Georgian Cinephiles are signing a Petition for Municipal Cinema

In the November of 2019, Martin Scorsese condemned Marvel and differentiated popular blockbusters and actual cinema saying: “The situation, sadly, is that we now have to separate fields: There’s worldwide audiovisual entertainment, and there’s cinema.” Scorsese compares Marvel movies to theme parks declaring they’re not essentially a cinema. However, he doesn’t think it’s because of the talent crisis and blames risk-averse funding corporate organizations.

Going to the movie theatres has primarily become a theme park ride nowadays but there are still some venues where you have a chance of a pure cinematic encounter. These encounters are possible in film archives, municipal cinemas, art-house film festivals or independent movie theatres which are in short of use around the globe.

It is the same in Georgia where all the movie theatres are private and profit-oriented. Georgian film enthusiasts are forced to pursue the independent, i.e. good films on pirate websites or they have to wait for a few local festivals whose programs aren’t even satisfying.

The debates about the significance of municipal movie theatres in Tbilisi have been on the table of Georgian film scholars and professionals for about thirty years now however it remains a struggle to establish this kind of social.

In the dawn of 2022 Georgian film professionals, enthusiasts and scholars launched the social campaign about a municipal cinema in the capital city of Georgia, Tbilisi and lots of Georgian cinephiles seem to be excited about the initiative. 

The English version of the petition:

“Our petition applies to anyone who has experienced the urge to talk to someone at least once after watching a movie; anyone who has thought about the social nature and importance of cinema, which beliefs in the mutual experience of a film session. Caress you who spend colourless days in unbearable inaccessibility; municipal cinema belongs to you!

We declare that a city without a municipal cinema represents a gazeless city, left without alternative possibilities of vision, boredom and homelessness.

In the age of meaning-loss in which we live today, heretics preach a modern religion of indifference from theoretical heights; that there is no longer a distinction between the product of a film subservient to the cult of money and "essential cinema" (Jonas Mekas's concept). We are emerging from the need to take this distinction into account. As an alternative to commercial cinemas, expensive tickets and similar images, we consider establishing a municipal cinema. A place whose driving idea will obtain a more adequate understanding of social life with the help of cinema, the creation of shared meanings among many people, the cognition of old and new, and the liberation of mind and eye.

Our goal is to establish a network of municipal cinemas in Tbilisi and gradually in all regional centres of Georgia; spaces with a multifaceted understanding of reality and a sense of community, places of love, equality, and support, which through the power of cinema will play their role in a critical perception of the present and a more distinct definition of the future.

We are encouraged by what connects us to our peers in time and space.”

The original source of the petition where you can contribute:

თბილისის მუნიციპალური კინოთეატრისთვის (manifest.ge)