The sad story about movie theatres in Morocco is that while they are showing more movies, the audiences are falling away. Abdallah Mchanna reports:
It seems that Moroccans are falling out of love with movie theatres. The tempo associated with watching films in these dark rooms seems to grow increasingly less attractive. The number of people who flock to see their favourable movies dramatically decreases. As a result, a growing number of cinema professionals are in the doldrums and press for urgent solutions.
In a country of more than 30 million people, there are currently only 50 cinemas, down from 70 just last year. They were 250 in 1995. Occupancy rate of these facilities during the last two years did not exceed 6%, according to the latest figures revealed to MAP by the Moroccan cinema centre (CCM), a state-owned body tasked to enhance and regulate the Moroccan and foreign movie-making industry in Morocco.
CCM Officials also say that during the first quarter of 2009, cinema-goers have generated as little revenue as 941,00http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif0 dirhams (116,000 U.S. dollars), proportionally meagre takings, as regards to 2008, when theatre owners raked in 2,960,000 dirhams. The majority of cinema owners are complaining now that what they earn can hardly pay out taxes and employees, and if nothing is done, they may witness the gradual disappearance of all the cinema theatres nationwide.
Cinema theatres: past and present
According to CCM, the difficult situation of movie theatres is basically structural as it dates back to the early 80’s. At the time, theatres' owners had already been suffering from major setbacks, epitomized by high taxes that used often to engulf almost 50% of their revenue. Besides, the competent public authority had also frozen price tickets at a time relevant products, services and taxes were on the rise.
Given the little profitability of the business, cinema owners relied heavily on commercial international films that were often poor in quality and conveyed no real artistic message.
Since the 90's, things got even worse with the spread of film piracy and the appearance of TV channels that screen feature films day and night.
Today, a quick stroll in any Moroccan city suffices to see that thousands of illegal CD and DVD copies containing recent Hollywood movies are overtly sold for no more than five dirhams (slightly over half a dollar). The proliferation of these cheap film outlets contributed significantly to the natural and drastic shrinking in cinema audience.
Now, the few theatres that still survive are under threat of bankruptcy, and closure. Professionals hold that in the absence of an urgent and genuine political will and strategic approach to be devised by both the public authorities and the sector's professionals, movie theatres will be obliged to put the kibosh on.
The bothering paradox
The miserable situation that characterizes owners of cinema theatres stands in the opposite trend of the volume of national and foreign films produced in Morocco.
Due to its natural assets and the administrative and tax incentives, Morocco has for years served as the backdrop for blockbuster films like "The Sheltering Sky" (1990) by Bernardo Bertolucci; "Alexander" (2004) by Oliver Stone and "Babel" (2005) by Constanza Perales. Director Ridley Scott has a particular fondness for shooting films in Morocco, with "Gladiator" (2002), "Kingdom of Heaven" (2005) and "Body of Lies" (2008). Meanwhile, since 1958, about 200 feature films were shot by Moroccan film-makers, with 40 being released in 2008.
Yet, many of the cinema professionals maintain that the evolution of home-made and foreign productions have paradoxically proved incapable of bringing to a halt the decline in cinema audiences throughout the country and also unable to fend off competition from satellite TV and bootlegging.
A re-launch in the wind
From an CCM point of view, there is no doubt that the Moroccan authorities consider the film industry a "serious matter," and grant it an undeniable support through a state fund, established in 1988 to assist financially a selection of films and cinema theatres. In 2008 the fund earmarked to Moroccan film producers the sum of 60 million dirhams (5.45 million Euros).
Many theatre owners complain that the government policy in dealing with their alarming situation is not enough. The sector’s professionals often report that the government should intervene as it did to enhance the sector of textiles and tourism. In other words, more public cash should be put in cinematographic infrastructures.
Aware of these expectations, the government has in fact recently offered the conclusion of contract-programme with the movie-making professionals.
Under this draft agreement, which covers the 2009-2014 period, the professionals are called to adopt a new strategy by helping construct multi-screen cinema complexes, equipped with high technologies and mostly offering parallel entertaining activities such as coffee shops, halls of exhibitions and cultural clubs. Focus is also centred on the quality and diversity film materials to be presented in these complexes.
This draft agreement, which is being supervised by the Ministry of Communication and the professionals of the sector, aspires to constitute a crucial alternative solution to stop the bankruptcy of threats facing many movie theatres, and jump-start a flourishing movie-making industry nationwide.
To capitalize on this project, professionals are urging for further efforts towards more tax incentives, bigger cash assistance, and, above all, efficient measures to crack down of film piracy.
With these objectives reached and high quality films and screens available, they assume with certainty that the public will reconcile with film-going habits.
Tags: Moroccan Morocco Fes, Maghreb news
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