- Cinemas give life to films as they were meant to be seen. They are where memories are made, minds are changed, and crucial conversations spill out from the screen into the street.
- Cinemas are essential pillars of the audiovisual ecosystem, combining cultural and economic value. Cinemas drive box office, support long-term success for diverse films across platforms, foster meaningful audience connections, strengthen local economies and lead innovation across the audiovisual industry.
- Cinemas remain the heart of free culture and society. Cinemas amplify new and courageous voices who confront their world with honesty and imagination; especially where filmmakers are at risk of being silenced. While cultural and media power becomes increasingly concentrated, independent cinemas remain crucial local hubs accountable to their communities, not to shareholders.
- Cinemas curate with passion and responsibility. In a content-saturated digitized landscape increasingly shaped by corporate interests and artificial intelligence, the mission of independent cinemas remains to guide audiences with thoughtful and diverse programming.
Today, we call on political decision-makers, our colleagues across the film value chain, and communities everywhere to recognize and protect independent cinemas as critical infrastructure, to invest in the cultural and audiovisual ecosystems that create lasting value, and to defend the values of pluralist democracy, equity, and diversity for which they stand.
