In the beginning, it was black and white. Years later, it was colour, followed by 3D glasses and Imax. But could the next big development in cinema be vertical screens? This weekend, film enthusiasts were set to enjoy a programme of 10 specially commissioned shorts on a vast portrait-orientated screen erected in a contemporary art museum in the Netherlands.
The screenings are part of a "Vertical Cinema" project - including acclaimed showings last month at Rotterdam's Arminius Church for the city's International Film Festival. The project defies the horizontal norm of cinema, and opts for a cinematic experiment designed for a tall, narrow space.
Lucas van der Velden, a curator for Sonic Acts, which produces the programme, said that the project was attracting widespread attention because "it makes people rethink cinema, and is a reset for the eyes, ears and brain".
The 10 short films, which are said to be a unique blend of abstract cinema and structural experiments, are intended to explore the idea that the format "might well be the crucial aspect of the total audiovisual experience".
Audiences have been impressed. A critic from the British Film Institute's Sight & Sound magazine who attended a screening in Rotterdam praised the "bedazzling intensity of the onslaught", adding : "Some of these works grabbed me by the gut, slapped me around the ears and did funny things to my eyes" to leave him in " something resembling a mild state of shock".
Erika Balsom, of the film studies department at King's College London, said the popularity of vertical cinema was linked to technical developments and the "larger variability of frame proportions that comes with digitization" as opposed to previous eras when the aspect image ratio had to mirror that of the filmstrip itself.
