Critical Cinema Lab is a film-practice-based & artistic research entity based at the Department of Film Aalto University. Critical Cinema Lab fuses film-thinking and filmmaking in order to catalyse new forms of cinema capturing the critical, ethical and political potential of cinema. The CCL brings together filmmaker-theorists, doctoral students and MA students committed to challenging their practice, experimenting and theorizing within their artistic work.​

Catalyzes

new forms and ways cinema can connect with audiences beyond the commercial emotion economy. Cinema is seen as an elastic art form echoing the urgencies of the historical moment which we live in.

Experiments

how cinema in its myriad forms – fictional, documentary, experimental, interactive or any hybrid combination of these – can make visible and experiential the ethical, social, political or ecological complexities of the past and present.

Challenges

the very meaning of the critical stance. Rather than distance, it calls for involvement and ethical engagement. The political in art is not understood as propaganda or a didactic endeavor but as an invitation to understand the very capacity of art to create ruptures in how we perceive the world.

Builds bridges

through cross-disciplinary initiatives with other research entities from the arts, humanities and social sciences interested in rethinking the role of cinema within the urgent societal debates. We also seek to collaborate outside the sphere of academia and the film field, cooperating with organizations and active members of civil society. ​

Organizes

workshops, seminars, film screenings and courses throughout the academic year in its home institution as well as in collaboration with other institutions.