When you ask people about Audio_Video_Club, the same types of words pop up.
Community. Connection. Relationships. Joshua Cleveland called it a “safe haven.” Astin Rocks called it an “encouraging space.” These descriptions come up time and time again, Audio_Video_Club emerging as a space where people who love film can come together to share in that love.
Bianca Cato started Audio_Video_Club, which bills itself as a “projector and screen dedicated to the exploration of visuals and sound through events, exhibits and workshops.” Cato is from the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Atlanta and attended Georgia State University as a film major. She got her masters at Columbia College Chicago – sort of like “the SCAD of the midwest,” she says – and hopped around a bit to different cities before coming back home in 2017.
While Cato officially started Audio_Video_Club in 2018, it didn’t become super active until 2020. That year, she hosted a film night on Halloween in Cabbagetown at the bar 97 Estoria. She screened two historic Black horror films and hosted a small discussion afterward. She was invited to come back, and the film night became a monthly, outdoor event in the bar parking lot.
“I’m a film buff. I was like, people should watch movies the way I watch movies and understand them,” Cato said. “I don’t look at movies like – oh, okay, that was entertaining. I look at them, and I want to have conversations about them. I want to see how they frame social viewpoints, things like that.”
Since that event at 97 Estoria, Audio_Video_Club has only grown with different events each month. Trash & Trivia is exactly what it sounds like – trivia and trashy movies. Cinema Souterrain is an underground cinema night hosted by Cato and documentarian Artemus Jenkins at Peters Street Station, curated in conjunction with whatever art exhibition might be at Peters Street at the time.
Through Cinema Souterrain, Cato linked up with the team at Eyedrum Art & Music Gallery, a nonprofit art venue, and helped start a film club called Cin-e-log. Audio_Video_Club also partners with Eyedrum for a workshop led by filmmaker Ben Winston, focusing on how 16mm film cameras apply to stop-motion animation.
Audio_Video_Club has grown significantly since its start, but Cato said it’s through Cinema Souterrain that she really began moving into the space of elevating local filmmakers. Depending on the theme of the movie night, she’ll put a call out to filmmakers or dig back into her archives looking for a film that fits the bill. If a film isn’t picked for the specific night it’s submitted for, that doesn’t mean it won’t be picked for something else.
“I really pride myself on not limiting our selections to quality or experience, or anything like that,” Cato said. “I’ve screened people who it’s their first film they ever made, to people who have a huge portfolio, to people who are now on Adult Swim and have deals.”
As far as who’s been running Audio_Video_Club all this time, it’s just Cato.
“It’s been a party of one,” she laughed. “ I will say though, I have great community, friends, and great event partners.”
Jenkins, who helps Cato run Cinema Souterrain, is one of those partners. He’s been an independent filmmaker for roughly 15 years, primarily working in the documentary space. When he became aware of Audio_Video_Club, he had just finished his documentary short “Heart of the City,” and was looking for a way to get it out there. One night, he and a friend went to a bar where a movie night happened to be going on.
“I was just looking around and saw this woman running around who looked like she was in charge of everything,” Jenkins said. “ I was like, I bet she is the one running this movie night. I went up and talked to her and found out that she was indeed running the movie night. I told her about my film project, and she was like well actually, I’m familiar with you … you were on my list of people to hit up.”
That was Jenkins’ first meeting with Cato, a meeting that blossomed into a partnership. He said he sees Audio_Video_Club as a way to connect people who love film with the people who make it, and also a way to create a space outside of the film festival circuit where people can get a read on what the film scene in Atlanta really looks like.
“Audio_Video_Club really just makes space for that, you know? Like to enjoy film in a whole lot of different ways,” Jenkins said. “That helps connect people who like film, which in turn, just really allows the community to see itself in a diverse way, in an organic way.”
Atlanta native Astin Rocks, who created the web series “Real Fakes” and screened it with Cato’s help last year, came to Audio_Video_Club through Cinema Souterrain. She said she loved the community aspect of the event, and also how it helped her bridge the generation gap in Atlanta’s film industry.
“It introduced me to not only new filmmakers, but a new generation of filmmakers,” Rocks said. “I’m 33 now, so of course there are filmmakers that are 23 out here doing things. It introduced me to people who have been out here for a long time that I may [know] by name, but they put a face to the name.”
For Joshua Cleveland, Audio_Video_Club allowed him to discuss his work with other filmmakers in a low-stress environment. Cleveland came to filmmaking through the lens of dance. After he graduated from DeKalb School of the Arts, he started filming dance events for friends and gradually started making concept videos and music videos.
“I always kind of had an eye for lines, and then also had an eye for movement and an eye for feeling out an image,” Cleveland said. “I feel like that came from being a part of dance.”
Cleveland came to Audio_Video_Club looking for a creative space for Black filmmakers where he felt his work would be inherently understood. One of the projects he screened through Audio_Video_Club was “Count It All,” a music video that played at the 2022 Atlanta Film Festival.
“You come to the space with a level of vulnerability and openness to say hey, like – yo, this is something I’m still massaging,” Cleveland said. “You’re gonna build relationships with people … they see what you’re trying to do, and they see the importance of it, and they actually invest and have a conversation about the work. That’s not a space that we get often.”
As for what’s next for Cato, she wants to continue hosting events, and plans on activating a board with her community partners. She also wants to open up a brick-and-mortar space for Audio_Video_Club sometime in the next five years. But mostly, she wants to keep propping up Atlanta’s independent film scene with all its moving parts.
“I personally want to shine more light on the people who help make those movies, not just the director, writers, and actors,” Cato said. “I want to get more into the perspective of film being not just one person or these three key people, and the work that it takes to make films and the collaboration that it takes to make a film. I’m more focused on shining more light to film in that way.”