Cinema communities
Sixty-five years ago Piet Meerburg, who passed away last year at the age of ninety, founded a cinema in Amsterdam entitled Kriterion with fellow students and former Second World War resistance fighters. The idea behind Kriterion was to create a place where alternative cinema could proliferate as well as to create a workplace where (Jewish) students who had lost everything because of the war couldn’t earn money to finance their studies. Today, sixty-five years later, Kriterion still stands, now run independently by fifty students that work hard to live up to the same ideals that were once set up by Piet Meerburg.
Unfortunately, not enough people know the achievements of Piet Meerburg, nor the unique background and business model student cinema Kriterion. This project aims to point to this story and to that of many other likewise initiatives around the world, that I propose to call cinema communities. For there exist other cinema communities, however not nearly enough.
A cinema community is a location, either online or offline, virtual or real, where people come together to share their love for cinema, specifically art house and/or alternative/experimental cinema. The unique aspect of the cinema community is that it not only supports non-mainstream films, but it also contributes to its surrounding (society) in general. These communities appear in many different forms, as for example a cinema pass with online platform (Cineville) or a series of national screenings of involved documentaries (Community cinema).
Now cinema is being relocated more and more to the Internet, where people can download films, watch live streams and post their favourite film clips on sites like Youtube, cinema communities demonstrate the importance and magic of offline cinema moments, while simultaneously embracing the seemingly endless new possibilities of the Internet. Therefore this project uses as well an online as an offline platform to present its two main goals:
The website
In order to make the concept ‘cinema community’ stronger and to also create more attention for it, I propose to make a website that connects ‘all’ cinema communities worldwide with each other. This website will function as a network through which cinema communities can learn from each and inspire one another. Each cinema community will have its own channel on the website that it can use to promote cinematic events and distribute information. Moreover, the site will have a discussion forum, set and designed as a livingroom, that will function as a cinema community in itself.
The book
The offline presentation will be a book in which the different cinema communities can present themselves, their programs and their target group to policy makers, from national to local governments, institutes and foundations, to inspire and convince them to set up cinema communities like the once presented in the book. An example is the Kriterion cinema in Sarajevo, that will open in the spring of 2011, that’s been set up by the Young Urban Achievers foundation with financial support from different funds and subsidies.
Page example book
Resources
Until the project website is online, more information on the cinema communities involved can be found on their individual websites:
- Kriterion - www.kriterion.nl (Dutch)
- Cineville -www.cineville.nl (Dutch)
- Warwick Student Cinema - www.filmsoc.warwick.ac.uk (English)
- Community cinema (Independent Lens) – www.communitycinema.org (English)
- Kriterion Sarajevo (YUA) – www.yuafoundation.org (Dutch) / www.kriterion.ba (Bosnian)
- Open Air Cinema Foundation - www.openaircinema.org (English)
Program(s)
Because cinema communities are very dependent on their location and mission, their programs vary enormously in content and form. Below you will therefore find the program of a day in the week of the cinema communities from the network.
Tuesday 15 March
Warwick Student Cinema
(Lecture Theatre 3 (Science Concourse))19:30: Kick-Ass
Community Cinema
Boise, Idaho: 17:30: Pushing the Elephant
Pocatello, Idaho: 17:30: Pushing the Elephant
Sheboygan, Wisconsin: 19:00: Pushing the Elephant
Boston, Massachusetts: 18:00: Pushing the Elephant
Plymouth, New Hampshire: 19:00: For once in my life
Kriterion
(Roetersstraat 170, Amsterdam)
17:00 Animal Kingdom
17:30 Les Amours Imaginaires
18:00 127 Hours
19:15 The Social Network
19:30 Black Swan
20:00 If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle
21:30 Animal Kingdom
21:45 Black Swan
22:15 Sneak Preview
Open Air Cinema Foundation
(Champs-de-Mars, Port-au-Prince)
Haitian presidential debates
There are 4 Comments to "Cinema communities"
I like the project you have initiated. First, I find the Cineville pass fundamental for the survive of art houses and for the distribution of valid films. This model should be more established in more cities around the world. Then I think that organising an international platform between cinema communities is a useful and creative tool to straighten their awareness about the important role they play within the society and the film diffusion. I agree that this platform would need to approach the possibility of exchanging ideas about film and event programming between the international students that run these cinemas.The website could also develop in a virtual tool for programming with personal channels proposing several and distinguished film program concepts. Why not, for example, a small exchange-festival where Bosnians come to Amsterdam for a week to put on something special and then you do the same in Sarajevo? This could provoke nice surprises!I remember the retrospective of Jodorowsky’s films in Warsaw when some people came naked to the screenings, and it was winter! Or during the Bollywood films people just dance!
As an environmental student from Utrecht I do watch movies, but I normally do not read about the whole world behind cinema. Therefore I found it rather interesting to read the inspiring story of Piet Meerburg and his initiative to support jewish students financially by offering them this organisation in which they could work and earn some money in a very pleasant and involving manner.
After that you write about cinematic communities. However, you do not include information about any communities outside the Netherlands. It is at the ending of your page where I finally find the ‘proof’ these communities do actually excist outside Holland. Maybe it would be a little bit hypocrite of me to think these communities would only excist in Holland, but as a Dutch person I would really be interested in the organisation and the activities of the foreign communities. So perhaps you could add some information about the Warwick Student Cinema and Kriterion Sarajevo?
I think the website you propose would be a great platform for all these cinematic communities to share their creativity and to promote their activities amongst eachother. And the book would be a beautiful memorabilia for all the people included in this global network.
All in all I find your project very interesting and I hope you will actually be abled to build the community!
Dear Wieneke. I have now also added a small program from all the projects, gathered of one day. Hopefully this has also created a bit more background information that you were missing.
This project is inspiring and makes me think of the importance of such a community in my own life. The WInnipeg Cinematheque is the only real arthouse cinema in Winnipeg, Manitoba (Canada), and it is closely tied to the Winnipeg Film Group, which is an organization that supports independent filmmaking in the city. I wonder if there are other such communities where a cinema is so connected to such a group.
For me the experience of going to the cinema and working as a filmmaker and with other filmmakers is inextricably linked. As a child, it was films at the Cinematheque that inspired me to want to make my own, and as an adult, it was where my first film screened for the first time. Crucial to both experiences was their collective nature.
For myself, online platforms are only appealing when they lead to experiences in the real world. I think what appeals to me most about your project is the way in which it aims to connect people and help them establish their own cinematic communities. The Kriterion Sarajevo project is really encouraging and gives me hope that such initiatives will take place more widely, and clearly your ideas are the kinds of tools that could make this happen.