It’s short.

It’s simple.

And slightly ambiguous.

The name ‘Breaking Cinema’ was originally the working title for a documentary idea I had back in 2014 that would have chronicled a number of new and old; big and small cinema buildings in an endeavour to uncover what is so captivating about the ceremony of, “going to the flicks” (see The Cinema Complex).

However, while I was researching that documentary idea, the idea for a podcast cropped up and very quickly became more and more appealing.

Then the working title of the documentary idea attached itself to the podcast idea and Breaking Cinema and just stuck.

I briefly toyed with other names for the podcast, all of which included ‘Breaking Cinema’ in them and some versions had a subtitle to more specifically elaborate on the focus of the podcast.

Some of the other titles I considered were…

  • Breaking Cinema: Constructive Film and Media Studies for Breaking Blindness – Good explantion, but very dusty and grey like an academic. I wanted something that was a bit more alive and quirky.
  • Breaking Cinema with a Selfie Stick – This was also the name of a reflective video I made for the project to help me define its focus. I also considered calling the YouTube channel this. I did like the quirkiness of this one.
  • Breaking Cinema with a Podcast – Very self-explanatory.

But I ultimately decided just to stick with the two-worded Breaking Cinema.

Short, simple and slightly ambiguous.

I liked how a cinephile might find the podcast on iTunes and think, “Breaking Cinema, this is clearly a podcast that will talk about how brilliant cinema is while deride the new divergent forms of consumer generated media are slowly eroding away at it – I’m stuck in the past, meh, meh, meh, meh, humbug selfie!”

They will listen to the podcast… and realise that it is not that at all, quite the opposite in fact and proudly so!

And maybe, just maybe, as they continue to listen to it, they might allow their minds to be opened up to a much more vibrant form of cinema which, far from eroding its traditional form, is ensuring its longevity.

I think the key to understanding the meaning behind it in relation to the podcast’s focus is to see it as more of a starting point.

In the same way that the film Chinatown actually has very little to do with the physical location of Chinatown in the film – ‘Chinatown’ is referred to as a state of mind that permeates throughout the film by the film’s scriptwriter Robert Towne – Breaking Cinema has very little to do with the subject of film, or rather, the subject of film as it has typically been treated, it will be present, but it will not be primary.

The point of this project is to break new ground, hence… Breaking Cinema.