Cry me a River

CRY ME A RIVER - Reflecting on cinema as an artists practice, was a project devised Bart Groenendaal where participants explored what it takes to make cinema and think about possibilities for artists to work with cinematic imagery.

We are interested in how the cinema (or the cinematic image) makes meaning and how we can use drama and narration, functionally and dysfunctionally. Can we employ the seductive powers of cinema to work for us as artists? We consider storytelling and its inherent perspectives. We touch on representation, on some rough angles of film theory and we reflect on how cinema is tied into 'modernity' in general. We will consider cinema as spectacle and as a collaborative art form. We read some texts and discuss them. We watch films and fragments and reflect on them. We do exercises with a focus on directing and being given directions as an actor or as a performer. The central focus of the project will be, to create cinematic scenes in groups: writing, developing and shooting. The aim here is not so much to end up with finished short films, but rather, to use the practise to reflect on the process of making film.

Bart Groenendaal