The films and art videos we’ve shown so far and the films we will show in the upcoming season, although chosen according to fancy, reflect our specific interests, and a couple of themes have emerged.

We debuted last summer with Workers Leaving the Factory by the brothers Lumière, thinking that the first film shown in a cinema in 1885 should also be our first film shown. The image of workers leaving the factory was then used to introduce our interest in post-industrial survival. Images from societies which depended on a local industry, thrown into a crisis condition when that industry was outsourced or closed down. What actions do people take, what are their strategies for survival? And maybe even more interesting to us is the question of what attitude you adopt in order to survive? How do you think about society, work, friendship, the future; how do you respond to the overwhelming apparatus geared towards dismantling your life? And how do you present yourself and your attitudes – as opposition, optimism, off-grid drop-out autonomy, absurdist artistic activism, active participation or desperate compassion? We’re looking around for films and videos depicting the results and future projections of the current austerity measures imposed on European societies. We are also looking at examples from other parts of the world and other points in history when crisis has hit a society, to find ideas and strategies already used, with or without success.

Another theme we’re interested in is the relationship between an artist and a political collective. An artist joins a collective in the capacity of a citizen, same as everybody else, but can also participate and work with the collective in the capacity of an artist or filmmaker, hir chosen vocation. We’re looking at films made by artists wishing to document the collective they belong to, and films made by artists who try to give form to the voice of the collective. But we’re also interested in artists describing their personal experiences, talking about what happened to them and their art when they chose to join a collective, whether the relationship between individual and collective produces conflict, disillusionment, euphoria, evolution, conformity, or new possibilities. We’re taking a special interest in professional filmmakers working to teach other members of the collective how to express themselves through filmmaking and art, to idealistically help found a cinema of the people, where the images of the people are made by the people.

These are just some of our interests. If you share them, please send us your links.