Collaborative and communal cinema
Mission to Strasbourg
Rising triumphantly above the shame of nearly a full year having passed since my last piece, I am happy to share a few pieces of good news, which perhaps explain why ‘writing about cinema’ has taken a backseat to ‘doing cinema’.
Firstly, I have started my first movements towards creating my own cinema, in the shape of the Waltham Forest Cinema Project. You can read the vision for the project over here. I held the first event of the project at The Balcony Movie, at the wonderful Good Shepherd Studios in Leytonstone. It was a beautiful night and I hope to keep replicating it: building a local audience, finding co-conspirators and showing wonderful films, all the while shaping an idea of what a local cinema in Waltham Forest looks like. I will likely write about the experiences of forging the project here, but if you want to hear about the events themselves, best to sign up here.
I am also looking especially to find a community connection with a Romanian group in Waltham Forest. If you know of anyone, please do connect me!
Secondly, I was asked by Agnès Salson, to attend the inaugural Cinema Makers conference in Strasbourg in March. Agnès is someone who I admire for how deeply she has been searching for what cinema could be, and it’s very cheering to me that her and her partner’s long quest – documented in their Tour Des Cinemas report and Cinema Makers book – has resulted in a new cinema space, La Forêt Électrique in Toulouse. Even more cheering was being around 25+ people – including our hosts Cinema Le Cosmos in Strasbourg itself – who are shaping equivalent cinemas across Europe, and discussing ideas for cinema to remain relevant to its community. I wrote a blog about my experience over here.
One thing I was thinking about a lot is ‘innovation’. My overall feeling is that most cinemas would be economically better off and more relevant to their communities if they re-learned how to do a few things excellently and commitedly, things that probably aren’t startlingly new to anyone who has been to a cinema or worked in one.
Infrequently does the future lie in ‘innovation’ in exhibition. The trends that held the greatest sway among the Cinema Makers participants felt very distant from start-up culture and far closer to organic social movements. As a result, they spoke to ideas that have circulated far longer than our current moment, even while making use of the ease of access offered by the digital. The following are the threads that felt strongest amongst the group. Few will be alien as concepts, but the extent, the foundational way they have been baked in and maintained to these spaces, is unique and gave me much pause for thought as I try to conceptualize opening my own cinema.
I’ve been working with a freelance client for the last two years, on very few days and we’ve achieved over 100% better box office (34% above the market growth) simply by doing a few things well above the noise of what seems important. If you ever want to talk to me about taking some of that to your venue, just email me.
That piece is hosted on the Cinema of Commoning blog, which has a lot of other good cinema reading. If you’re thinking, ‘Hey, I want my own piece of idyllic cine-inspiration in a European city’, then look no further. The fine people at Berlin’s Sinema Transtopia (who it was my pleasure to meet in Strasbourg) are gathering there between 4–7 July to host a conference that expands further than Europe in asking and answering what a cinema could be.
Finally, I’m helping organise a fundraising screening for the crisis in Sudan on 9 June at the Genesis Cinema in Tower Hamlets. We’re showing Goodbye Julia – the latest in the wave of big hitting Sudanese films from the last few years including the wonderful You Will Die at Twenty – and we’re down to the last 20% of tickets. Genuinely good film for a genuinely good cause, no wonder the streets have jumped on it, and you should too.
That’s enough hopeful new shoots for now from me. Send me yours!