineties, most of the video shops had gone out of business and the cinemas were, once again packing in audiences.
But the big cinema audiences did not last for long, and most people are once again watching films at home. Not only are DVD-players affordable to everyone, but the arrival of home cinema systems has completely changed the experience of film viewing at home. Demand for DVDs has shot up and rental shops have sprung up everywhere in order to satisfy it. This does not mean that the shops are renting pirate DVDs. On the contrary, most established rental shops are said to rent original copies, which makes the problem more complicated. It would appear that most pirate DVDs are being sold by newsagents and small shops in the tourist resorts, rather than being rented out.
This would make a police clampdown less effective, because if the rental shops are above board it could be that dwindling cinema audiences cannot be attributed exclusively to piracy. It may be that trends are changing and people prefer to sit at home to watch a film on their home system than go to the cinema – it is certainly cheaper. The fact that multi-screen cinemas are thriving undermines the theory that piracy is chiefly responsible for the poor business of one- or two-screen cinemas.
The cineplexes of Cyprus, even though they are not in the town centres, attract huge audiences of today’s main cinema-goers – the teenagers – who go there to hang out as well as to watch a film. The teenagers are today’s main customers of the cinema (most of Hollywood’s output is targeted at this section of the population) and they like seeing films at the cineplex. Dwindling audiences at the old cinemas have coincided with the opening of the multi-screen centres, which are doing very good business.
This is not to say that the police should avoid clamping down on DVD piracy, but even if they do so with maximum effectiveness, it is doubtful that they would save the old cinemas from closure. It is sad to see the old cinemas close down, but unless they find ways of attracting the teenagers, there does not seem to be much hope for them.
