Welcome back to VOLUME 21: The Creative Nonfiction Film Weekend 2025.
Chronically Online was a showcase of ephemera from the depths of the British psyche. Presented in partnership with Our Screen Heritage, supported by the @BFI Screen Heritage Fund, below the curators talk through some of their picks.
First off: putting together this showcase was hard. Have you ever tried to negotiate rights for a YouTube video? Probably not. The issue is that nobody goes into that negotiation with preset expectations, because there is very little precedence for showing these videos in a theatrical context. Most (although not necessarily all) of the videos you’ll watch in the programme were never intended to be thought of as ‘cinema’. They’re shitposts, vlogs, sketches, internet detritus. Some of them were created with thought and skill, and some are more like fragments of precious found footage—evidence that there are cathedrals everywhere for those with eyes to see.
Because of the accessibility of phone cameras and the immediate distribution system of the internet, almost anybody can be an ‘online video creator’, and it’s fostered a different kind of moving image language that all poor ‘chronically online’ souls are fluent in. It’s different from traditional cinema, but I’d argue that these videos are still ‘cinema’ of a different kind—the experiment of presenting them in a movie theatre is a provocation to you, to decide whether you believe that to be true. In the spirit of doomscrolling, we’ve collected a sampling of the UK internet, from the old to the new, and across all genres and approaches. Some of the videos are part of the BFI’s new online moving image archive: a collection of what they’ve deemed significant British online video. Some are contributions from guest curators, who have delved into their internet poisoned brains and each pulled out a favourite earworm (see their blurbs below). The rest was filled out by CNFW’s curators (myself and co-director Kimia), in the hopes of assembling a full portrait of the stories Britain tells about itself online.
Orla Smith, CNFW festival co-director
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
Are you Catholic? (@tylerdaclaire on TikTok, 2025)
I love this lightning-in-a-bottle moment between non-binary scouse TikTok creator Tyler da Claire (@tylerdaclaire) and an unseen passersby under a city streetlight. Whenever it appears on my feed I'll stop, let it wash over me, and laugh all over again. Queer nightlife is full of weird and wild moments of connection, and to me this TikTok is one of the internet's finest records of this, a tight 15 seconds of priceless mystery. I honestly still don't know if the person off camera is Catholic? Like—is a Monty Python gang bang inherently Catholic, or not? Why ask?? I'm just glad they did. I am left feeling a delightful and dizzy combo of connectedness with, and cluelessness about, the big beautiful world we share. It's also just really funny. THIS is what the internet is for.
Recommended by Rhi YorkWilliams, Peckham Experimental Prototype Cinema of Tomorrow (PEPCOT) co-organiser.
British lads hit each other with chair (Kramberries on YouTube, original creator unknown, 2016)
Men strive for physical touch from one another, yet through centuries of societal conditioning, rarely receive it through acts of care or love, lest they be perceived as weak. Yet, you’ll see young men kicking each other's shins, practicing their favourite professional wrestlers moves on their pals, and breaking bones from play fighting: all acceptable forms of touch between young men. Boisterous boys battering each other rather than asking for a little cuddle from their bestie. These acts of roughness aren’t just a case of one upmanship, but calls for intimacy. Male friendships are tender and violent.
This video is like capturing lightning in a bottle. The kiss. Throwing the cigarette on the floor and another taking it. The care of lifting up their fallen friend after he lands in a pile of broken glass. In a short runtime, it captures this complex dynamic between violence and tenderness in a way I don’t think many narrative features can.
Recommended by Josh Coates, Anfield People's Cinema Co-ordinator.
Get the tunes on lad: Scouser Car Chase (anonymously circulated on WhatsApp, 2021)
First circulated through WhatsApp group chats in Liverpool before finally making it onto TikTok where it went viral, this video of 3 scouse lads joyriding before dashing away from the police captures many of the things that make personal videos posted online both fascinating and vital. This is pure documentary of a working class experience that has existed as long as cars have been commonplace. It shows not only the unbridled joy the working class have for disrupting the order of the lower middle classes, but also just how common outright contempt for the police is in the UK (despite what the media and so-called ‘working class’ reform voters would have you believe). It is also incredibly funny, exhilarating, and unabashedly scouse. Liverpool is often looked down upon as a city of scallies. This video proudly looks at that title and says, ‘and what?’
Recommended by Joel Whitaker, curator of Anti-Reality Image Network and co-curator of Fumetti Funnies.