Kino Climates

For its 10th anniversary, Kino Climates presents a one-day, intensive, eclectic programme that reflects the mix of upbeat pulses animating the independent cinemas, micro-cinemas and other organisations that are part of its network.

Exactly ten years ago, in 2010, International Film Festival Rotterdam hosted Kino Climates, which aimed to propose a map of independent cinemas in Europe in the first decade of the new millennium. Following the closure of a large number of art houses and repertory cinemas in the 1980s and 1990s, an impressive array of alternative practices in film curatorship and programming had over the years emerged, together with a reappropriation of urban spaces and the conversion of them into new types of hybrid cinemas. Whether permanent or not, these venues dedicated to a new cinephilia, and often the result of collective processes, were and still are an underestimated reality that lay between the film festival circuit and the commercial film sector.

Ten years later, Kino Climates is back! Meanwhile, it has turned into a permanent network. What has changed since? A daylong program with film screenings, debates, performances and book presentations.

Films | From the struggle of the Amsterdam squatters’ movement in the mid-1980s to the occupation by filmmakers and activists of the Zvezda cinema in Belgrade in Serbia two years ago. And more. With two features and three compilations, here is a glimpse into the spirit of cinephilia promoted through the Kino Climates network.

Debate | Cinema is a communal space, but it is rare that community is properly attempted inside the auditorium. Kino Climates celebrates a different mode of film exhibition; collective and participatory, convivial and experimental. Representatives from across the network will reflect on the utopian method at the heart of their cinema communities.

Books | Where is Cinema by Anouk de Clercq is a book made up of portraits of film initiatives from around the world, interwoven with conversations with adventurers who have rebooted movie theatres or built these from the ground up. For their book Cinema Makers, Agnes Salson and Mikael Arnal set out in search of inspiration to launch their own cinema. Testimony to a changing time and a sea of ideas inspiring cultural projects.

Performances | To remind us that cinema is not necessarily a static experience, we will end the day with two performances that challenge its boundaries as well as its technology.

10:30 Waar de ratten koning zijn + Talk | 12:00 Microclimates | 13:30 Reels Regained | 14:45 Books presentation | 16:00 Occupied Cinema + Talk | 20:00 The Way of Cube + Kung Fu Trailers | 20:30 Handmade and Homegrown | 21.30 The Hot and the Cold | 22.15 Argentine Signal