In the Media

Find full coverage of Vertical Cinema in the media in this document: PDF

“Cinema seems irrevocably conquered […] The phrase ‘35mm’ has itself become a site of resistance – technological, and therefore also political – and in some way the medium was Vertical Cinema’s message: these shorts, projected onto a vertically hung CinemaScope screen, were aurally violent and unceasingly radical departures from narrative cinema. And yet, over the course of its 90 or so minutes – even over the course of one single short – the bedazzling intensity of the audiovisual onslaught […] acquired a narrative sensibility of its own.”

– Michael Pattison, Sight & Sound Magazine

“It was a fascinating experience, an exercise that hinted at myriad possibilities for cinema while questioning its very definition. Walking out after the event, several questions abounded in my mind. How would the laws of filmmaking be altered if cinema were vertical? What would happen to the constructs that assist in deconstruction of cinema, such as mise en scène? Where would such a format take the knowledge and rules of photography, composition and scriptwriting?”

– Laya Maheshwari, Filmmaker Magazine

“The entire project, which began last year in Austria, is more of a giant art installation than an argument to the film industry that vertical videos could replace the tried-and-true cinema experience. It is not an invitation to leave cinemas — which have been radically transformed over the past decade according to the diktat of the commercial film market — but a provocation to expand the image onto a new axis.”

– Josh Lowensohn, The Verge

“Vertical Cinema is like the ultimate anti pop-up event. It has become fashionable to show films in any venue, but this event turns that on its head because you have to find a very specific kind of venue that has the height and also the depth of room as well. There’s no point in showing these films unless you show them really, really big. They’re all screened from 35mm, so it’s a special projector which has to be put on its side and then placed on a massive platform. The sonic element of the films is crucial too; it’s very much an audio-visual experience. It’s such an insanely singular, unwieldy, truculent behemoth of an event – it sort of proposes a future for cinema but uses obsolete film equipment and can only ever happen in very particular spaces.”

– Matt Lloyd, Director of Glasgow Short Film Festival, in Herald Scotland.