Digital video, 1080p
Logline: a love letter to all the doomscrollers
In the early days of cinema, Méliès, the Lumière Brothers, and Edison used the "cinema of attractions" to depict human experiences, focusing on spectacle and audience engagement, simultaneously blurring the lines between public and private spheres. Some argue that this genre's influence persists today, as seen in special effects-heavy franchises like Marvel and advanced camera techniques in nature documentaries. However, these high-tech productions often lack the depth of human exploration seen in the original cinema of attractions, falling short of challenging our self-perception.
In contrast, Instagram Reels, YouTube Short, and TikTok have adopted the spirit of the "cinema of attractions", forming a kind of digital circus. On these platforms, users create a wide range of content, covering human achievements, daily life, the beauty of nature, the decay of urban environments, humour, tragedy, ecological disasters, and more. They effectively become the new filmmakers, engaging and intriguing audiences much like the early cinema pioneers did.
These low-quality user-generated videos frequently retain traces of their journey across various platforms, igniting conversations about authenticity and their ability to capture the performativity and absurdity of modern life. This shift has transferred the power to determine which aspects of the human experience are valuable from traditional movie studios and commercial entities to algorithms that evaluate content based on viewer engagement, promoting the most compelling and contentious material. The decline in cinema attendance over the past two decades can partly be attributed to the scripted and artificial nature of films as compared to the raw nature and accessibility of online content. It is via this new amateur cinema that we can gain insight into what it's like to be alive today. Experiencing the sublime is now at our fingertips. As I spend hours upon hours scrolling into infinity a single thought comes to mind: I hate this world so much I love it.
