The relations between Parma and cinema were so strong for almost the whole of the twentieth century that this city became an early laboratory of ideas and theories on cinema and a set chosen by some of the greatest Italian authors and beyond. Furthermore, a considerable number of directors, actors, screenwriters and set designers were born in Parma who have made their way internationally, testifying to the fact that in this small city in Northern Italy there was a decidedly cinematic air. Red armchairs takes up the thread of this story, wondering why, unique among the Italian provincial cities, Parma has given so much to the cinema, accompanying the viewer on a journey backwards that from the first projections of the Lumière cinema reaches the ultramodern experience of new multiplexes. During this journey we will meet the characters who created the conditions for this diffusion of cinematographic culture in Parma.

For at least three generations of viewers, cinema has been like life: a motive for work, relationships, conflict, politics, and pleasure. The documentary, based on original interviews with critics active between the 1950s and the present day, evokes the places, rituals, professional routines, gender relations, and polemical and social dimensions of Italian film criticism. Not only a profession, but above all a discovery of the world through films, yesterday as today.