Film Festival: 'RIZOMA 2026. PLASTIC DREAMS'
In its 14th edition, taking place in Madrid from November 16 to 22, 2026, RIZOMA takes Plastic Dreams—Jaydee’s iconic 1993 track that revolutionized dancefloors—as its point of departure to reflect on the very plastic that made cinema possible.
Celluloid, the first commercialized plastic, emerged in the late 19th century as a substitute for scarce natural materials like ivory. Lightweight, malleable, and luminous, it quickly found a second calling: becoming the transparent strip upon which cinema was built. Through celluloid, dreams could be projected, shared, and remembered. Cinema did more than entertain: it shaped desire, identity, romance, and success, even fueling the mythology of the American Dream through the moving image.
However, the very artificial material that carried our collective fantasies also mutated into an omnipresent substance. Plastics transformed modern life with extraordinary convenience, but their permanence gradually revealed a hidden cost, fostering a dependence that now threatens the natural environments they originally replaced. As ecological concerns grew, so did the cracks in the American Dream, exposing the fragility of promises and the deepening inequality that were once sold as universal.
Cinema itself now stands on uncertain ground, navigating technological upheaval and shifting modes of consumption. The medium that once defined the 20th century must continually reinvent itself to survive. Perhaps it is fitting, then, that this journey echoes the hypnotic pulse of the track Plastic Dreams: a title capturing both the seductive optimism and the uncanny persistence of a material—and a dream—that continue to shape our world.
Reduced mobility
