Media: All lights on Lumière cinema

David Deprez is the new Artistic Director at Lumière cinema in Maastricht. He speaks with Crossroads about his love of film, the theatre’s history and its role in expanding the cultural horizon for the expatriate community in Maastricht.

Hello David, would you like to tell us a bit about yourself and your work?
My interest for films first started when I was 18, when I came to study here in Maastricht. I’m originally from Belgium. I became the Artistic Director of Lumière just three months ago so I’m totally fresh in the job! But I have actually been working here for six years already. This year, I’m totally responsible for the programming.

So, you pick all the films shown at Lumière?
Exactly. But most of the films that I select are also seen by at least one other colleague, usually the Artistic Advisor. Sometimes it happens that I select a film without seeing it. In that case, I have to rely on the opinions of colleagues from other cinemas.

Does your own taste affect the choices you make?
(Emphatically) No, it shouldn’t. Sometimes, I pick films that I really don’t like, and sometimes I can just see that it’s a perfect film for our audiences.

Was there any particular film that made you say, “Oh, this is what I have to do!”
Well, yes it’s a very old one. It’s an Italian film from Michelangelo Antonioni called “Professione: reporter”, with a very young Jack Nicholson. It’s just…it’s a classic.

How many films do you see per week?
I can’t say… Last week, I saw six films. Next week, it could be only one. It depends on what I can see at what locations. Of course, when there’s a film festival, I see five films in a day. For the rest, I’m quite busy with arranging all kinds of things related to the screenings. My work involves a lot or emailing, faxing and making phone calls. Most of it is just like a regular office job…

Who else works at Lumière?
Lumière has ten staff members: a financial director, an artistic director, an office manager, a market coordinator, a public relations staffer, an administrator, two operators and two barkeepers. Besides that, the theatre works with over 100 volunteers, who help us in a wide variety of tasks. All of the staff members are Dutch. Most of the volunteers are Dutch as well, and some are German.

When was the theatre founded?
We started in another building some thirty years ago. It was just the old idea of one room, with some wooden boxes and old machines, very bad chairs… 16 millimeter films, maybe you’ve seen one. We’ve been in this location since ’84. This building used to be a church. Actually, two churches. One of them was used as a Spanish club for expats up until 2003, when it closed, I don’t know why. The city then decided that we could build some extra screening rooms there. In 2004 we were able to go from three to six screening rooms.

Do the people who originally established the theatre in the 70’s still work here?
No. Our artistic advisor who started working here in ’84 left three months ago. He was our closest link to the early days of the cinema.

How many people visit Lumière?
In 2003 we had 45,000 visitors and this year, we’ll have 70,000. But we’d like to welcome even more visitors because things are tight, financially. A lot of people think that we get a lot of funding from the government.

Don’t you?
Well, we get about EUR 100,000. But that amount doesn’t go very far because we have to rent the building from the same government for EUR 60,000. So in the end, we have to earn most of the money ourselves. That’s the difference between us and other theatres or museums…This year we sold over two euros per each visitor in concessions. I think that’s a lot…The bar and the foyer are doing better and better. A lot of people like to stay here a little longer after they’ve seen a film. That’s a big difference with other cinemas.

Would you say that the primary demographic of the theater is students?
No, no. Not at all. I think the number of students doubled since we renovated our theatre two years ago, but before that, only about five per cent of our visitors were students. You shouldn’t forget that Maastricht’s university is pretty small…

Oh really? So who is your biggest audience?
Dutch ladies from age 40 and up… This means that we should always have at least one film targeting this specific group, like “Volver”, “Pane e Tulipani” or “The Girl With the Pearl Earring”. The smaller itch is that whenever we want to do something aimed towards a younger audience, our regular audience goes home. A couple of weeks ago we had a very nice band, but some people left because they didn’t like it. It’s a bit of an eternal competition between audiences and it’s sometimes difficult to find a compromise that will keep everybody happy.

Who is the rest of your audience? What about expats?
We’re not sure how, but the expatriate population in Maastricht seems to be growing. That includes staff members of the university and foreign students. As for the rest, a lot of people come from other cities in Limburg, like Heerlen, Sittard and Valkenburg. We also welcome customers from across the (German and Belgian) borders, from Aachen, Hasselt, Genk and Bilzen.

Are there any plans for an English version of Lumière’s website?
(Excitedly)Yes! Now that you mention it, we’ve got a very small task force preparing an English website for 2007. Our Marketing Manager is in charge of the content for the English website. He’s Dutch, but he studies English.

Excellent!
We think that not only foreign students, but all non-Dutch speaking people can make use of an English website. Especially in the last three months, a lot of foreign people have come to our theatre. The influx of English speakers is an important reason for our cooperation with the Maastricht School of Governance and with the Maastricht branch of Amnesty International. Our challenge is to locate films with English subtitles for these organisations. It can be pretty expensive to get these films here because they often have to be ordered from Paris or London or elsewhere.

What kind of cooperation can you offer?
I think our partnership with the School of Governance is a very good example of cooperation. It’s what I call a win/win situation. The School of Governance wants to offer their students something more than just books. So we screen a film for them and the deal is the film is totally free for the School’s students, but the rest of the audience has to buy a ticket. This arrangement means that the screening remains affordable to us. What’s more, the School of Governance gives free drinks to all the students and everybody’s happy! We work almost in the same way with Amnesty, as well as with the European Studies Association Concordantia. There is also a new international student organisation in Maastricht that would really like to work together with us. Maybe it’s a surprise to you, but we think a lot about what we can do for non-Dutch speaking people!

That’s wonderful to hear! Are there any upcoming events at Lumière you’d like to tell us about?
Well , the biggest event is the one-week film festival we’ll be hosting next year in the last week of March: the Maastricht Film Festival. Its main theme will be “Europe” because 2007 is going to be an important anniversary year for Maastricht and Europe. We’ll be celebrating the 15th anniversary of the Treaty of Maastricht and the 50th anniversary of Treaty of Rome. We’ll have some guest programmers and we’ll also try to work together with Studium Generale and the School of Governance. But of course, the main goal of the festival will be to show as many films as possible in one week. The main difference with last year is that we’ll offer more imported films with subtitles.

But before all that, we’ll show a very interesting Jewish film festival in the first week of December. And three days before Christmas, Maastricht will host a “Winter Pride” gay and lesbian festival. There will be a party for all the gay and lesbian people in Maastricht and we will have a special film programme for them too. And we’ll screen a cult night in February.

You’ve got a lot going on, that’s fabulous! Thanks for meeting with me, David.
You’re welcome!

Lumière cinema is located at 40 Bogardenstraat and can be reached by phone at 043 321 40 80. If you can’t wait for the English version of their website, you can find them in Dutch at www.lumiere.nl.

By Sarah Brin

Sarah Brin is a visiting student from Brandeis University, US, at the Centre for European Studies, Maastricht. She is currently writing and recording a podcast audio guide for The Rose Contemporary Art Museum in Massachusetts.