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The Public Cinema Project's Digital Salon is an outreach of the Rural Media Arts and Education Project (RMAEP). It is intended as a compliment to our weekly film series to further involve our community in discussing and taking action on important contemporary issues and ideas.

The whys of a Public Cinema:

• Eighty percent of what you see and hear (film, television, radio, newspapers, magazines) is controlled by five corporate entities.
• Since the 1996 Telecommunications Act was passed there has been a general trend toward greater concentration of media ownership in private hands, justified by the notion that diversity may be defined simply by the number of channels or screens, and evaluated in increasingly narrow terms of commercial interests and private ownership.
• Far from increasing and expanding upon the marketplace of ideas and offering the public greater choices, the result has been programming designed to support the owners' financial interests. Billions of dollars are made annually on the publicly owned airwaves.
• Like the television industry, the film industry operates under the same voracious commercial imperative. The majority of films released by studios are targeted for 13-to-25-year-old males, and then put on multiple screens, thus squeezing out virtually most intelligent, independent, and diverse films from both the US and abroad. And though they do not use publicly owned airwaves to achieve this, the net effect is the same.
• An explosion of channels and commercial theater multi-plexs, which should mean greater media diversity, merely translates into more of the same. The result is the lowering of creative standards to produce the cheapest product in the shortest time. These offerings pander to our culture's lowest common denominator. The sheer amount of content on an overwhelming number of outlets often buries thoughtful, creative programming. If you can't find it, you can't watch it.

A public cinema manifesto:

• Film and television are unparalleled in their ability to inform, educate, and entertain. This power should not be concentrated in the hands of the few.
• Intelligent, informative, and innovative programming should be easily accessible to every person in every community, regardless of socioeconomic status or geographic location. Public cinema, like public television, was created to address this issue.
• As a public cinema, our mission is to open up access to a wide variety of thoughtful, creative programming, acting as a "cultural clearinghouse," and presenting these programs in a noncommercial setting. Films and other media presented in a public cinema are not disposable commodities. A public cinema is about the story.
• Viewing films and other media in a communal setting is inherently different than viewing them in isolation. Community is created when members of diverse segments of the population are brought together in a shared artistic experience. Media can be a catalyst to a better understanding of others and issues that affect our lives.
• In short, the media has amassed tremendous wealth and power in corporate hands, created and perpetuated tenacious stereotypes, and accelerated our cultural homogenization. Yet, the ability of media to manipulate, weaken, and erode is matched by its power to inform and strengthen. When this powerful tool is placed in the right hands, it opens up the power of transformation.