Green light for China’s silver screens
Print Edition
CINEMAS across China reopened this week after the country’s film administration announced the green light last week, heralding another return to some semblance of normality. Kind of.
I headed down to one of the city’s cinemas, the Shanghai Film Art Center, to check out a movie on Monday afternoon, the day cinemas opened after being out of action for 178 days.
Before heading down I knew that, being under the constant threat of novel coronavirus, going to the movies of course wouldn’t possibly be anything like we remember before. A set of stringent measures have been put into place to ensure the safety of cinemagoers, which means going to the movies now is something you might take a bit of time to get used to.
Among those measures are the obvious: Temperature checks and green health QR codes on entry, and anyone over 37.3 degrees Celsius will be refused entry. Everyone needs to register, writing down your name, ID number, phone number and temperature.
Tickets can’t be bought at the cinema and will instead need to be purchased online beforehand using real-name registration.
But on top of that, masks must be worn at all times, which leads to a few interesting changes to the usual trip to the cinema: No food or drink is allowed to be consumed, which means you can’t buy a delicious and annoyingly crunchy bucket of caramel popcorn, the smell of which reminds most people of childhood memories at the movies.
Only 30 percent of seats are allowed to be sold, which ensures ample safe distance between guests. That sounds all well and good, but I can’t imagine sitting so far apart from friends and loved ones will make going to the movies the fun, social event it usually is. What about people going for a sneaky cuddle on a date?
A young couple of lovebirds in my movie told me they didn’t mind sitting apart, as per the new rules: “Safety comes first,” the young lady said as her boyfriend quietly nodded.
But with Qixi, China’s Valentine’s Day, coming up next month, I couldn’t help but ask the head manager of the cinema, Gu Yan, if they might make some concessions in the near future.
“Audiences must sit apart according to the rule,” she told me. Then she smiled a little bit. “But if they are lovers, couples, or anyone in a similar situation, I think we can make a more considerate arrangement.”
Another elderly patron, whose face was beaming as the lights came up at the end of “American Dreams in China,” a film that originally came out in 2013, wasn’t at all put off by the new rules put in place under COVID-19.
“Even though they’re putting on older movies, it still felt like an exciting, new feeling,” she told me. Honestly, she looked like a kid on Christmas morning. “My heart feels content, I can finally watch movies again!”
It was her second film of the day, and she promised she’d be back all week with her VIP card.
The opening of cinemas in China has meant that the Shanghai International Film Festival, originally scheduled to begin a month ago, can go ahead. But the same restrictions apply, of course, making tickets for the event — already difficult to snap up — even harder to get your hands on.
With only 30 percent of the normal number of tickets available, it wasn’t even worth trying. Tickets for the festival, which hit the city’s screens today, sold out within 10 minutes.
Cinemas are among the hardest hit by novel coronavirus, and with no food and drink sales on top of seat number limits, it looks like the struggle will continue.
Earlier this year, Shanghai Film Group set up a 1-billion -yuan (US$142.8 million) fund to try and keep cinemas across the Yangtze River Delta region afloat, and the Shanghai Film Administration also allocated 18 million yuan in subsidies for the city’s 345 cinemas.
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