Day two if the Independent Cinemas conference, like day one, was punctuated with distributors’ presentations of the coming year’s productions (unfortunately embargoed for media comment). However, Paramount’s Mike Selwyn’s introductory comments served as a keynote to the whole conference when he commented on the continuing strength of the theatrical sector in an age of downloads, and noted the amount of new cinema building that was going on.
In particular he said that after years of agonising over the technology changes: “we don’t need to talk about digital anymore. We’ve done it”. Over coffee, veteran equipment supplier Peter Williams (former head of Edge Digital) suggested that Winston Churchill’s line might be more appropriate: “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning”.
