Le Panoptique is an independent digital cinema managed by Panorama-cinéma magazine. It is a bilingual platform aiming to develop and refine the online viewing experience while championing marginalized, fragile and obscure forms of cinema.
Designed in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Le Panoptique is born from a will to allow the screening of rare film works and their proper critical framing to persist in a shifting industrial context, marked by the limited occupancy rates imposed on cinemas and a film offer rendered homogeneous by the precariousness of the distribution market.
In keeping with our desire to perpetuate a certain idea of curated programming, this platform will offer ‘programs’ rather than ‘films’: at least two films, short or feature-length, accompanied by various supplements prepared by Panorama-cinéma’s writing staff and other collaborators, presented in partnership with various organizations, festivals and institutions preoccupied with the good health of minor and forgotten cinemas.
Le Panoptique will never require viewers to subscribe, but rather aims to offer programs at its own pace, in the form of 7-day rentals at various costs, with all the profits being shared between the rights holders and Panorama-cinéma. Seeking not to select works currently showing in cinemas, Le Panoptique seeks instead to offer programs at the crossroads of distribution catalogues, then to finance the restoration of films that are still absent from the digital ecosystem.
The Panoptique receives support from the Canada Council for the Arts for its conceptual, developmental and programming needs and from the Conseil des arts de Montréal for its programs dedicated to metropolitan filmmakers.
