The Cinephile’s Playground: An Exploration and Analysis of the EYE Film Institute Exhibit

When we first approached the Eye Film Institute, one of the world’s largest sites of film preservation and history, we took photos outside of the impressive building’s façade. With its varying levels and angled lines, you might mistake this building for a spaceship. It was beautifully designed and constructed by a German architectural firm. I found the entrance of the building simultaneously majestic but also overwhelming, as evidenced by our timid entrance into the illustrious lobby. Sensing our discomfort, the front desk representative recommended that we go down to the lower level, where they had a free museum open to the public.

Now, when I heard "free public museum", I thought of a tiny display on the way to the next subway stop or something equally mundane and quotidian. However, upon entering the exhibit, I was amazed to find a sleek, modern space, with enticing objects that invited exploration and prodding. I first saw an eye-catching interactive arts display.

A projector was playing what seemed like an interactive light game – people would play with the screen causing the lights to react to their virtual bodies. After watching people playing for awhile and then playing myself, I realized something was off. What did this interactive game have to do with cinema? It wasn’t until after interacting with the rest of the exhibit did I understand the atmosphere the exhibit was trying to achieve.

 What caught my eye after the video game was another interactive video game, but with a twist. The video console allowed the user to insert themselves via green screen within an iconic film scene (such as Georges Melies’ Flight to the Moon). (photo) This piece of the exhibit correlated pretty closely to how it relates to cinema. Also, there were yellow pods that played entire films for free (like Shrek and the first Harry Potter film). These activities were playful like the other games but I couldn’t understand how these two activities worked with the other previous activities that seemed to have nothing to do with movies.

            After I interacted with all these different parts of the museum*, I saw the museum sign explaining the correlation between all the activities listed. 

“In the Basement, the rich collection of EYE has been made accessible to the public in a variety of interactive ways…The Playground, with regularly changing interactive installations, is the place to playfully get acquainted with film”.
               Then it clicked. Of course it was a playground! Here, inside the Playground I’ve been giggling and running around, like a younger child. Not only do the games make me feel happy and engaged, they all played with sight and visuals. Films as a whole all play with visuals, illusions (whether man-made or computer-generated), and color to tell a story and intrigue an entire group of people, starting with the individual. In addition, they force the user to participate, something that all movies do to some extent (ie 3D movies). With the projector, I was really amazed by how the visual colors bounced off my body. While playing with the projector more, we would act out and create visual storytelling with our bodies, as if we were telling a story through visuals like a movie. The colors would change periodically through all the colors of the rainbow, implying a change of tone and rhythm – providing more fodder for imagination when interacting with the exhibit. In addition, the video game was a race, so there was an interactive, competitive component. I especially loved the way it made your eyes focus on certain things and play with illusions. Films, especially in today’s age, please with so many different illusions that both puzzle and amaze. The video game evoked this imagery, similar to watching a movie.* It was another way to engage with visuals and sound in a way that’s impressive and engaging.

While the green screen activity and the Pods were much more congruent with the concept of cinema, they were interactive and fun to play and engage with as well. I especially liked the green screen activity because it taught people a bit of film history and feel like they are a part of it. The very insertion of the user’s body into an old piece of film is very powerful symbolically because it shows that we can still connect to something as powerful as film even when it was created long before we were born.

             This museum reminded me a lot of the Cinematek, a museum I visited in Brussels just a week before the seminar started. It too had a free museum where they had interesting games (playing with the concept that frames are multiple pictures played quickly) that would intrigue and engage a large audience. However, what made the Eye institute stand out was its inclusion of different forms of interactive, digital art – that seem distant from cinema but are actually directly complementary – making film not only a spectator sport, but also a game, making the user feel even more involved in understanding the visual and participative aspects of cinema. 

* I did not review the Panaroma part of the exhibit (one of the most exciting elements of the free exhibit), as one of my colleagues will be reviewing it further on this blog.

BONUS: Here is the video clip of the green screen activity. I inserted myself in the iconic moon scene from Georges Melies' works. CLICK HERE