Exploding Cinema
A ReidsonFilm extra ...
ReidsonFilm rarely sets foot outside of the screening room but last Friday we ventured out into the cold night air to join a bunch of fellow cineastes at Exploding Cinema.
Exploding Cinema is a London-based collective (remember those?) that has been in circulation since 1991. Their aim: to screen films and they will show any film submitted to them, and that means anything and everything, with one proviso – the film has to have a running time under 20 minutes.
no stars no funding no taste
They are defiantly anti-mainstream with no sponsorship or ads. Film nights take place all over the metropolis with past venues including squats, churches disused factories, and on one great night an empty Lido.
On this particular evening they were hosted by Iklectik, itself an impressive music and arts venue that’s just a five minute stroll from St Thomas’ Hospital in Lambeth (the bar serves a pretty good Negroni). And the 14 films on show were indeed eclectic in range. Budgeting probably ranged from five quid to £5K but amidst the DIY feel of the whole project what was remarkable was the diversity of voices on show.
ReidsonFilm’s highlights included Quarantine, an experimental meditation on the isolation of lockdown filmed by Stephanie Webber in her kitchen; an avant-garde animation, From the Bowels (view here) by Portugese filmmaker Anabela Costa; the technically impressive comedy-horror The Internet Remains Undefeated by Robbie Gibbon (trailer). And we were particularly impressed and unsettled by Unsettled, a Lynchian glitterfest by Anna Grigorian, a film and video artist who crossed the pond from Canada to join us on the night.
Exploding Cinema’s next outing is on the 22nd April at the Cinema Museum in Kennington. Now home to an exceptional collection of artefacts, memorabilia and equipment from the days before the rise of the multiplex, the building dates from the 19th Century when it served as the Lambeth Workhouse. Its most famous resident was Charlie Chaplin whose family spent time there when they became destitute.
Find more details here, and we hope to see you there amongst their ‘kaleidoscopic wonderland of psychedelic projections’.
P.S. of course if you have made a short film of late, Exploding Cinema always welcomes submissions.