What I love about Civi actually isn’t the technology – that’s as potentially frustrating as any complex software or tool, it’s the community. We meet once or twice a  year at residential coding sprints and make stuff together. This isn’t just unpaid, we pay to be there, and cook together. It’s not unlike making an unpaid short film at a remote location when the cast and crew are high-paid talent the rest of the year round. Ask high-fee talent why they work free on a short film – and it’s always about the people, and how the shared love of creating something brings them together.

Building community spaces became the theme of this second issue of Netribution@25 after Gareth Evans, curator of the Whitechapel gallery, hosted a screening of Ken Loach’s 2014 film Jimmy’s Hall at my local community cinema. We look for meaning, and ways to connect, stroking our phones all night with one-eye on AI-plotted streaming series. But just a few steps away, thanks to the effort of people who may not get paid is this very old thing of magic. Gathering together, of a night, to share a story. In this case to watch then discus a film, with wine and chocolate and ceilidh music. It’s tech-free bliss, there’s neither algoirthm, competitive likes or shares on the things you say. Light shon upon a wall – 130 years on – proves remarkably resilient to corruption. You can go to the ‘enshitified’ version (I – confess – I often do, bathtub of overpriced popcorn and all), but the projector at the village hall hasn’t changed so much. It’s really not so far from campfire and painted cave walls telling stories. 

Perhaps the entire lesson of web 2.0 could be summed up by Cory Doctorow’s timeless observation “content isn’t king, conversation king; content is just something to talk about” (said in response to a Netribution article). 

And so two films weave themselves around each other like a double helix in this issue: Jimmy’s Hall and The Brutalist. Both tell of men who build a community space. 

One is producing the content for people to talk about; the other is producing the space for that talking to happen.  One starts his journey fleeing his home to New York; the other ends his journey being exiled there. One is a work of cinema that demands to be seen on the biggest screen, with the best sound system; the other could be watched on a laptop but resonates so much more deeply if seen in a community space like the one it’s about. One is a cold and lonely monument to a rich man’s vanity and an architect’s ambition and trauma; the other a place for people to come together, to share, discus, dance. Both men fight the system they are in with every step, at all costs, and somehow the films sit together, like paired opposites. And both in different ways remind of the power of cinema against the smaller screen at home or in palm – one for its scale and spectacle; and one for it’s reminder of community; something far from the clinical but giant-screened multiplex, but central to independent cinema.

Also in this issue Ben Blaine talks about what he thinks is most likely to kill off cinema in the next 25 years (I think he’s right), and Tom Fogg introduces us to the dogs he spent winter with on a Greek Island.

But first comes a memoriam for Stephen Applebaum, the journalist and father of two who published dozens of outstanding interviews on Netribution and who died last February. Unsure how best to reflect on someone I knew mostly through his work (and one unforgettable night at Edinburgh film festival) I’ve revisited the first 6 interviews he sent us in 2001. They include Mark Ruffalo, Kelly Reilly and Michael White right at the start of their film careers, and John Boorman, Jack Cardiff and Ken Russell right towards the end of theirs. Thank you for everything Stephen.

Til next time,

Nic

ps – some hope for the Prince Charles Cinema – faced with a huge public backlash the landlords have started discussing a new lease with the management.

pps – some other promising news: discussions to get Netribution’s first new book(s) since 2008 are moving fast – I don’t want to jinx anything by saying more that. But the proofs looks fantastic, more soon.