" I am happy to see you! The cry of the heart of Patrice Le Marchand, director of the UGC Ciné Cité Les Halles, in Paris (I), goes with his smile. Three days before the reopening of theaters, while his team ends this Friday, the last preparations before the resumption, he does not sulk his pleasure to finally see a few people walking the corridors of the busiest cinema in Europe . He experienced a particular confinement: for three months, he found himself alone or almost in this immense space of 27 rooms - that is 3,820 seats -, which normally welcome more than 3 million spectators a year.
Three months when the 100 employees of the multiplex were partially unemployed and the director came to visit this ghost ship for technical maintenance maneuvers: "A cinema is made to operate permanently, it was an extraordinary situation, never seen. If the batteries of the digital projectors stay idle for too long, they will be damaged. We turn them on once a week… ”
Popcorn in sachet
All this is just a bad memory because, recently, the staff is busy preparing for the resumption and, while we wander between the rooms, it tinkers in all corners. We will first have to manage traffic and spectator flows, "but that, with our capacity, we know how to do it," says Patrice Le Marchand.
If the cash desks will be open, the cinema favors online booking, thanks to its thirty terminals disseminated to withdraw seats - tickets will no longer be torn but visually checked -, to which will be added fifteen others for the distribution of hydroalcoholic gel. Staff members, all masked, will guide spectators from the entrance, where the main confectionery counter will remain closed to avoid traffic jams and crossings. And the reception will be "from 8:30 am instead of 9 am, to better regulate flows".
Other arrangements have been made: furniture removed from the bar, popcorn available in closed bags for those who find it more reassuring, signage indicating instructions ... The access doors to the toilets will remain open, holds will be put in place under the doors of the rooms before and after the screening: "Everything is organized so that the spectator does not touch anything between his arrival and his departure from the cinema," explains the director, who shows us around room 10, one of the largest (475 seats), where many previews take place.
Funny birthday
On the giant screen, the main health security instruction is recalled: “I leave a free chair between myself or my group and the other spectators. This room, like all the others, will be cleaned completely between each session, which will take twenty minutes - so there will be one less session per room per day.
Reopening in its conditions, with half the spectators in less, isn't it too difficult? Patrice Le Marchand, reassured, like all exhibitors, to have the choice between 45 films for his programming, swears that it is not, and expects mass attendance from the opening day: “We are confident. Even during the confinement, spectators came to stop us through the gates to ask us when we were opening. We feel their strong desire to return. "
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VIDEO. Reopening of cinemas: reservation, wearing of mask and distancing from the program
He reserved surprises for them: a program of heritage films and "the choice of the director" which will change every week. For the first, he did not hesitate: it will be "Usual Suspects", by Bryan Singer, who had filled the rooms of this multiplex twenty-five years ago, when the cinema had recently opened. Because UGC Les Halles is also celebrating its anniversary, it was inaugurated in 1995 ... on June 22.