As multiscreen cinemas march down the Italian peninsula, sweeping away historic city center cinemas, a small independent screen in Puglia has stumbled on a secret weapon to fight back.
The Odeon in Molfetta, a seaside town in Italy’s heel, projected its first wedding video on Tuesday night, a sell-out as friends and family of a local newlywed couple arrived to cheer themselves as they appeared on the silver screen.
With 50 wedding parties booked for celluloid reruns of their nuptials, the Odeon’s future is looking safer, despite the opening of a multiplex in an industrial zone outside town, complete with ample parking facilities, which appeared to have sealed its fate.
“I went to the Odeon as a kid and it’s great to be doing something now to keep alive a cinema that you can still walk to with your own children,” said Roberto Pansini, 30, who came up with the scheme while working at a local advertising agency.
Puglians take weddings seriously, inviting hundreds to celebrate, but Pansini said couples found it difficult to get all the guests back to squeeze around a television to watch the obligatory video.
“Now they hand over about 300 euros [US$440] to rent the cinema, with cocktails thrown in if they ask,” he added. “It is so popular we are even taking bookings for wedding anniversary parties. People are thrilled to see themselves on a cinema screen.”
The 360-seat Odeon is the only one of four cinemas once open in the center of Molfetta that still survives, hobbling along on a council grant and pulling in punters with music concerts and theater performances, alongside the regular fare of films and matinee cartoons.
“The competition from the multiplex has hit really hard, but if this idea works out, I plan to market it around the other small Italian cinemas in peril,” Pansini said.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of