"Observation is a dying art."- Stanley Kubrick

We photograph things in order to drive them out of our minds. My stories are a way of shutting my eyes."-Franz Kafka

We often say that we go to the cinema for entertainment Or at least treat it as a mode of escape. It can also be fair to say that we go to the cinema to learn "stuff"; whatever that may be. Pure escapism can of course be the function of virtually any art for especially music and the movies, but if can also be an incredibly grounding experience. One that gives color and nuance to the world, and ensures that our tentacles remain firmly entrenched in the realities around us, regardless of its difficulties.

There was a much-clichéd trope bandied about a few years a ago that proclaimed cinema is dead. This general feeling of unease and ennui can be contributed to a number of factors, but thankfully, many films made in the past decade alone negate this premise. Cinema is an art of constant renewal: so long as filmmakers are able to take over the means of production and tell stories without fear, it will remain.

While it is undoubtedly true that the Internet has given us tremendous accessibility to content, nothing can truly replicate the experience of seeing a film in the cinema. Nor can it adequately provide the kind of personalized attention to organizing a programme that our team at Cimatheque so enjoys providing its audience. And at the end of the day, the more spaces we have to screen and discuss films, the stronger the industry will be: as a diverse team made of filmmakers, arts administrators, and historians, this is a value we hold dear.

It is fair to say that our last month of programming for this inaugural season at Cimatheque is preoccupied with two concerns: tracing cinematic movements throughout history (highlighting works that perhaps flew under the radar or did not get the credit it deserved till much later); and exploring a the notion that society is marked as much by what it chooses to forget as what it chooses to remember.