Tina Witt

When the theaters shut down in March of 2020, no one could have predicted that many of them will still be shuttered nearly a year later. Most insiders in the exhibition side of the industry were anticipated maybe being closed a few weeks, a couple of months in the worst case scenario. As the virus became politicized and people, specifically in the U.S. refused to wear masks and as the young people continued to gather maskless, it became clear that we were in a downward spiral and movie theaters lost sight of the light at the end of this dark tunnel. I think that it is important to highlight these issues and our ever changing situation by calling out what I see. I am hopeful that people will flock to theaters in the coming future and I think that the out of home movie experience will make a huge comeback someday. I only caution that we are teetering on losing what is important about films. We have moved away from physical media and owning films as a tangible product. I personally have a nice, growing collection, but to the majority of people, films are nothing but digital files. More and more streaming services don’t even play the credits anymore and people that worked hard to get those credits don’t even get recognized because the streamers want you to click to the next option as quick as possible. One of my film Professors in school always said, the film is not over until the credits have finished and I respect that perspective. If we get to a point where people don’t own a physical film, or don’t embrace or appreciate the theatrical experience, a big part of societal culture is in danger of being lost. Look what happened to the music industry. No one buys music anymore and musicians only make money on t-shirts or performances, which due to COVID has debilitated them further and most musicians only do it for fun.