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Personal Cinema : Distribution

Distributions systems can assume a personal scale, but there is a tendency for the opposite to occur. The maintenance of many cultural characteristics that constitute social identity requires more than a passive response to changing media technologies and marketing regimes. The first Personal Cinema demonstrated the emergence of new spheres of cinematic production, which have the capacity to critique and diverge from the norms of the dominant cinema.

But the dominant cinema is global cinema, and any discernable local trends must contend with the insatiable capacity of global marketing. The attention of each consumer is intensely contested. Without adequate attention to distribution, at least in the local sphere, personal cinema will be a curiosity rather than a significant bulwark for cultural identity.

The emergence of the Internet has caused procedural and strategic upheaval for artists and industries alike. But despite the increasing accessibility of productive media technologies for artists and filmmakers, easy distribution of film and video work remains complicated by the emerging economy of bandwidth. Will the easy patterns of media consumption necessarily exclude personal cinema?

Personal Cinema calls for the emergence of both representation and distribution systems that are responsive to the local, the individual, and the even the unprofitable. At stake is the relevance of the work of artists and filmmakers who would work outside of large international corporations.

Lacking coordination and investment, independent artists and filmmakers settle into the reactive procedural contexts that are industrially produced. Not surprisingly these contexts require skills that are very similar to those demanded by the advertising and entertainment industries, which exert the most influence over the further evolution of media technology. Personal Cinema II explores roles that can be elaborated by artists and filmmakers that are not conducive to the death of art and cinema.

Technological innovations have established new rules for engagement with a public that has become accustomed to increasingly frenetic and effortless media. The amply demonstrated utility of the new media for the purposes of marketing now motivates creative practices that short-circuit, parody, deflate, and digress from the imperatives of consumption.

While relevant distribution systems are clearly in a state of flux, historical parallels with the emergence of film and radio would lead us to believe that this fluid condition will not last. What would it mean for digital media and distribution systems to assume a stable configuration? Would such a configuration be something other than an apotheosis of marketing? Would it more resemble extreme sports, violent video games, or the archive of artifacts that are conventionally known as cinema?

Personal Cinema focuses attention on the distribution of personal media works and strategies of public address. It engages both the possibilities and dangers borne by instantaneous global exchange. Personal Cinema intends to ask how cinema can assume a personal scale without simultaneously becoming historically obscure?

Andy Deck-Ilias Marmaras 2000