Illustration by Lucinda Rogers

Something we really miss right now is going to the cinema. Celebrating that previously simple act is Sight & Sound magazine’s campaign, My Dream Palace. We caught up with production editor Isabel Stevens to talk about the film exhibition industry, her love for the big screen and how we can get involved… 

Cast your mind back. What was the last film you saw at the cinema? When was that, exactly? For me it was in August last year, a month or so after it was declared, briefly, that cinemas could reopen in the UK (only to close once again a few short months later). While sitting down in front of a film remains one of the escapes – albeit fleeting – from the challenges we all currently face, for many of us, streaming a movie simply can’t compare to watching as part of an audience. It remains an event in a way that settling down on the couch never could be. With this in mind, we spoke with Sight & Sound magazine’s production editor Isabel Stevens about My Dream Palace: the publication’s campaign to celebrate cinemas.

The Double Negative: Tell us about My Dream Palace.

Isabel Stevens: My Dream Palace is an editorial campaign, celebrating cinemas and the magic of communal movie-going, that Sight & Sound started in November 2020. It grew out of a regular column we’ve run in the magazine since 2018 called Dream Palaces where a filmmaker spotlights a cinema they hold dear.

In November last year Edgar Wright launched the campaign taking readers on a tour of all his favourite cinemas and the formative experiences he had in them – from watching fantasy films in the late 70s in Bournemouth to social distanced screenings after the first lockdown. Since then many filmmakers from all over the world have taken part.

The lovely thing about their contributions is how varied they are – some transport you to streets full of ornate picture palaces that no longer exist (like Viggo Mortensen talking about Buenos Aires’s movie houses), others champion cinemas that are currently shut (Regina King on US theatre chain Alamo Drafthouse; Lynne Ramsay on the BFI Southbank or Francis Lee on the Hyde Park Picture House) or make you aware of cinephile hot spots to put on your future travel wish list (like Recife’s Cinema São Luiz that Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho discusses). We even had Richard Linklater talk about how he set up a cinema (the Austin Film Society). Meanwhile other filmmakers speculate on what the future might bring for the big screen – but all of them agree that cinemas are the optimal environment for watching a film.

TDN: What initiated the campaign?

IS: The lockdowns that have happened all over the world; the fact that we can’t go and watch films all together in cinemas at the moment and we really miss that; the precarious state of the film exhibition industry right now and the fact that many cinemas around the world may not reopen unless they receive financial support.

TDN: What is it that makes the big screen experience so important?

IS: For me it’s an out of body experience of sorts that you just can’t get at home. As Wes Anderson says, it hypnotises you. I think Tilda Swinton put her finger on it in this poem she wrote for Sight & Sound (before we were even aware of Covid-19) where she praises ‘the wild wide screen’. Going to the cinema is an adventure.

It’s a roller coaster ride that you’re not in control of. And that sense of submission is really important – Lulu Wang talks about this in our next issue – to give yourself up to it and not be distracted is vital. It’s just like Susan Sontag writes in her 1996 essay, The Decay of Cinema, where she describes the experience of sitting in a cinema as akin to being kidnapped. That’s a perfect analogy in my opinion.

The darkness and the audience around you play a huge part too – it’s a singular mixture of feeling totally alone but also submersed in a crowd – and immersed in the drama on screen. There is nothing else quite like it.[…]

Continue reading: http://www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2021/01/going-to-the-cinema-is-an-adventure-sight-sounds-my-dream-palace/