Locating the microcinema: Echo Park Film Center, Light Industry, and Other Cinema

The term microcinema has emerged over the last decade in scholarship of film and film culture, journalism, and organization mission statements. This thesis explores three microcinemas as case studies: Echo Park Film Center in Los Angeles, CA; Other Cinema in San Francisco, CA; and Light Industry in Brooklyn, NY in order to approach an understanding of microcinemas as small-scale revisionist responses to the norms of movie theaters and screenings in film and art worlds. The microcinema is a contextually responsive critical space that must also be understood as a product of its locality. ❧ I consider the microcinema in relation to historical precedents, specifically the early years of Canyon Cinema. Secondly, each of the microcinemas is described in terms of their physical characteristics, their organizational models, and their programming. Lastly, I turn to Hollis Frampton’s notion of Infinite Cinema as a unique source with which to expand ideas and characterizations of the microcinema. This study argues for the microcinema as a small-scale institution that functions as a necessary site for the activation and preservation of marginalized forms of cultural production and their related distribution networks.