Cinema’s Lost Soul: How the Industry Killed Its Own Art

Once, cinema was a gateway to revelation. It was a medium that could expand human consciousness, where Tarkovsky sculpted time, Bresson stripped away artifice, and Bergman plunged into the depths of the soul. The great masters did not make films to satisfy an industry—they made them to elevate human experience.

Today, can we say the same?

The Industry Has Turned Art Into Content

Cinema, once an art of transcendence, has been reduced to "content." Streaming platforms speak of "engagement metrics," awards bodies chase "relevance," and film festivals, which once championed artistic risk, now reward safe choices designed for the industry, not for eternity.

Even the so-called "best films" of today feel manufactured—shaped by focus groups, social trends, and award campaigns. Nothing is left to mystery or ambiguity. Everything is pre-calculated for impact, for approval, for consumption.

What Happens When Art Is Controlled by an Industry?

• Risk disappears. Filmmakers no longer dare to challenge form and thought; they self-censor to survive.
• The same names keep winning. The festival circuit is dominated by a handful of filmmakers who fit industry expectations, leaving little room for true radicals.
• The next Bresson or Parajanov may never emerge. If Tarkovsky were making his first film today, would he even be noticed? Would Stalker, Mirror, or Andrei Rublev exist in a world where financiers demand "narrative clarity" and "marketability"?

The industry congratulates itself on "diversity" and "innovation," yet the films it promotes are often the same product in different packaging. What is missing is the sacred—cinema that exists beyond commercial cycles, films that do not just "tell stories" but illuminate existence itself.

The World Needs a New Sanctuary for Cinema

Every great art form has its sanctuaries:

• Music has concert halls and patron-funded orchestras.
• Painting has museums and collectors.
• Literature has archives and institutions.

But cinema? It has been left adrift, abandoned to the logic of commerce and corporate industry.

This is why The Cinema Sanctum must exist.

Not as nostalgia, but as necessity.

The Cinema Sanctum is not just another film initiative. It is a rebellion against the erasure of cinema as high art. It seeks to build a space where film is once again treated with the same reverence as music, literature, and painting. A place where cinema is not dictated by markets but by artistic and philosophical depth.

If we do not act, the future of cinema will belong entirely to the industry—and the greatest films of tomorrow may never be made.

But if we fight for it, cinema can be reborn.

Join us: www.thecinemasanctum.org