Abstract/Summary

This chapter presents an overview of Star and Shadow (S&S) Cinema activity since 2001, situating it in the historical context of radical screening practice in national and international currents in alternative film exhibition. Assessing points of connection over time and place is significant for how S&S understands and positions itself in a local and international historical context. On June 4, 2014, S&S got the bad news they had been preparing for, that their lease would be terminated and the site redeveloped. The gentrification process around the Ouseburn, which S&S had been both inadvertently part of and resistant to, had slowed briefly in the aftermath of the financial crash. Between 2015 and 2018, the S&S collective were absorbed in a second building festival, to construct a high-spec cinema and music space for the commons. This version has been more expensive, higher profile, and bound by more restrictive regulation, qualities that bear down on S&S’s DIY mode of organising.