PARIS:
JM VIDEO, one of the only two remaining DVD rental stores in Paris, is a focal point for films lovers and visited by actors like Brad Pitt when they are in the city, but the ever -increasing competition of streaming platforms means that this Paris institution is fighting for survival.
The choice is not the problem: JM Video has a library of more than 50,000 films, more than 5,000 offered at any time on Netflix (nflo.x), opens new tabs and more than the catalogs of all the main combined streaming players.
“This is one of the few places in Paris with a real collection of films, you can find things here that you cannot find anywhere else,” said the Virginie Breton cinema, which rents DVDs several times a week. But not enough to keep the JM video afloat.
The rents of the Sky-High Paris property and a declining clientele, combined with the arrival of increasingly streaming services like Amazon Prime, Disney +, HBO Max, Paramount + and Apple TV + serve life outside the store in the shape of a cave, where DVDs get rid of floor racks.
Founded in 1982, JM Video was one of around 5,000 video rental stores in France at the end of the last century, long before Netflix went from DVD rental outfit to a streaming pioneer around 2010.
Now France has only about 10 DVD rental stores, including two in Paris. Theo store director Theo Bancilhon said that the JM video has trouble paying the rent and wages of its three employees and has lost nearly 20,000 euros ($ 24,000) in the past two years.
This month, the store launched a crowdfunding call, raising around 26,000 euros over 1,000 donors in less than two weeks. But it needs 35,000 euros to guarantee its immediate future and 65,000 to be safe in the long term, said Bancilhon.
He firmly believes in the concept of DVD rental, noting that young people in particular are interested in high quality formats. “We are a beacon in the night that goes against new ways of consuming a certain culture. It is good that people know that there is another way of approaching cinema, not motivated by algorithms,” said Bancilhon.
(1 $ = 0.8445 euros)
