Abstract

One of the most important problems of the cinema industry in Iran is the lack of audiences in the cinema halls. Dezful -the second most populous city in Khuzestan province with a population of around 400,000- has one cinema and it is the field of study in the present research. In this city, the cinema-goers are very limited and there isn’t much research to show why people don’t tend to go to the cinema. This paper is a qualitative study and we did semi-structured interviews with 40 persons in Dezful who don’t go to the cinema. We used purposeful sampling and the sample included both genders with different ages (21-56) and different social, cultural and economic contexts. The main themes of the interviews were 1) the reasons for not going to the cinema, and 2) alternative ways for watching films instead of watching in the movie theater. The results showed although some people don’t go to the cinema because of the lack of quality of the cinema hall, some people don’t go to the cinema because cinema is considered as individual entertainment. Most people believed that the traditional culture in many small cities is spending time with family and relatives in their free time as a collective culture. Importantly, some people had a negative view about individuals who prefer to go to the cinema in their spare time instead of meeting their family. Other individuals, structural and cultural obstacles are discussed.