Cinémobile, a cinema on wheels bringing the big screen to rural France
For the past four decades, people in the centre of France have had a cinema unlike most: one on wheels. The Cinémobile – a lorry that transforms into a movie theatre – tours towns across the Loire Valley, delivering thousands of showings to rural communities each year.
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Of the 41 years that Cinémobiles have been operating, Philippe Leroy has driven them for 33.
“Time goes quickly. I don’t feel like I’ve been doing this job for 30 years, but it’s more than a job – it’s a passion,” he says.
With one of the day’s four showings down and the second underway, driver-projectionist Leroy is taking a break outside the Jacques Tati, one of three Cinémobile trucks that crisscross the Centre-Val de Loire region, setting up in one of 46 different towns every day.
Back when he started in the early 1990s, he laughs, “I wouldn’t be out here talking to you”. In those days the projector ran on reels of 35-millimetre film – five or six of them for every full-length feature, handed down from permanent cinemas and sometimes held together by tape.
“We couldn’t leave the projector, because [the film] might break at any moment,” Leroy recalls. Now everything’s digital, he explains. “Today, with one of these little hard drives, it’s all good.”
The first Cinémobile set out in 1983. Launched by a local cultural association, the scheme was taken over by the regional council in 1989.
Technology isn’t the only thing that’s changed since then.
“We don’t have the same audiences anymore,” says Leroy. “We get a lot fewer people.”
In the days before premium TV and video on demand, a Cinémobile might sell as many as 600 tickets in a single day, says Leroy, who remembers putting on extra late-night showings of Titanic to pack in spectators queuing down the street.
These days, people in even the remotest of areas have plenty of options for watching the latest blockbuster. To keep drawing an audience, Cinémobiles have to provide something more.
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Moving pictures
Today the truck is in Mer, a town of around 6,300 people about 20 kilometres from the nearest bricks-and-mortar cinema.
“Here the cinema comes right to their door, so that’s even better. Plus tickets are cheaper,” says Pascal Lerede, the town councillor in charge of events.
Subsidised by the region and local councils, the Cinémobiles sell full-price tickets at €6.50, with reductions for schoolchildren, seniors, people with disabilities and others.
Their programming differentiates them too. Managed by regional cultural agency Ciclic, the line-up includes independent films, shorts, documentaries and locally shot productions alongside mainstream hits.
This afternoon there’s a showing of Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans for a class of middle schoolers studying English, followed by Comme Un Prince (Like A Prince) – a French film shot at the nearby chateau of Chambord.
Other days might feature talks by directors, or post-screening drinks. The project works closely with schools, too. Of 58,800 tickets sold last year, 23,200 went to pupils, from high schools right down to nurseries.
Théophile Petitjean, another projectionist who arrives to take over from Leroy, says his favourite showings are the ones for the very youngest – some of whom may never have been to another cinema in their lives.
He recounts: “Once a little one came up to me afterwards and asked: ‘Mister, how far did we drive during the film? Where are we now?’”
Cinema on wheels
More experienced cinemagoers, however, won’t notice much difference between a Cinémobile and a traditional cinema.
“It’s no different,” says local councillor Lerede, who comes whenever the Cinémobile passes through Mer once a month. “It’s a bit smaller than a cinema, but just as comfortable. The seats are good and there’s a big screen – it’s like being at the cinema.”
Designed and built by a local company, the lorries convert from vehicle to cinema in around 45 minutes. A push of a button sees the sides of the trailer concertina outwards to create a screening room with between 80 and 100 seats, depending on the model, all of them in traditional red upholstery.
Meanwhile the driver folds out a set of steps or a ramp for wheelchair access.
Two comforts the trucks lack, though are toilets – logistically tricky – and popcorn. In between pinning up posters, vacuuming the carpet, manning the ticket booth and running the film, Petitjean explains, they wouldn’t have time to make it.
Culture in the country
But the point isn’t to recreate a multiplex experience in miniature.
“The Cinémobile supplements permanent cinemas – we’re not here to compete with them, not at all,” says Leroy. “We’re here to offer some extra cultural programming. We bring culture to rural communities.”
That’s a mission that chimes with the priorities of the day. The first act of France’s new Culture Minister Rachida Dati, appointed as the country saw some of its biggest farmers’ protests in years, was to launch a nationwide consultation on access to culture in rural areas.
“Numerous initiatives exist to bring cultural offerings to these areas, but they are still not sufficiently recognised or supported,” a ministry press release said, hailing the power of cultural activities to strengthen social bonds, bring new economic opportunities and even “literally change lives”.
'It gets us together'
While Leroy doesn’t put it quite so grandly, he does believe the Cinémobile provides something special.
“Some people come because they’re cinema lovers and they want to see the film. And others come because they’re glad we’ve made the effort to come to them,” he says.
“There are people who come who don’t even know what they’re about to see. They come, they buy a ticket, and they ask: ‘Oh by the way, what’s the film tonight?’”
Others just want an evening out, he adds. “They come by in work clothes in the afternoon, then that evening they’ll come back all dressed up because that’s their outing for the week or the month.”
“It gets us together,” says one neatly dressed woman who’s just exited the 4:30pm showing. She’s here with three friends, all spry pensioners, who came to see the film shot in Chambord, where they like to go walking.
“It gets us together,” her friend agrees of the Cinémobile. “It’s nice.”
Even with their senior discounts, they say, the prices here are “really exceptionally good”. With the loyalty card they get six showings for €24 – the equivalent of €4 a film.
Plus this way they can come by foot, instead of driving to the multiplex a town over. “When I lived in the Paris region, I was 500 metres from a cinema,” one says. “Now it’s 300 metres away, so I can’t complain!”
The same woman announces she’s coming back for the 8.45pm showing – a French comedy about a city-dwelling academic who moves to the countryside to try his hand at farming.
“It’s topical,” she informs her pals.
“Maybe I’ll come back too,” muses one.
“I’m not coming out again,” declares another, to a chorus of objections.
“Oh go on!” urges her friend. “I’ve still got two tickets left. Come on, off we go.”
This story appears on the Spotlight on France podcast, episode 107.
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