Barn Set Films

We are not here to compete with Hollywood; With their ever collapsing, struggling world which chases tax incentives and profit, over any integrity they might have had. Nor to cater to the capricious will of popular opinion, which so often destroys art in its search for comfortable entertainment. Nor are we here to land solely in the realm of the modern, so called “Art-House” film, the “rebellion” or “anti-art” against artistic traditions, which have long been built up for our safekeeping.

Wonder, Truth, Contemplation! These are the goals of art and film. Not money or appearances; the self-gratification of entertainment or apparent “novelties”. Cinema cannot advance with such meaningless ends.

We must return to the primal philosophies; Centuries of ideas grown from the length and breadth of brilliant minds, who still thought of such things.

To see the movements of the soul, captured in the slight gestures of the human face; the beauty of the world; the good, the bad; the rhythm of “imprinted time” and the poetry of cinema.

“Film as dream, film as music.”¹

Our search is one for Truth. “To recreate life, its movement, its contradictions, its dynamics and conflicts. To reveal every iota of the truth… even if not everyone finds that truth acceptable.”²

“To show nature her own image.”³

To hold a mirror to the soul. To show man in relation to himself as he lives and contemplates and struggles in time.

That is our task. The raw potential of cinema. What an incredible invention, one that is rife with possibilities and dangers.

We present this “ethos”, not just to the audience, but to all filmmakers, potential or established, to encourage them to see their art in a new light, and to resist the den of entertainment. May they find solace in the works of the masters of cinema.

—D.M.

1. Ingmar Bergman, The Magic Lantern
2. Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time
3. Shakespeare, Hamlet