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There's a lot about the film space that seems dire.

Streaming services have simply replaced TV packages of the past, charging more and more for less and less. Monthly fees keep mounting, while these services continue to maintain a dynamic in which we never own the video we pay for. The video art being put out by these streaming services also leave much to be desired, when the head of Netflix sees the art they facilitate as just content, then it inevitably results in the nonstop churn of low-quality work.

I think one of the most telling signs of the direction of Netflix and the like is that there isn't a robust way to navigate and search the catalog. There is no alphabetical view, or a comprehensive list to go down. The designed experience is to let the algorithm tell you what to watch next. This both serves as a way to obfuscate the list (making it hard to know when things are removed, or the list is not growing) and as a way to condition the viewer to be a passive consumer, rather than an active engager. Think about the DVD collectors and iTunes library obsessives, there is a reason that this model of active archiving and appreciating is the complete opposite of how these platforms function. Ease of use and frictionless experience is sold as the end goal, not deeper connection or love for the films, because the former can be sold by Netflix, and the latter...well the latter requires work, and isn't Netflix's end game. It could even be worse than all that, like with the Discovery situation, in which films are simply not released. Batgirl and Coyote vs. Acme are just tax write-offs to the executives.

The very platforms that seek to disrupt the old school Hollywood system are really just doing the same thing all over again, their insatiable appetite means film costs balloon to the degree that the likes of Apple are losing $1 billion a year. One billion! There's so many better ways to spend that money. It doesn't really matter that Apple loses this money, but this means that production is shifted to prioritize large, safe, conservative projects (and endless sequels). Or they flood the film festivals and pick up projects only to dump them unceremoniously into the backrooms of their streaming service.

And it's not like the "old" system has learned much. The AMCs and Regals are devoting the majority of their screens to the latest Disney live-action re-hashes and then they wonder why attendance is down.

And so, we have the "auteurs" that proclaim that independent movie theaters are the institutions worth saving, and indie films are the films worth boosting. And to some degree, that is true, they are much better than the other options. But better is not necessarily good here. Whether it's true indies struggling to stay open, or big indies like Alamo Drafthouse and their union-busting ways, the proclaimed third space leaves much to be desired.

Things don't look much better from the production-side either. While the likes of Neon and A24 might seem to green-light more progressive and artistic projects than the big studios, the pitfall of running a studio like a brand is that a brand does not have a soul. A brand means that an artistic, "nuanced" collaboration between Alex Garland and an Iraq War veteran is inevitable. Or put more simply, as long as these films are treated as commodities to further a brand and aesthetic, then the end goal is always going to be to make war propaganda more aesthetically appealing.

It's important to treat film and the film-watching venues as connected concepts. Whether it's the studio pipeline to theater, or streaming services producing their own content, the through-line has always been there. It was there back in the 40s, with United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc., when movie studios got in trouble for maintaining a monopoly, controlling both the studios and the theaters, and they are still present now.

So is there really any hope in this space? As always, Third Cinema offers some guidance. A Latin American film movement in the 60s that directly critiques capitalism and imperialism. The movement rejects the "first" and "second" cinema: the Hollywood system that outputs bourgeois values to a passive audience, and the European art films that seem to tackle more pertinent issues, but through an individualistic lens and still through a capitalist production system. This gave rise to a multitude of experimental and revolutionary films, often working smaller, more-DIY crews. These guerilla units might have a more amateur quality to them, but they also were able to experiment with so many more forms. The supposed limitations of a smaller project, actually gave room for cinema to be defined more expansively. Similarly, screenings were hosted in people's basements. They hosted screenings anywhere and everywhere, some even paused the film every few minutes for the crowd to discuss. Just as the limitations of the production gave way for more expansive shooting ideas, the lack of traditional screening spaces actually allowed for a more fluid, multitude of pop-up theaters.

So we start in the spaces we have. We make our apartments and homes into screening spaces. They might not have the sound systems or the giant screens, but they have the community. They can be more spontaneous, and more nimble. They can allow for dialogue—the most crucial part of a film, that has all but disappeared from traditional movie theater spaces (and now are relegated to Letterboxd quips). They can also give us more flexibility on what to screen!

What better thing to screen than what we already have, and what we're all already making! So we arrive at Pocket Video Cinema.

Pocket Video Cinema celebrates the video art and films we take on our phones. The most "simple" of recording devices that we have on us at all times. The devices in which we capture memories—serious and silly, dance videos of our cousin, the sunset by the lake, the vacation vlog update. It's not that any one of these videos are necessarily capital-I important, but it's that together, they form a fabric of the process that is valuable and special.

If we accept the video I took of a plastic bag stuck to a tree as video art, then we have expanded the definition of cinema, we have broadened the scope of creativity, and crucially, extended it beyond the reaches of capital. Capital wants to gate-keep what is cinema and what is a cinema space, preferably behind large productions and "real directors". They can't control the multitude of observations we're all creating at all times, so they seek to de-value it, to claim it as lesser. And yet, there is nothing more powerful. The phone video my friend takes of a dog they saw, is an art of love, is an art of reflection, is an art of process. Any of those things is worth more than Christopher Nolan blowing up a plane for Tenet, and it costs a lot less.