As multiscreen cinemas march down the Italian peninsula, sweeping away historic city center cinemas, a small independent screen in Puglia has stumbled on a secret weapon to fight back.
The Odeon in Molfetta, a seaside town in Italy’s heel, projected its first wedding video on Tuesday night, a sell-out as friends and family of a local newlywed couple arrived to cheer themselves as they appeared on the silver screen.
With 50 wedding parties booked for celluloid reruns of their nuptials, the Odeon’s future is looking safer, despite the opening of a multiplex in an industrial zone outside town, complete with ample parking facilities, which appeared to have sealed its fate.
“I went to the Odeon as a kid and it’s great to be doing something now to keep alive a cinema that you can still walk to with your own children,” said Roberto Pansini, 30, who came up with the scheme while working at a local advertising agency.
Puglians take weddings seriously, inviting hundreds to celebrate, but Pansini said couples found it difficult to get all the guests back to squeeze around a television to watch the obligatory video.
“Now they hand over about 300 euros [US$440] to rent the cinema, with cocktails thrown in if they ask,” he added. “It is so popular we are even taking bookings for wedding anniversary parties. People are thrilled to see themselves on a cinema screen.”
The 360-seat Odeon is the only one of four cinemas once open in the center of Molfetta that still survives, hobbling along on a council grant and pulling in punters with music concerts and theater performances, alongside the regular fare of films and matinee cartoons.
“The competition from the multiplex has hit really hard, but if this idea works out, I plan to market it around the other small Italian cinemas in peril,” Pansini said.
Incumbent Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa on Sunday claimed a runaway victory in the nation’s presidential election, after voters endorsed the young leader’s “iron fist” approach to rampant cartel violence. With more than 90 percent of the votes counted, the National Election Council said Noboa had an unassailable 12-point lead over his leftist rival Luisa Gonzalez. Official results showed Noboa with 56 percent of the vote, against Gonzalez’s 44 percent — a far bigger winning margin than expected after a virtual tie in the first round. Speaking to jubilant supporters in his hometown of Olon, the 37-year-old president claimed a “historic victory.” “A huge hug
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
A judge in Bangladesh issued an arrest warrant for the British member of parliament and former British economic secretary to the treasury Tulip Siddiq, who is a niece of former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who was ousted in August last year in a mass uprising that ended her 15-year rule. The Bangladeshi Anti-Corruption Commission has been investigating allegations against Siddiq that she and her family members, including Hasina, illegally received land in a state-owned township project near Dhaka, the capital. Senior Special Judge of Dhaka Metropolitan Zakir Hossain passed the order on Sunday, after considering charges in three separate cases filed
APPORTIONING BLAME: The US president said that there were ‘millions of people dead because of three people’ — Vladimir Putin, Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelenskiy US President Donald Trump on Monday resumed his attempts to blame Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for Russia’s invasion, falsely accusing him of responsibility for “millions” of deaths. Trump — who had a blazing public row in the Oval Office with Zelenskiy six weeks ago — said the Ukranian shared the blame with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ordered the February 2022 invasion, and then-US president Joe Biden. Trump told reporters that there were “millions of people dead because of three people.” “Let’s say Putin No. 1, but let’s say Biden, who had no idea what the hell he was doing, No. 2, and
RSS