Festival's Mission and Dedicatees
Kinodrome: An International Motion Picture and Screenwriting Festival is a fully non-corporate, volunteer- and donor-supported nonprofit educational event. The festival presents original independently produced and student-produced short-form film, video, and television content from Ohio and around the world. In addition to motion media, the festival also presents short, feature-length, and series-pilot screenplay content. We welcome any genre or style, provided it includes at least one of the following forms of creativity:
— a highly original concept;
— thought-provoking themes;
— unusual subjects or characters;
— an open-minded form of artistic expression.
Our judges want to see—or read—work that feels fresh, strange, scary, provocative, shocking, unconventional, hilarious, or politically “incorrect” in a thoughtful and nonconformist way. Merriam-Webster defines “nonconformist” as “a person who does not conform to a generally accepted pattern of thought or action.” Be distinctive. We are looking for original, non-mainstream work that takes audiences on a ride and leaves a lasting impression. Kinodrome is not concerned with how much money you spent on your film or video. Whether your project was shot on old film stock, with a vintage camera, on a mobile phone, or with a high-end 8K camera, we value strong ideas and meaningful execution. While basic filmmaking techniques, sound quality, cinematography, and overall production value matter, we are most interested in content that demonstrates:
— NARRATIVE OR VISUAL ORIGINALITY: something fresh, unique, and different;
— ARTISTIC INNOVATION: a creative approach to mise-en-scène and visual storytelling;
— SOCIO-CULTURAL RELEVANCE: real-life subjects and thought-provoking social, cultural, or political issues;
— AN ARTHOUSE APPROACH TO CINEMA: including the freedom to challenge conventional “Hollywood rules”;
— A NONCONFORMIST MODE OF EXPRESSION: a clear willingness to take creative risks.
Our festival is less about mainstream entertainment and more about independent, arthouse, experimental, and unconventional work. We care deeply about your message and the audience’s response to it. The same approach applies to screenplays: write something distinctive, fresh, and honest. Do not be afraid to express yourself fully.
Inspired by Works of:
• Eadweard Muybridge, 1830-1904, an English photographer important for his pioneering work in photographic studies of motion, and early work in motion-picture projection. His famous art-piece (and first motion picture ever made) “The Horse in Motion” (1878) – serves as our festival’s logo. Muybridge's early photographic experiments laid the foundation for modern cinema. Developing his keen interest in photography whilst recuperating from a stage coach crash in 1860, Muybridge moved to America upon his recovery, joining a San Franciscan photo business. Quickly establishing a reputation for landscape work, he was appointed director of photographic surveys for the U.S. Government in 1868, conducting studies of numerous remote areas, including the newly purchased Alaska. A capable and successful commercial photographer, Eadweard began to consider rapid motion photography in 1872 when approached by Californian racehorse owner, Leland Stanford. Stanford had reputedly laid a wager on the contentious issue of whether a galloping horse was ever airborne. Using wet plates Eadweard produced faint, highly underexposed plates, proving Stanford's assertion that all four hooves did, in fact, leave the ground at the same time. With the support of Stanford he expanded his experiments into horse movement, setting up a series of still cameras parallel to the race track. By connecting their electrically controlled shutters to trip wires lain across the track, he ensured each one automatically took its own picture as the horse sped by. The work was widely respected, being published in scientific journals and formally released in the study, “The Horse in Motion” (1882).
Inventing the zoopraxiscope, Eadweard found a way to project his silhouettes in rapid succession onto a screen. First demonstrated to the public in 1882, it is often quoted as the first ever moving picture. Years later, his pioneering work was cited as a major inspiration in the invention of the modern cine-camera by Thomas Edison. Having sparked considerable scientific interest, Eadweard took his work to the University of Pennsilyvania. Developing a new multi-lens camera, he produced a celebrated high-speed study into the movement of both animals and humans, published in eleven volumes as Animal Locomotion: An electro-photographic investigation of consecutive phases of animal movement (1887). Returning to England in 1900, he died at his cousin's house in 1904, and the building now hosts a British Film Institute (BFI) commemorative plaque, recognizing the contribution he made to the film industry.(info courtesy of Wild Film History).
• George K. Spoor, 1872-1953, an American film producer known for his early and successful movie exhibition service, ultimately named Kinodrome, in Chicago in 1897 – inspired our festival’s name. Primarily servicing vaudeville accounts throughout the Midwest and down the Mississippi Valley, Spoor was energetically in competition with 'Colonel' William Selig and his Polyscope service, but instead of making his own films he relied on supplies of pictures from others; before 1900 Edward Amet and later a variety of sources including Georges Méliès. He opened his distribution service, the National Film Renting Bureau, in 1904, and the increased demands of the nickelodeon era finally pushed him into film production in early 1907, when he founded the Essanay Company with Gilbert Maxwell 'Broncho Billy' Anderson, an important firm that made popular westerns (starring Anderson), launched the careers of J. Walter Kerrigan and Francis X. Bushman, and briefly employed Charles Chaplin. Essanay ceased production in 1918, and during the 1920s Spoor spent much of his time developing the Natural Vision system for widescreen 3-D films, producing the feature Danger Lights in that process in 1930. In 1947 he was one of a small group of American pioneers (Thomas Armat, William Selig, Albert Smith) given a special Academy Award for their contributions to the development of motion pictures.
(info courtesy of Victorian Cinema)