A Radical Resurgence from the Rubble: Duncan Reekie’s BOOM! The Exploding Cinema and the New London Underground Wheeler Winston Dixon May 2026 Book Reviews Issue 117 In the suffocating, sanitized corridors of contemporary media, where slick, over-produced corporate content passes for art, the arrival of Duncan Reekie’s BOOM! The Exploding Cinema and the New London Underground is a necessary, and indeed glorious, explosion. Not a tidy, polished monograph, but a radical collage of images, memories, and manifestos, this book documents the chaotic, collective energy that gave rise to Exploding Cinema in the early 1990s and has sustained it for over three decades. It is an indispensable chronicle of a movement that stubbornly refused to play by the rules of either the commercial mainstream or the state-subsidized avant-garde. For anyone familiar with the institutional gatekeeping that has long choked the life out of genuine independent film, Reekie’s account will be a bracing dose of truth. London was home to the Arts Lab in the 1960s, but with the collapse of the Lab, there was a definite space to be filled, highlighting works that challenged the status quo of the cinema. As Reekie and the collective have repeatedly asserted, and as this book powerfully confirms, the London underground of the 1990s and beyond existed in direct opposition to the established “art” world. While academics and critics were busy dissecting the French New Wave, a true, populist insurgency was brewing in the art squats of Brixton, transforming disused factories and seedy clubs into temporary cinematic utopias. BOOM! documents this evolution with a raw authenticity that a conventional history could never capture. The book, compiled and edited by Reekie, a founder and guiding spirit of the movement, eschews the linear, academic narrative in favour of a decentralized, collective approach that mirrors Exploding Cinema’s own anarchic structure. The result is a vibrant, messy, and thrilling work assembled from the rolling membership over 30 years. We are presented not with a single, authoritative voice, but with a chorus of filmmakers, anarchists, and agitators. Archive photos and posters splash across the pages, capturing the gritty, lo-fi aesthetic that defined the era. Here are the ephemeral, hand-scrawled flyers, the grainy photographic evidence of crowded, multi-projector events, and the visual propaganda that declared a new kind of cinematic warfare. Central to BOOM! is the history of the Exploding Cinema collective itself, and it is a fascinating, inspiring story of grassroots resistance. Starting in 1991, in the thick of a DIY culture revival, the collective carved out a space for open-access screenings where any film – regardless of quality, length, or content – was given an audience. This was not about curated taste but about radical democracy, a direct challenge to the closed-circuit festivals and institutions that had long monopolized the exhibition of independent cinema. The book gives us a glimpse into this past, from the early analogue days, with projectors flickering in squalid spaces, to the inevitable, if sometimes uneasy, transition to the contemporary digital landscape. This is where the specificity of BOOM! shines, as it moves beyond the collective to document the wider London underground movement. Reekie and the contributors bring to life the vibrant, interconnected network of groups that flourished alongside Exploding Cinema. We see the influence and collaboration of other organizations, including the visionary work of MyEyesMyEyes, the confrontational artistry of Omsk, the subversive antics of the Halloween Society, and the critical counter-currents of Undercurrents. The book chronicles their shared spirit of defiance and their collective impact, cementing their legacy as the most dynamic development in alternative media since the 1960s underground. While the book’s format is a deliberate mosaic, specific voices and films emerge from the din. Duncan Reekie himself is a prominent figure, not as a central author, but as a driving force behind the chaos. We are reminded of his own film projects, such as the collaborative feature Maldoror, screened at the New York Underground Film Festival in 2001, which perfectly encapsulated the collective’s fragmented and experimental ethos. A list of films screened between 1992 and 1998, archived by Stefan Szczelkun, confirms the sheer volume of work that passed through Exploding Cinema’s hands, with filmmakers from around the world contributing their visions. BOOM! acts as both an archive and a manifesto, proving that this kind of radical, participatory culture is not a nostalgic memory but a living, breathing force. It reminds us that genuine cinematic innovation often comes not from lavish budgets and computer-generated spectacle, but from the raw, unfiltered passion of artists working on the margins. The move from analogue projection to online presence is not a capitulation but an evolution, demonstrating the collective’s ability to adapt its core principles of open access and DIY spirit to new media, ensuring that the explosion continues. The book’s structure, a “radical collage,” is in itself an act of resistance, rejecting the formal, linear approach favoured by academic historians. It is peppered with the raw material of the movement itself: archive photos of cramped, raucous screenings, hastily assembled posters for events in squalid venues, and the incendiary propaganda that served as both promotion and manifesto. The inclusion of eyewitness testimony ensures that the story is told not from a detached, critical distance but from the front lines of the cinematic struggle. This is a history written from below, celebrating the voluntary action and collective ownership that defined Exploding Cinema’s democratic ethos. Perhaps most importantly, BOOM! bridges the gap between the analogue past and the digital present. It traces the movement from the grain of 16mm and Super 8 to the contemporary online sphere, demonstrating that the spirit of Exploding Cinema is not a relic of the nineties but an adaptable, persistent force. The transition from physical squats to online presence reflects the collective’s inherent resilience and ability to continue its project of open-access cinema despite a changing media landscape. The book serves as both a historical record and a living manifesto, a blueprint for future generations of DIY media activists. It is an indispensable read for anyone who understands that the true history of cinema is not found in the sterile confines of a film studies textbook, but in the vibrant, unruly archives of dissent. BOOM! is the sound of that archive bursting open, a vital and long-overdue rectification of the record. In the end, what Reekie and the contributors have created with BOOM! is not just a history of a film collective, but a testament to the power of collective creation itself. It is a document of a crucial period where artists, alienated from the mainstream and ignored by the established “independent” sector, created their own world. This book is a loud, chaotic, and inspiring rallying cry, a reminder that the best cinema, the most important cinema, often emerges from the cracks in the pavement rather than the polished marble of the academy. It is a book for anyone who believes that film is more than just a commodity, and that a truly engaged audience can be a revolutionary force. BOOM! is the sound of that revolution, still echoing decades later. Duncan Reekie, ed., BOOM! The Exploding Cinema and the New London Underground (London: Exploding Cinema Press, 2025).
