Halls help: Yakut film distribution technology will go to Kazakhstan and Brazil after India

The Yakut technology of inexpensive film screening has attracted the interest of distributors in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Brazil. India will build 10,000 cinemas over the next few years, with trials opening in August. Professionals from Yakutia have not only sold the license, but will also personally oversee the construction of the halls. These are economy cinemas for villages and small towns, with cheap equipment and minimal requirements for the technical quality of the content. Izvestia learned the details of the unexpected collaboration.

India asks for help

Indian cinema annually produces about 2.5 thousand films in 16 languages: there is no one in the country that everyone speaks. There are not enough cinemas for this. Indian colleagues learned about the Yakut technology and decided to use it for the cinematography of their country.

— People in India really like to watch movies, but not everyone can afford a ticket that costs $10-15. It has become even more expensive now, and viewers are refusing to go to cinemas," Yusuf Sheikh, CEO and founder of Janata Cinema, told Izvestia. — We started showing films in small halls and charging $1 for a ticket. And the audience went.

The company's name Janata Cinema translates as "folk cinema". It is not surprising that they became interested in the experience of Yakutia.

"We cooperate with the government of India, and as part of our cooperation, our companies provide halls in small towns," continues Yusuf Sheikh. — All cities that have public buildings or town halls dedicated to organizing people's leisure activities are provided to us by the government. We will convert these halls into cinema halls. We are combining Russian technologies and ours, their movie projector model and our infrastructure, to create cinemas in those cities where there are already halls.

Yusuf Sheikh considers the project promising. Currently, there are only 9,000 cinemas in India, a country with a population of 1.4 billion people. For comparison, there are 90 thousand of them in China. According to the Sheikh, there is not a single cinema in 6.5 thousand villages and towns. Janata Cinema's ambitions are to double the number of cinemas using Yakut technology. The latter, by the way, allows you to show films in the format of a mobile cinema. The Indian Association of Film Producers supported Janata Cinema: companies understand that the pictures they produce must reach the audience.

— Wherever we find a suitable room, be it a banquet hall or a wedding hall, we can turn it into a cinema hall. And if you have a good playground, an arena or an open—air field, we can show a film there," says Yusuf Sheikh.

The first ten test cinemas will open in August. Then 224 cinemas will be opened in Tripura, and over the next two years, the partners plan to increase their number to 10,000 across India.

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An alternative to a number

The essence of the new technology is that it is a cheap replacement for the DCP (Digital Cinema Package) format, which is used in most of the world's cinemas. The format is convenient and universal, but it is controlled by American companies, they sell licenses for the production of media servers and film projectors working with this format to large equipment manufacturers. To date, 2.3 thousand cinemas (5 thousand cinemas) of the DCP format operate on the territory of the Russian Federation.

In Yakutia, they created a replacement — also digital, with similar capabilities, but without having to pay the Americans. The technology is called "Extra Cinema", it is patented and is already being used not only in Yakutia, but also in other regions of Russia. A Russian-made projector is attached to it, into which the corresponding filling is sewn. It protects against piracy. It is possible to connect ticket sales services and the Pushkin Card. And it is relatively cheap compared to DCP projectors.

Know-how with government support

Extra Cinema technology emerged in 2022 as an alternative to DCP. In May 2023, it was presented to the President of the Russian Federation at the exhibition "Development of the Creative Economy of Russia". As a result, it became the basis of the Cinema Foundation's project for competitive support of cinemas in small towns. A large-scale program is being prepared to launch to equip almost 20 thousand cultural centers in small towns and villages of Russia.

— Since 2022, 74 modern cinemas have been opened in the Republic of Sakha-Yakutia (with an investment of 70 million rubles), which have been visited by more than 100 thousand. the audience," Nikolai Egorov, head of the Extra Cinema rental platform, told Izvestia. — We cover small towns. The most remote cinema hall is located in the village of Sasyr, which is more than 1,200 km from Yakutsk. At the moment, we are receiving applications for connection in cultural centers from hundreds of institutions. There are more than 500 of them in the republic.

As it turns out, cinema attendance in rural areas is several times higher than in cities, due to the lack of alternative forms of leisure activities, the expert says. The average attendance at cinemas with Yakut technology was 33 viewers in 2023 and 36 in 2024, while the corresponding national figure is 13 viewers per session in 2023 and 15 in 2024. It's easy to see this on the EAIS website, where even the recently released super hit "Ballerina" in Russia has an average turnout of ten people per session.

There are 2,300 cinemas in Russia. At the same time, there are 40,000 cultural houses with auditoriums in rural areas. But movies are often not shown there: the equipment is too expensive.

— Although in Soviet times there were 1,500 film installations in our republic, the film was transported everywhere. — the head of the company, Peter Chiryaev, told Izvestia. — And now, in the digital age, when content can be transferred from point A to point B at the click of our fingers, we cannot do this. Because there are fears that he may be abducted. We have developed a technology where the content is guaranteed to be safe. We take the file from the copyright holder, which is stored in our extension, according to our standard in the cloud. Even if it is stolen, it will be impossible to open it. Only on devices located in our localities that use the new technology.

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Copyright holders do not incur the cost of shipping copies to cinemas and receive a more reliable system for protecting content from piracy, including online reporting and attendance control.

As the Association of Cinema Owners of Russia told Izvestia, private commercial halls in small towns are usually unprofitable. They have high competition with online platforms, low effective demand, and difficulties filling the halls due to the insufficient number of residents, which negatively affects profitability. As well as high operating costs. The municipal cinema can function there solely by compensating for all expenses from the budget. We need government support.

Meanwhile, a new production and assembly plant has opened in Yakutia, which will produce up to 15 film projectors per day. Their number will reach 5,000 per year. Perhaps some of these projectors will go to raise the Indian film screening.

India is not the only one interested in Russian development. In Belarus, the project was presented to President Alexander Lukashenko. Kazakhstan has shown great interest, where there is also no film screening in rural areas. There is also interest in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.

Brazil is also eyeing domestic technology. Yakut producers are planning a visit overseas.