To Public

The primary argument of Project Cinema City was for the unique phenomenon of urban public culture in the 20th century. While it still enjoys the iconic status in the realm of popular culture the publicness of expanded cinema culture has been dwindling since the beginning of the current century. In this project we tried to understand the publicness of cinema in the 20th century from many different factors that were at work and through the eyes of many different kinds of cineastes. Through the multi-channeled project, we also tried to speculate the future shape of the public culture at the time of post-celluloid. It was not a standard social science project neither was it just a curated art event.

The extra-ordinary expanse and cross-disciplinary approach had also earned the project many different kinds of protagonists and spectators – artistes, architects, artisans, copyists, wage labourers, film professionals, sociologists, culture studies people, film buffs, home makers, town planners, geographers, lab technicians, digital technicians, the drop outs and the waywards, and so on.

Hence it was essential to put back the findings of the project in the public sphere (beyond the usual academic and art spaces) in regular intervals and enrich the project further through those open encounters. We needed to strategies the outreach programme in order to reach different strata of people. In addition to the series of film events, exhibitions and publications, Project Cinema City was also disseminated through other avenues.