*Can these statistics possibly be accurate? I don't get it. What are all these French people doing inside those movie theaters? How can they sit in the dark for two hours without taking cellphone calls?
*And – allegedly – the French are also pirating entire movies at a blistering rate? What the heck is so compelling to the French about this form of entertainment? What on Earth are they watching – Amelie reruns?
Jerry Lewis? SPIDERMAN V? How can you have golden age cinema attendance in the leaden age of cinema?
http://www.european-creative-industries.eu/Presse/tabid/56/newsId/602/Default.aspx
1/9/2009: French cinema at its zenith (Published by Caroline Ceytte )
According to recently published data by the Centre National de la Cinématographie (CNC) 188.8 million admissions were registered in French cinemas in 2008, 6.2% more than the year before. Especially French movie attendance increased by 32.6% reaching a total of 86.2 million admissions. With 45.7% the French cinema’s share in the market exceeds the US American share (44.5%) – a more than rare phenomenon. Within the last 22 years there has only been one other comparable event: a neck-and-neck race between France and Hollywood in 2006.
Nevertheless people working in film business point out figures could be even better without the disastrous progression of film piracy on the Internet. In August last year the Association de la lutte contre la piraterie audiovisuelle (ALPA), an association fighting against audiovisual piracy, published a study according to which 450.000 copies of recent films are downloaded illegally in France every day. The finding is a real knockdown: It comes up there are as many piracy acts as box office admissions....
