"Our subscribers validate the Lumière spirit."

PostED ON OCTOBER 14

OCS managing director Guillaume Jouhet explains how its programming is a reflection of the festival in Lyon.

Can we feel like we’re at the Lumière festival when watching OCS?

This is always the case, but it is even truer this year, especially thanks to the broadcast of the new documentary, Lumière, des histoires de cinéma, by Thomas Valette, who for many years was the genius behind the amazing montages of film extracts featured at the festival. It is an entertaining and complete documentary on the history of this festival, of which we are one of the founding partners. There is a programme on OCS Géants during the festival, with films by Bertrand Tavernier or Alfred Hitchcock or pre-Code flicks - with a new documentary on the libertarian period of American cinema - etc. And from next week we will present the five Antoine Doinel films by François Truffaut, whose restoration we participated in. At a later date, we will show the documentaries we have just presented at the festival, such as the Kuperberg sisters' documentary on Ida Lupino.

Are all these films available on demand?

Absolutely. They are programmed on our heritage channel, OCS Géants, and then accessible in replay. We can see that it is important to keep a channel with a strong identity, for a slightly older audience - a third of our subscribers - who still watch regular television. Another third alternates between linear and replay. Finally, the last third watch our programmes on demand, mostly series.

How did the exit from the Covid lockdown go for OCS?

Quite well! We haven't lost any subscribers, which could have been a concern. And this is despite the fact that because of rescheduled releases, we are short of recent films. Next year will present another problem, we will have access to two years of productions! We have held on despite the emergence of new platforms, with almost 3 million subscribers.

The lockdowns boosted curiosity about the cinema, and this movement seems to be sustainable. One of our biggest successes was the prime time showing of Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, along with ten films that inspired it, all presented by Tarantino himself, exclusively for OCS.  I'm very proud of this, and it completely validates the Lumière spirit!

Interview by Aurélien Ferenczi