Cellular Cinema

an artist-run screening series for contemporary experimental film on film, video and expanded cinema since 2014

MANIFESTO

For a little more than a century the cinema will have lived among us, seducing and observing us as extraterrestrials or divinities sometimes do, then disappearing suddenly from one day to the next, not even leaving a moment for us to understand the machines or natural wonders were these. Today, on the heels of its death and transfiguration, we have formed the almost certain belief that its images, produced by strange machines, half camera, half bicycle, offer us innumerable enigmas that still await their mysterious key.

– Raúl Ruiz, Poetics of Cinema

Cells are microscopic living creatures that are organically self-contained, while at the same time participating in larger, continually evolving ecologies of organisms and ecosystems.

We propose a methodology of cinema that is small in scale, self-contained in terms of resources, and unpredictably alive in terms of content and form.

We are witnessing the twilight of the era of Macrocinematic Art. The business model deployed to produce a narrative feature film using the industrial model, whether in the context of Hollywood or what is quaintly called “independent filmmaking,” is unsustainable, detrimental to the creative process, and almost always unhealthily exploitive of the time, energy and talent of those involved, driven by the outdated mythology of the ascendant auteur.

The corporate film industry is a place for entrepreneurs, hustlers, and MBAs – not for artists anymore, if it ever was. We say, leave the hustle to the hustlers and the movie business to the businessmen. We choose instead to turn our energies toward salvaging the art form of the moving image, in all of its messy, intimate and unprofitable glory.

We are far from the only ones who feel this way – there are experimental filmmakers and moving image art communities like ours around the world – but as far as we know, we’re the primary voice speaking on behalf of this approach to cinema in our region. Similar efforts exist as near as Madison and Winnipeg, but we are the only ones we know of making this case in Minnesota.

Industrial Cinema has its place, as entertainment, diversion and distraction, an opportunity to disappear for a few hours, alone in the dark. Industrial cinema drives us apart, absorbs us in our own personal screens, streaming pretty content to numb our senses and distract us from thinking, feeling and communicating with those around us.

Cellular Cinema, meanwhile, presents an opportunity to explore the immediacy of our surroundings and to connect us empathically and experientially with the subjectivity of other humans, to be challenged and uncomfortable and confused and entranced and amazed.

Cellular Cinema opposes the deadening effects of marketing, branding and self-promotion. Cellular Cinema rejects the debt-ridden and investor-driven framework of media-making and distribution on an industrial scale with commercial intent.

Cellular Cinema does not scale, is not an online or streaming experience, will never make anyone wealthy. Our internet presence is solely intended to direct people to our small, self-contained, live and in-person events.

Cellular Cinema exists because the moving image is a profound sort of magic, and that magic can be used to bring us together and make us feel, or isolate us and make us numb. Let’s choose together.

© 2024 Cellular Cinema

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