Toward a Practice of Experimental Cinema-Making

Can the descriptor “experimental film” expand outwards from its central category of making films, to accommodate a spatial practice of constructing cinema commons? With a special focus on the Kino-Climates network of alternative cinema practitioners, this essay chronicles types of experimental film exhibition that are being practiced on the European continent. Three thematic approaches are given attention, to account for the variety of screening projects and their different motivations, revolving around the inhabitation of space as either a momentary encampment or long-term home with an emphasis on collectivity and “living” cinema together; the occupation of either pre-existing cinemas or other urban spaces as a direct action to make certain demands; and the retreat to a space of nurture and reconnection often outside of the urban zone, but which can also be a conclave that sustains the participants without necessarily seeking dominant visibility.