PRESS RELEASE
Ann Arbor (MI), New York City (NY), and Paris (France), March 9, 2017 | Eclair, Ymagis Group’s content services business unit, today announced a strategic alliance with the Art House Convergence (AHC), USA’s premier non-profit association in support of independent film exhibition and distribution. This new alliance was sealed during AHC’s 10th Anniversary Conference held just prior to the 2017 Sundance Film Festival.
As part of the alliance, Eclair’s CineConductor for DCP Management & Delivery via Broadband Network becomes AHC’s preferred “next generation” broadband digital cinema services provider in the US. Launched at the AHC’s 2015 event, CineConductor rapidly expanded to well over one hundred sites, many of which are ongoing AHC participants. Over half of the more than one hundred plus cinema venues and two thirds of the rights holders attending the 2017 AHC have already been CineConductor users. Cinema venues new to the service that attended both 2016 and 2017 AHC events are also entitled to receive additional benefits with CineConductor.
Terms of the partnership include Eclair’s ongoing financial support for the AHC’s Scholarship Fund, which subsidizes selected cinemas to enable them to attend the annual conference held in Midway, Utah the week leading up to the Sundance Film Festival. The Art House Convergence annual conference is presented in participation with the Sundance Institute Art House Project, a joint program in support of the indie film exhibition and distribution community.
“Our purpose, from the very beginning of the Art House Convergence, is to support ‘community-based, mission- driven’ cinemas,” explains Russ Collins, founder of Art House Convergence. “The process requires not only creative programming and marketing efforts but ongoing dialog between Art House exhibitors and distributors, as well as re-visiting the business models we all work under. Sustainability and increased diversity, on the screen and in the audiences, are critical to our ongoing growth. When an effective new service, such as CineConductor, comes onto the market and is quickly adopted by our constituents – including my own Michigan Theater, in Ann Arbor – it is meaningful. With our new alliance Eclair has stepped up to support us, both via the Scholarship Program, and in cost effectively and conveniently sending DCPs to participating theaters.”
For Barry Rebo, Managing Director of Eclair USA, “Ymagis Group’s founder and CEO Jean Mizrahi and I in fact launched our US-based company back at the 2015 AHC conference. Since then we have been extremely pleased with the uptake of CineConductor by the specialty film community as practiced by the active AHC participants. It’s indeed an honor to be able to expand our support of their extremely worthwhile efforts via both our Scholarship Fund initiative as well as applying Eclair’s commercial resources in service to our mutual goals.”
CineConductor, Eclair’s innovative and highly regarded DCP Management & Delivery via Broadband platform, offers “DCPs without hard drives” to over one hundred Specialty Film & Event Cinema exhibitors in service to over three dozen prestigious rights holders based in the States and overseas. The AHC/Eclair USA program is now available to interested and qualified venues. The agreement has an initial term of two years, subject to renewals as agreed to by both parties. In addition to the strategic alliance with the AHC, Eclair also announced a complimentary program with the Film Festival Alliance, which holds its own conference in association, and simultaneously, with the larger Art House Convergence gathering.
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