Sarah Lonsdale from the London Film School interviewed us for her article, The Big Sleep, which explores the cultural impact of Covid-19 on Edinburgh’s historic cinemas.
Close to our heart and doorstep is The Cameo, a beautiful art deco theatre where my grandparents went in the 50s. Sitting in those warm velvet chairs, you can’t deny the magic of bringing folk together to experience the world anew, or the risk of doing so in this new world.
Christopher Nolan’s dedication to the vehicle of cinema is well known, as demonstrated by Tenet, the only major title to hit the big screen in 2020. In The Nolan Variations he touches on what moviegoing means to him as a director, producer and screenwriter:
“The thing that makes films completely unique is the combination of subjectivity - the visceral experience - with shared experience and empathy with the rest of the audience. It’s a borderline mystical experience. You read a novel: totally subjective experience. You can’t share it with other people. You’re in that narrative on your own. The stage has the empathetic experience, but every person views the stage from a different point of view. Movies have this very, very unique mixture of the subjective and immersive, but it’s also shared.”
As we adapt and rework our plans for Nucleus and other productions, maybe it’s a positive step that features can be released simultaneously in cinemas and on VOD platforms? It could lead to a groundswell of support for indie films ordinarily dwarfed by blockbuster releases.