Vertical cinema: taking a sideways glance at film

Vertical cinema: taking a sideways glance at film

What exactly is Vertical Cinema? Is it it film, is it art, is it installation, is it a live event, is it a one-off, is it the future? Does it look backwards or forwards – or is it, quite literally, a sideways move? The Melbourne International Film Festival is hosting a performance of Vertical Cinema, a project that presents traditional celluloid film in an unfamiliar way. It uses traditional CinemaScope, or widescreen film, flipped on its side. A specially modified projector shows a large-scale vertical image on a screen in a non-cinema location: Vertical Cinema has been seen in churches and museums in Europe and America, and in Melbourne it will be at Deakin Edge.

Vertical Cinema was created by a Dutch organisation called Sonic Acts, which invited 10 artists to create short experimental works for the format and the scale. They came from a range of backgrounds. Some had film experience, some were completely new to celluloid – even to the idea of creating a fixed work rather than a performance that could be varied.

Joost Rekveld, whose work is part of the Vertical Cinema event at Melbourne International Film Festival.

Joost Rekveld, whose work is part of the Vertical Cinema event at Melbourne International Film Festival.Credit:Simon Schluter

Joost Rekveld is one of the commissioned artists, and he's worked in film before. His piece for Vertical Cinema was the first time for 20 years that he'd created his own soundtrack, although he has a background in electronic music.


The project is "not a strong statement", he hastens to say. "We're not saying that screens should be vertical". It draws on the idea that "even though celluloid is disappearing and cinema is changing, it's not as if the possibilities are exhausted. It's perhaps a bit of a call to destandardise, and to experiment."

There are references to past and future, after all in the aspect of the frame. The shape of the traditional fine-art portrait is vertical. It's the format people often resort to when they film with their mobile phones. But Vertical Cinema also has a monumental aspect to its presentation: the screen is 10-metres high. For some of the artists, a reference point was the mysterious monolith of Kubrick's 2001. And one of the things Rekveld was able to do, working on a large scale, was experiment with slowness in a new way. It's something he couldn't do on a smaller screen, he says.

The artists for this program come from Austria, Germany, the Netherlands and Japan, and many of them were known to one another. There is more Vertical Cinema to come, Rekveld says. A new program is on its way, and it's planned to invite an even more varied and eclectic mix of participants.

Vertical Cinema is at Deakin Edge on August 14 at 6.30 pm and 9pm.

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