By Crispian Balmer
VATICAN CITY, Nov 15 (Reuters) –Pope Leo told a group of prominent Hollywood actors and filmmakers at a Vatican audience on Saturday that movie theaters are struggling to survive and that more must be done to protect them and preserve the shared experience of watching movies.
Cate Blanchett, Monica Bellucci, Chris Pine and Oscar-winning director Spike Lee were some of those in attendance.
Leon, the first American pope, said cinema is a vital “workshop of hope” in a time of global uncertainty and digital overload.
“Cinemas are experiencing a worrying decline, and many of them are disappearing from cities and neighborhoods,” he said.
“There are many who claim that the art of cinema and the cinematic experience are in danger. I urge institutions not to give up, but to cooperate to affirm the social and cultural value of this activity.”
Box office receipts in many countries remain far below levels recorded before the COVID-19 pandemic, and multiplexes in the United States and Canada just suffered their worst summer since 1981, excluding the COVID closures.
León stated that cinema, which this year celebrates its 130th anniversary, has gone from being a game of light and shadow to a form capable of revealing the deepest questions of humanity.
“Cinema is not just moving images, it sets hope in motion,” he said, adding that entering a movie theater was “like crossing a threshold” where the imagination expands and even pain can find new meaning.
A culture shaped by constant digital stimuli risks reducing stories to what algorithms predict will be successful, he said.
“The logic of algorithms tends to repeat what works, but art opens up what is possible,” he said, urging filmmakers to defend “slowness, silence and difference” when they are in the service of history.
The Pope also encouraged artists to honestly confront violence, war, poverty and loneliness, stating that good cinema “does not exploit pain; it recognizes and explores it.”
He praised not only the directors and actors, but also the many workers who work behind the scenes to make cinema possible, calling film production “a collective enterprise in which no one is self-sufficient.”
(Additional reporting by Angelo AmanteEditing by Gareth Jones, Edited in Spanish by Juana Casas)