Coming to Streaming & Disc on May 20: THE CINEMA WITHIN

THE MYSTERY...

Why do film cuts work? Why do people around the world – even children – so effortlessly understand them? In real life we don't instantly jump from one viewpoint to another. Such a bizarre disruption of reality would be nauseatingly jarring. And yet, most viewers don’t even notice the hundreds or thousands of edits in their favorite films and shows.

THE CINEMA WITHIN is a feature-length documentary that delves into the psychology of film editing – the mystery of how and why an edited movie feels so natural and so effortlessly makes sense.

Drawing on the insights of editor Walter Murch, scholar David Bordwell, and a varied group of perceptual scientists, THE CINEMA WITHIN explores the idea that in film’s earliest years, the most common edits were instinctively shaped to fit the contours of human perception – and that this might explain why, more than a century later, most modern-day filmmakers still rely on these exact same techniques.

But in the remote mountains of Turkey, a young researcher – and a group of people who have never seen a film before – put this deepest of cinematic ideas to the test.

A SINGULAR FILM

Produced over the course of four years, The Cinema Within is a film unlike any other. Playfully inventive in its construction and striking in its visuals, it dives deep into the deliberately hidden language of film editing – a language so seemingly natural it usually goes unnoticed.

Drawing on dozens of examples from both well-known and obscure films across cinema history, it explores not only the essential grammar of the world’s most popular art form, but the very mechanics of how we perceive reality.

The result is a scientific cinematic adventure – a documentary in which our basic understanding of film editing becomes the dramatic heart of its story.

About the Director

Chad Freidrichs is an independent documentary filmmaker. Prior to The Cinema Within, he directed and produced four feature-length documentary films, including Jandek on Corwood (2003),The Experimental City (2017), and The Pruitt-Igoe Myth (2011).

Amongst his films' many honors, Chad's The Pruitt-Igoe Myth was acquired for the Museum of Modern Art's permanent collection in 2017 and was on display at MoMA in New York from 2019-2022.

Capable, resourceful and independent, Freidrichs performs nearly every production task on his films. But he specializes in editing and the creative aspects of post-production, which he loves most of all.