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Nested Cinema at
AND Festival 2026
What happens when a film reaches beyond the screen?
We’re delighted to be part of Abandon Normal Devices Festival’s SERVER \ Talks Programme, with our recorded conversation, Beyond the Screen: Nested Cinema and the Future of Cinematic Experience.
Join Pavel Prokopic, Andy Miah and Jayne Sayer as we discuss the ideas behind Nested Cinema and our AHRC-funded research. We explore how spatial sound, lighting, projection and VR can extend a film into the space around its audience, opening up new creative possibilities while keeping cinema at its heart.
SERVER will be playing at Barnsley Civic and online throughout the festival weekend, 25–27 September 2026, with the stream available from 10.30am on Friday 25 September. Entry at Barnsley Civic is free, with no booking required.
Explore the SERVER programme and watch the stream.
The wider festival brings immersive installations, experimental film, spatial audio and interactive experiences to venues across Barnsley and Elsecar. It’s a chance to encounter artists exploring the possibilities of technology, storytelling and shared experience. All events are free, with advance booking encouraged for selected installations.
Discover the full AND Festival programme.
Jayne and Andy will be at the festival on Friday 25 September. If you’re coming along and would like to chat about Nested Cinema, immersive storytelling or the future of cinema, we’d love to meet you!
INEFF LAUNCH
As part of the 2026 Experimental Fiction Film Festival (INEFF) at Cultplex on 20 June, we presented an early demonstration of Nested Cinema by expanding Pavel Prokopic’s Mirrors and Tears beyond its original screen form. First published through Screenworks in 2020, the film grew out of experimental work with performance, cinematography and chance, creating what Prokopic describes as a form of meaning that is felt before it is fully understood.
The Cultplex demonstration gave us an opportunity to revisit that work through the emerging language of Nested Cinema – exploring what happens when the atmosphere and affect of an existing film begin to extend into the physical space around its audience. (View and read about Mirrors and Tears in Screenworks)
Just as importantly, the demonstration became a space for conversation. INEFF brings together filmmakers, artists, researchers and audiences interested in pushing at the boundaries of fiction filmmaking, making it an ideal setting in which to ask not only “does this work?” but “where could cinema go next?” Following the experience, we interviewed both filmmakers and audience members about Nested Cinema, how they imagined films might be created and experienced in the future, and what opportunities – and challenges – they saw in moving storytelling beyond the single screen.
Those conversations are helping shape the next stage of the project: developing Nested Cinema not simply as a new way to exhibit films, but as a creative platform through which filmmakers can rethink, expand and spatialise the worlds they have already created.
