Cinematic Dim Sum

I grew up in a city which had within it a vital Chinese culture. I took it as a personal mission to launch myself into various paths of discovery of this culture, especially the gastronomic side of China. I began looking for and visiting hungrily great purveyors of Dim Sum. For the unaware, Dim sum is a large range of small Chinese dishes that are traditionally enjoyed in restaurants for brunch. Families trundle themselves on weekend mornings to sample an array of tasty often steamed bao (buns), various forms of dumplings, sliced meats and single portion oddities including cuttlefish and tripe.

?People usually position themselves around large round tables, usually 8 seaters. The food is presented on regular or steam carts and slowly paraded around the tables. Diners survey the content of the carts and pick and choose from the offerings. The basket of delectable goodies is placed on your table and a sheet is ticked with the item and the cost.? As more items are picked and consumed the sheet fills up. It’s a more than interesting experience. Its strength is the range and depth of the product that is being offered.

?Initially drawn from a Cantonese experience, Dim Sum has caught on fire with a multitude of western audiences. Mail order companies are offering Dim Sum on the internet and even Goldbelly is pitching Dim Sum among its offerings, at a hefty ten bucks per dumpling.

?As I am addicted to allegory, I thought I would trot out the above for the increased need for diversity with the offerings that theaters provide. In regards to filmed entertainment, cinemas are going to be consistently compared to the various streamers who pitch thousands of titles to their client base. The limited offerings that cinemas provide to their clients is a deep problem of perception amongst movie fans. The lines between the virtual and physical world are fading and no matter how the virtues of movies on the big screen are extolled, the comparison is here to stay. So instead of dismissing it, how can we as an industry begin to bring a more diverse base of content to market. I know it’s really a different product, you know it’s a different product, but the people we want to drag into the theater do not.

?We can fight the streaming services, but we will lose. What we can do is build on top of their offerings and show proper cinematic ecosystems and build both the streaming and theatrical markets. I believe that precedent exists when a more diverse product really gave rise to a more robust box office and brought an increased vitality to movie going.

?Movies made reflecting the Afro-American experience have existed from the damn of cinema. In the late sixties, audiences were getting restless. Traditional genres like the western began to lose popularity, There was a brief re-ignition as a result of the discovery of the Italian produced Spaghetti Western courtesy of filmmakers like Sergio Leone and Sergio Corbucci. In the early 1970’s black moviegoers began looking for their own voices. Filmmakers rose up and started producing movies specifically for an Afro-American audience. The first movie that rose up was Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, directed by Melvin Van Peebles. Laser focused on appealing to an Afro American audience and no one else. This movie pushed the boundaries of traditional cinema but ignited a blaxploitation fuse.? The movie grossed $15 million even while being rated X.? The studios took notice and began to enter the blaxploitation market.

MGM was about to go to the auction block, but a movie with a kick ass theme song by Isaac Hayes entitled “Shaft” pulled it back from the brink. “Superfly” followed and created an uproar from the NAACP. White audiences took notice and? by the mid 70’s 200 blaxploitation movies had been produced. Actors like Fred “The Hammer” Williamson, Tamara “Cleopatra Jones” Dobson, Pam Grier, and heck they even created an Afro American icon in the form of Blacula starring a Shakespearean Actor, William Marshall. A differentiator was that usually Blaxploitation movies were accompanied by an amazing soundtrack, most of which have far surpassed the relevance of the movies they were attached to.

?Here is a simple fact, contained within the sometimes silly UCLA Hollywood Diversity Report, is the fact? that movies which have more diverse casts are more likely to find a deeper empathy with the moviegoing audience. In 2023, the movies that had between a 30% to 40% more diverse cast enjoyed the highest global average box office.? I am not a fan of anything that is politically correct, but at the end of the day diversity is just smart business and creates a far more relatable product.

?Now imagine if the studios got smart, offered lower cost productions, more productions with greater diversity of storytelling and casting then the appeal would widen. This cinematic Dim Sum should be the goal of the studios and if they cannot grasp the reality of the market then it's time for the theaters to start pushing those carts. Laura Peralta-Jones John Sullivan Rob Arthur Kevin Mitchell Tony Franks Steve Winn Domenico Del Priore Patrick von Sychowski Sunil Suri