On Sunday 27th January, 2018, we gathered 150 mourners in the Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, to remember and celebrate Vine, “a short-form video hosting service where users could share six-second-long looping video clips.” As the audience filed in, every seat in CCA’s theatre was laid out with an order of service, and the screen displayed the classic DVD player screensaver. After local band Joyce Delaney, all decked out in Victorian mouring attire, struck up Chopin’s funeral march, Matchbox Cineclub offered a brief eulogy.
At its best, we suggested, Vine captured the hilarity and horror of human existence in six seconds. Its main tools were angry animals, children in jeopardy and basic human stupidity. Its primary modes were lip syncing, shade and screaming. After Vine, of course, you can still loop weird videos and share them. But Vine celebrated being weird, being creative and being funny. Most of all, it celebrated brevity, so perhaps it’s fitting that, in the end, its life was cut so short.
After a six-second silence in honour of the passing of this legend, we introduced the first of two 45-minute compilations of the best Vines, originally curated by Pilot Light TV Festival, debuted in Manchester and also showcased at the BFI Southbank. The Glasgow audience spontaneously recited their favourite Vines, before holding their phone torches aloft for Puke’s interval rendition of Lady Gaga’s I’ll Never [Vine] Again.
Then, after a second 45-minute compilation passed in the blink of an eye, Joyce Delaney once more took the stage for a short but typically wonderful set, unfortunately curtailed by a broken guitar string (please do check them out at the earliest available opportunity).
Matchbox Cineclub would like to say a solemn thank you to Greg Walker and Pilot Light TV Festival, Live Cinema UK, BFI, Film Hub Midlands, CCA, Joyce Delaney, Puke, the ever estimable John Pooley and our stalwart volunteers (who couldn’t make it). Most of all, we’d like to say thank you to the audience and all the Vine fans who made the event so very special. 🙏
ONE LAST THING! We’d like to note tickets for this event were sold on a sliding scale, which we would recommend to anyone with a similar screening or event. We believe in full accessibility in principle and always try to keep tickets as low as possible (or free, when we can) but the support of BFI emboldened us to try the sliding scale for the first time. Normally we’d fret about that since, as an independent exhibitor with no institutional support (barring CCA’s in-kind venue support), we have to cover costs. Making a profit, however small, allows us to keep programming films and producing events, while losing money clearly jeopardises that. However, this event proved a sliding scale approach can also be economically viable, even without support, since the uptake on £6 and £8 tickets covered any potential loss from the cheaper tickets. It won’t always be possible for us to employ a sliding scale for ticket sales, but whenever we can, we will. If you have any questions about it, please get in touch: info@matchboxcineclub.com.
