My Pic­ture Palace cre­ative brief – the results

We were bowled over and deeply moved by the entries we received for our My Pic­ture Palace cre­ative brief. To get you up to speed, we set you the task of emu­lat­ing the ele­ments of the cin­emago­ing expe­ri­ence you love the most, but in the com­fort of your own home. We then asked you to send us some pic­tures of video detail­ing your efforts, and the results were staggering.

Just below we have made a lit­tle video com­pi­la­tion of the entries we received, and have includ­ed on there the main prizewin­ner – and let me tell you, it was an extreme­ly tough deci­sion. One of the things that shines through these entries is that every­one has their own per­son­al plea­sure points when it comes to the joys of movie going.

Some embrace the flick­er­ing lights in the dark­ness, some cher­ish the com­mu­nal aspect and the notion of being thrown togeth­er with ran­dom strangers in the search of a col­lec­tive high (hard to recre­ate this one now!), while oth­ers like the food and the lux­u­ry of a cin­e­ma trip, and oth­ers still are supreme­ly focused on the imag­i­na­tion and glo­ry of the images themselves.

I loved Jazz Denney’s Gnome Cin­e­ma under the stars, which brought togeth­er a bed sheet, a pro­jec­tor, a piece of wood, some paints and a gar­den gnome to beau­ti­ful effect. Lola Stamm­berg­er built her Lola Cin­e­mas a pas­toral zen retreat and explained her all-encom­pass­ing pro­gram­ming vision, while Dominic Gra­ham and his team decid­ed to throw every­thing in the pot and just remake Stan­ley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey – with daz­zling results.

Romy Harink’s cin­e­ma is made from recy­cled and reclaimed objects, and all the signs, sights and details are present and cor­rect. Lucy’s cin­e­ma offers a gen­der-based twist on the Every­man chain, and Angeli­na Mar­i­lyn, a film pro­duc­er, has trans­formed her liv­ing space into a neon dream as a way to pass the time on lockdown.

Cath Shayler and gang haven’t so much recre­at­ed a cin­e­ma, as they have the entire process of going to the cin­e­ma: their Viva Las Cine is focused on the inde­ci­sive movie goer, and they explain how their Pic­ture Palace places the movie, seat and screen selec­tion on var­i­ous games of pure chance.

The movie haven cre­at­ed by Matt Blount is some­thing that most cinephiles like­ly dream of – a cave of cin­e­ma built out of Blu-rays, books, posters and mag­a­zines. And final­ly, Rebec­ca Del­fu­to has addressed the idea of not being able to assem­ble in groups by attach­ing a (pos­si­ble very dan­ger­ous) cin­e­ma screen (tablet) to the front of her bike and cre­at­ing a trav­el­ling cinema.

Our high­est com­men­da­tion and top prize goes to Tom Ender­by and Anna Garvey’s video enti­tled A Trip to the Pic­ture Palace, in which a lit­tle dog (Nora) takes heed of Lit­tle White Lies’ rec­om­mend­ed review of Alex Ross Perry’s Her Smell, and heads of on a grand day out to her local Every­dog cin­e­ma to see it.

We felt that this video not only offered an inge­nious riff on the pos­si­bil­i­ties of recre­at­ing a cin­e­ma in the con­fines of your own home, but also the uni­ver­sal joys of mak­ing a movie pil­grim­age and every deci­sion and vari­able that it entails.

Thanks every­one for your entries, and thanks again to our part­ners at Mod­ern Films and Joe and Seph’s.