Operating as a nonprofit filmmakers' co-operative, Open Cinematic seeks to produce diverse high-profile moving image work by fostering collaboration between filmmakers who share our values.
Combining the resources, skills and labour of our members, Open Cinematic will create socially engaged films of extraordinary depth and ambition. While numerous films will be produced, all will be situated within the larger (radical) Open Cinematic project.
Ideology
A1. Open Cinematic believe that art should never be reduced to propaganda, yet can still play a vital role in advocating social change. We believe that the next 10 years present a watershed for humanity and our planet. We therefore seek to engage with the most important issues of our time, creating compelling, considered and philosophical cinema. We also believe in ambiguity, and the inherent negative capability of great art.
A2. Open Cinematic will engage the communities in which we operate in participatory art projects. We will jointly encourage the personal artistic practice of every human being and advocate an inclusive notion of art. Resultant work will be incorporated into the main body of each completed film.
A3. Open Cinematic will seek to emphasise the relationship between people and their environment, stressing the nature of experience as necessarily in-place. All work will seek to record the sustenance-giving capacity of the earth, and the profound importance of local knowledge, language and culture.
A4. Open Cinematic believes that all forms of moving image work are enriched through research. This may take the form of historical, scientific, journalistic and/or aesthetic investigation. Open Cinematic works will typically navigate between the demands of fine art, journalism and social activism – yet never easily be categorised as any one such category.
A5. Open Cinematic believes that rigorous fact, proof and evidence based investigation is integral to interrogating competing understandings of the past and present. Much of the modern media, like our collective memory, confirms and reinforces our understanding of history and our underlying assumptions about the present. We believe in our capacity as journalists and historians to challenge and disrupt such notions.
