The New Theatrical Is Not a Run. It Is a Relationship.
Audience Reality Check #7
Streaming sold audiences convenience. Independent cinema must offer them a reason to gather.
Photo licensed under the Unsplash+ License
Streaming spent more than a decade engineering friction out of viewing. Audiences can now choose from thousands of films without leaving the couch. Independent theatrical cinema cannot beat streaming at convenience. Most Canadian independent films cannot compete with Hollywood on advertising scale, spectacle or screen count. They need to offer something different: a reason to be in a particular room, with particular people, at a particular moment.
Dana Harris-Bridson recently described this shift as turning distribution into a kind of performance art. “Presence is the product.” The screening becomes more than access to content. It becomes an occasion.
But I would take the argument one step further.
Presence may be the invitation. Relationship is the product.
The new theatrical is not simply about making screenings scarce or unusual. It is about creating relationships between films, audiences, cinemas, creators and communities. It is not a short-term run. It is a longer-term audience pathway.
The One-Week Run Is No Longer the Default
For decades, securing a conventional theatrical run was treated as proof that an independent film had achieved a legitimate release. The number of screens and cities became shorthand for success, even when the film played to nearly empty rooms. However, a film playing once or twice to full houses may create more value than the same film playing fourteen times to mostly empty seats.
The question should no longer be, “How many screens did the film open on?” It should be, “Where does this film’s audience live, and what will give them a compelling reason to attend a physical screening?” That does not make every conventional run obsolete. Some films earn longer engagements because audiences are actually showing up. The problem is treating the week-long run as the automatic goal for every film, regardless of audience behaviour.
Canadian Films Are Already Showing Other Possibilities
Canada has its own examples of filmmakers using theatrical release as a relationship-building pathway.
Winnipeg filmmakers Lisanne Pajot and James Swirsky used a direct-to-fan, hybrid distribution strategy for Indie Game: The Movie. Its filmmaker-led screening tour connected directly with gaming communities. They were not simply placing the documentary into theatres and waiting. They used the tour to concentrate attention, meet viewers and turn screenings into participatory events.
Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie demonstrates a more recent version of eventized theatrical. Its existing cult audience helped fuel sold-out festival screenings, while later engagements included screenings tied to a date within the film, a 35mm presentation, special guests and a midnight show. The film was not being sold as interchangeable access to content. The occasion was part of the offer.
The same principle can take many forms. A documentary can work with advocacy groups, schools or professional associations. A genre film can partner with fan communities and festivals. A culturally specific film can collaborate with organizations that already know how to reach and welcome its intended audience.
Not that “one night only” should become another rigid formula. Scarcity can create urgency, but a single screening may exclude disabled audiences, caregivers, shift workers, rural audiences and anyone unavailable at that precise time. A film might offer an encore, an open-captioned or relaxed screening, several regional events, or a live event connected to a later platform release. The format should follow the audience.
Independent Cinemas Cannot Fix This Alone
Canada’s independent cinemas are essential cultural infrastructure, but healthy venues do not automatically create healthy pathways for Canadian films.
In English Canada, the slow, city-by-city release of Sook-Yin Lee’s Paying for It shows what can happen when a film arrives with more than a booking. Filmmaker appearances, local promotion and sustained collaboration with exhibitors helped keep it in circulation beyond a single opening weeken
In Quebec, Cinéma Public offers another model: long-term audience trust built through consistent curation and community-focused programming. Audiences are not encountering each film in isolation. They are responding within an ongoing relationship with a cinema whose identity they already understand.
But cinemas cannot carry the burden alone. Exhibitors need films with identifiable audiences and credible local strategies. Filmmakers need cinemas with community knowledge, trusted relationships and the capacity to take risks. The new theatrical depends on infrastructure connecting both sides.
Telefilm Is Moving, but Theatrical Still Holds the Centre
Telefilm Canada’s Production and Marketing guidelines show real movement toward a more flexible understanding of release. The Production Program now evaluates a project’s community engagement plan, its potential to reach audiences and its strategy for making the film discoverable and accessible through community, social media, festival and theatrical activity. That moves audience thinking upstream, before completion. The revised Marketing Program supports audience-centred campaigns that can evolve with a film’s trajectory. Public exhibition can include community screenings, festivals, public events, broadcast or eligible platform releases. Producers may seek early support for longer-lead work such as impact campaigns or social content, while distributors can apply later for the formal release.
Under Telefilm’s previous framework, films budgeted above $3.5 million needed at least a one-week continuous theatrical run. Producers could not satisfy the requirement simply by four-walling a cinema and renting it themselves. Removing that test creates room for a concentrated event, targeted tour or carefully designed theatrical pathway.
But the shift is not complete. The Production Program still says eligible projects must be aimed primarily at the Canadian theatrical market. Films budgeted at $3.5 million or more still require a firm commitment from a Canadian distributor for a theatrical release within one year of completion. The Marketing Program may support non-theatrical public exhibition, but its dedicated audience-engagement funding is defined as amplifying a theatrical release and remains exceptional, generally supporting only six or seven activities annually. There is a tension in the new framework.
Telefilm is inviting agile, film-specific and non-traditional strategies while continuing to place theatrical at the conceptual centre, especially for higher-budget films. Applicants may still assume that the safest plan is a familiar conventional run. Staff may also interpret “theatrical release” more narrowly than the guidelines now require when evaluating distributor commitments, exhibitor evidence and the scale of a proposed release.
Flexibility on paper does not automatically become flexibility in practice.
Telefilm should make clearer that a serious theatrical strategy does not always mean more screens or more consecutive days. It might mean a targeted roadshow, community-partnered events, a festival-led release, a hybrid pathway, or one concentrated engagement designed to create momentum for later windows. Examples, case studies and clear guidance would make this flexibility tangible. Otherwise, the most conventional interpretation may continue to win because its pathways are the most familiar and established.
Filmmakers Should Use the Opening
Filmmakers should not self-censor promising release strategies because they assume an older institutional model is still the only acceptable one. Use the language of the new programs explicitly. Describe the targeted roadshow, community-partnered event, festival-led release or hybrid pathway you are actually proposing. Identify the audience, trusted partners, intended outcomes and connection to subsequent windows. Discuss the plan with Telefilm early rather than hiding its most innovative elements inside a conventional theatrical template.
The strategy also needs direct audience infrastructure. Pair eventized screenings with an independent website, a permission-based email list, accessible ways to stay connected and a plan for ongoing community management. A sold-out room matters more when the relationship survives after everyone goes home.
A Full Room Is Not the End Goal
There is no denying that a full theatre photographs well and creates social proof. But what remains after the audience leaves? Did the filmmaker gain a direct connection with attendees? Did the cinema learn who responded and why? Did the event create a useful partnership, audience intelligence or demand for the next window? Did anyone document what worked so another Canadian film could learn from it?
Without that learning layer, each successful event remains isolated. Canada does not simply need more unusual screenings or more films adding a Q&A at the last minute. It needs audience pathways that begin during production, evolve through marketing and generate useful learning after release.
Studios can sell scale and spectacle. Streaming platforms can sell convenience and endless choice. Independent cinema can offer intimacy, specificity, participation and community.
It bears repeating: Presence is the invitation. Relationship is the product. And audience infrastructure is what allows that relationship, and the learning it produces, to last.