Paris:
JM Video, one of only two remaining DVD rental stores in Paris, is a gathering point for movie lovers and visited by actors like Brad Pitt when in town, but the ever-growing competition for streaming platforms means this Paris institution is fighting for survival.
Choice is not the problem: JM Video has a library with more than 50,000 films, more than approx. 5,000 at any time on Netflix (nflo.x), opening new tabs and more than the catalogs for all the major streaming actors combined.
“It’s one of the few places in Paris with a real movie collection, you can find things here that you can’t find anywhere else,” said Film Buff Virginie Breton, who rents DVDs several times a week. But not enough to keep jm -video fluid.
Sky-High Paris Property Rents and a dwindling customer base combined with the arrival of increasingly streaming services such as Amazon Prime, Disney+, HBO Max, Paramount+ and Apple TV+ are pushed life out of the hollow-like store where DVDs are wasted from floor-to-ceiling racks.
Founded in 1982, JM Video was one of about 5,000 video rental stores in France at the end of the last century, long before Netflix changed from being a DVD rental -clothing to a streaming pioneer around 2010.
Now France has only approx. 10 DVD rental stores, two of which are in Paris. Store Manager Theo Bancilhon said JM video is struggling to pay rent and wages for his three employees and have lost nearly 20,000 euros ($ 24,000) in the last two years.
This month, the store launched a crowdfunding call that raised about 26,000 euros from over 1,000 donors in less than two weeks. But it needs 35,000 euros to secure its near future and 65,000 to be sure of the long term, Bancilhon said.
He firmly believes in the DVD rental concept, noting especially that young people are interested in high quality formats. “We are a guy at night who goes against the new ways of consuming a particular culture. It’s good for people to know that there’s another way to approach cinema, not driven by algorithms,” Bancilhon said.
($ 1 = 0.8445 euro)
