Exploding Cinema: the guerrilla movement that shows movies everywhere except the big screen
Ever dreamed of making your own movie? Of having your creation up on the big screen in front of hundreds of avid viewers at the local multiplex as they munch popcorn and sit in hushed wonder at the genius you’ve created? Well, the good news is the first part is absolutely achievable thanks to Exploding Cinema, but the second part, not so much.
That’s because while the film collective that started all the way back in 1991 by squatters in an old suntan lotion factory in Brixton is still inviting anyone to submit their film to be shown at one of their events, just as long as that screening does not take place at anything that could possibly be conceived of as anything like an Odeon or a Vue.
Exploding Cinema have shown thousands of amateur movies over the years, projecting them in churches, car parks, bank vaults, inside old beaten up coaches, all over the place. Subjects have included experimental documentaries, performance art, homemade TV shows and much more, interspersed with music, other visuals projected onto walls, prize raffles and all manner of goings on.
As their member Ben Slotover told The Guardian, “We make no distinction between a film that cost £10 or £10,000. We will show a filmmaker’s first film or their hundredth film. A film shot on a VHS camera? A film spitting rage and bile which will offend everybody?
“We’ll show it…we are answerable to no one.”
Ben Slotover
Finally, a chance to have other people enjoy my four-hour homemade 12 Angry Men tribute filmed on an iPhone 4 and acted out entirely by local subtitled dogs! To be fair to the collective, these days things have come on a bit since those early stagings and screenings will mostly take place at The Cinema Museum in London’s Elephant and Castle, but it’s certainly pretty reasonable at £7.50 on the door.
And the advent of the internet has, of course, made life much easier when it comes to submitting pieces to be shown, with Slotover adding, “We’ve been snowed under and have a big backlog to get through. We don’t have the luxury of picking and choosing, so we’ll just keep putting on show after show to get them screened.”
Guerrilla filmmaking and cinema showings have been going on all over the world for many years, and the advancement in technology has allowed people of all ages to make their own movies, edit them and upload them to an incredibly high standard without having to go through the traditional studio system. Just this year, YouTuber Mark Fischbach AKA Markiplier made headlines when his crowd-funded, self-shot horror movie Iron Lung made more than $50million at the box office on a budget of just $2m.
Moreover, last year, the spirit of guerrilla was shown to be alive and well even in the beleaguered country of Iran, as It Was Just an Accident received the Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Written and directed by Persian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, the movie is a drama about a group of former political prisoners who must decide whether or not to kill a man who they believe once tortured them.
The film is highly critical of the Iranian government and Panahi and his crew had to film in secret, without a permit, especially as the director had already been arrested and banned from working in the country for 20 years.
