Résumé : L’article étudie la transformation historique de la présentation de films en salle depuis le début des années 2000 à travers le cas de Cineplex Divertissement, la plus grande chaine de salles de cinéma au Canada. Suivant la tendance générale du marché des films sur grand écran aux États-Unis et au Canada, Cineplex a réagi à la crise par un mouvement de consolidation et de diversification et par de nouvelles options de projection haut de gamme. En réponse aux changements sectoriels, sa campagne publicitaire de 2016 donnait à son marketing un tour personnel, émotionnel et nostalgique en évoquant une éthique bourdieusienne du plaisir, qui fait de celui-ci une responsabilité morale. Ce faisant, la chaine de cinémas a révélé son investissement dans les classes moyennes et supérieures, ciblées par les nouvelles pratiques de diversification et les technologies de projection de pointe. Le recours à la nostalgie inscrivait fictivement Cineplex et ses nouvelles activités dans la lignée des pratiques de projection antérieures, ce qui a permis à la chaine de légitimer ses offres les plus récentes et la continuité de sa position centrale dans la vie culturelle publique.

Interview with Jackie Brenneman and Bryan Braunlich of the National Association of Theater Owners (NATO) and The Cinema Foundation, in which they discuss their organizations’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic in defense of US cinema owners. Brenneman recounts the first three years of the pandemic, including NATO’s initial understandings and activities during the early weeks of the pandemic’s spread to the US. She details NATO’s role in government support programs, distribution challenges, and evolving industry narratives surrounding exhibition, as well as her own experiences working to assist in exhibition’s recovery. Brenneman also reflects on the broader impact of the pandemic on the industry after three years of struggle and adaptation. With Braunlich, she explains the goals, initiatives, and trajectory of The Cinema Foundation, a cross-industry organization founded in the wake of the pandemic to advocate for stakeholders across the exhibition sector.

The COVID-19 (SARS‑CoV‑2) pandemic has led to a generational crisis for film exhibition around the world. Since the pandemic began in 2019, movie theaters have been forced to close their doors temporarily or permanently, alter their modes of presentation and the parameters of the theatrical experience, and transform their operations in countless other ways. But COVID-19 is certainly not the first crisis in film exhibition, nor the only one in process locally and globally. The introduction to this special section examines the concept of crisis in the study of film exhibition and the historic and contemporary crises that have altered cinemagoing practice. It argues that these crises open opportunities for scholars to analyze a broad array of social, political, and industrial impacts that influence film exhibition and related areas of cultural and creative practice across time and space, introducing new research that employs this analytical lens.