Mapping a city’s spaces and practices of communal film viewing is a way to explore urban history, cultural policy, social change and inequality. This discussion takes up critical geography approaches to film exhibition to ask about the role of cinema spaces and events in the current conjuncture. The Covid-19 pandemic made explicit and urgent some of the simmering concerns about the infrastructures of sociality. The loss of ‘third spaces’ due to neoliberal urbanism and the digitalisation of work and leisure was a long-running process, but the experience of lockdowns brought it into focus.As the climate emergency demands a reprioritisation of resources, and the environmental impacts of cultural activities are more clearly documented, this discussion offers a space for critical reflection on the kinds of spaces that cinema can hold.

More information and readings here: https://www.cities.humanities.uva.nl/news/nica-masterclass-who-needs-cinemas-screening-films-in-a-permacrisis-with-maria-velez-serna-university-of-stirling/