Fireplace Cinema is a research project investigating newly emerging practices of commoning in cinema spectatorship and the potential of non-institutional film screenings within social processes of solidarity, kinship, proximity and mutuality as an act of resistance to global, extractivist or post-capitalist formats of production and exhibition.

My own experience as a founder of Cinemaximiliaan in Brussels resonates in a transnational and transcultural relation with various contemporary community-driven film exhibition initiatives organizing screenings in (amongst others) rural areas in Guinea Bissau, in the suburbs of Jakarta, a University film club in Ibadan, community screenings in the Parisian or London peripheries, open air projections on islands in the Pacific or collective hallucinations by indigenous communities in Australia…  where, gathered around a proverbial fireplace, cinema dreams of a coming community.

From the phenomenology of that shimmering light in the dark, from those distantly murmuring sounds, questions arise: how can a theory of the collective film experience be conceived from a transcultural solidarity between peripheral film screening initiatives within precarious or fugitive communities? Under which conditions can a cinema space be a site where the subaltern or marginalized subject emancipates and acts as a generator of resistance? How to escape an ‘economy of empathy’ maintaining a structurally unequal position of the subaltern subject within the realm of the visible? How is a cinematic hegemony of visibility and transparency maintained, negotiated and resisted, activating a potential of refusal, opacity and fugitivity?

Through a series of film screenings, talks, conversations, masterclasses and (co-)written essays, Fireplace Cinema attempts to generate useful discursive support to precarious and peripheral screening initiatives that nurture a passion for the medium of film while maintaining a radical commitment to social and societal emancipation. As such, my hope is that Fireplace Cinema can make a modest contribution to ground work of peripheral processes in the contemporary audiovisual arts landscape. It can give support to those who, invisibilized by the light of the projectors of capitalist film industries, continue to fight for dignity and solidarity in the cinematic presence of oneself and one another.

Besides philosophical essays and publishable texts, Fireplace Cinema consists also of a public program of film screenings, masterclasses, debates and assemblies in Brussels to activate a community of individuals and initiatives around the research project. 

All welcome to engage, get in touch or join in.

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