Ever think of a good arthouse film that you really wanted your friends to watch, only to find it's not showing anywhere? Now you don't need to be frustrated any more thanks to a private screening website known as Ele-meet that collects films and lets you organize an audience to watch them at the cinema.
Hou Yanlin works for an auditing agency, but her hobby is taking up more and more of her time: Organized movie screenings. It is like being a rescuer of good movies because cinema chains naturally only want to put on profitable films, which means they don’t always have time for quality niche films or documentaries.
With the help of the private screening web site, Ele-meet, Hou managed to launch a dozen screenings – but it's not easy because she needs to find around 50 people for each one. Hou said Ele-meet is one of the most mature private screening sites in China as it has a lot of copyright resources to gather the audiences.
Since it was set up in late 2016, Ele-meet has now teamed up with nearly 100 cinemas in Shanghai. Duoyunxuan cinema is one of them. Its manager Zhang Wei said they do the chosen since they want to diversify the movie offerings.
“They can provide niche films. Normally they recruit the audiences themselves, but if they can't get enough, we'll help them by selling tickets on our site. I think they can help us popularize our cinema since a lot of people will come back after learning we offer such films,” Zhang said.
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As a pioneer of what might be called the Customer-to-Business model, Ele-meet targets its audience first and then organizes the showing which is the opposite of a traditional cinema's business model. CEO Wu Feiyue said they have three ways of building a library – arranging to share them with big local distribution agencies, promoting films produced by private directors, and making some films themselves.
No matter how the movies are collected, however, the company has yet to figure out a way to make profit. Wu, however, remains optimistic, and said there are three main channels to profit in the future.
“First, we can charge moviegoers ticket fees and organizing fees whenever they place orders on our site. Second, movie makers or distributors will pay us money. Third, we are considering giving 'masterclasses' with professors for movie lovers who are not satisfied with just watching films, but are willing to pay to learn more about them,” Wu noted.
Ele-meet has so far held more than 3,000 screenings across the country, with a seat occupancy rate exceeding 80 percent. The company said it has a regular audience base of 300,000 members nationwide.