City Film Cultures: The Kino Movement

Since one of the Creative Region Initiatives is called Film Dayton I’d thought I’d post on two film concepts that have a localist focus. The first is the Kino movement.

Kino is the German and Russian word for “the movies”, but apparently was adopted by a bunch of Montrealers (people working in advertising) for the name of their amateur film group


This has turned into an international movement, with Kino cells forming on 4 continents, but mostly in the Francophone world (Quebec, France, etc) based on this list.

Some of these groups have web-pages so you can see what they are up to. I like Fimonik, from Manchester, England…they seem to have a lot going on.


Two examples from the German speaking parts of Europe are Kino M and Kinoberlino. Both sites mostly auf Deutsch (with some English on the Berlin page), but you can get the idea that each local cell has its own identity (Kinoberlino even makes its own DVDs)

For the USA there is Wis-Kino, up in Madison, Wisconsin (the other US cell is in Louisville, which is how I found out Kino). Wis-Kino seems pretty active:

What’s cool about Kino is that it’s participatory and open to amateurs. This is particularly the case with their 48 hour filmmaking marathons called Kabarets.

A Kabaret starts out with a ‘secret ingredient’ that has to be incorporated into the film, then groups of filmmaking teams form up and shoot their films, with the films shown at the end of the 48 hours as a small film fest, open to spectators as well as the participants.

If one is familiar with the traditions associated with architectural education at the Ecole de Beaux Arts this is akin to being on charette, but with film.

Of course, being that this is amateur one can assume the quality is uneven, but one has to applaud this as a way to jump-start some creativity, possibly spinning off a local film scene beyond just watching movies.

Heres an interesting article on it from UKULA:

On The Road With Kino

"Forget what you know about movies…the bloated budgets, the popcorn programming, even that castrated gold statuette. Now let me introduce you to Kino—a stripped-down film collective, equal parts Stella Artois and Stanley Kubrick. Since its basement apartment inception, Kino has set out to create films in an environment of community and collaboration.

"Founded in 1999 by two Montreal filmmakers, Kino consists of independent artists who create shorts that are then distributed around the world on the festival circuit. Kino has since evolved into an international movement with cells in over 50 cultural hubs from Vienna to Adelaide to Reunion Island. Hell…even Wisconsin is represented

So, an interesting way of getting film afcionados involved with actually making films.