In an evening that brought together the senses, The Cold Magazine, in collaboration with Cremate and Ethereal Maison, held a short film screening that paired incense with experimental cinema. Eight films were screened at the Cramer St. Gallery in Marylebone, centered on themes of identity, online personas and liberation.
Curated by Yaiza Hernandez, Danielle Paterson and Tatiana Martinez alongside Cold Magazine’s Valeria Berghinz and Jude Jones, we went on an immersive journey through smell and screen that brought an entrancing and more encompassing viewing experience.
Selected films spanned from the 1920’s until 2026 and were paired with incense from Creamate, a London based fragrance studio that reclaims scent as a ritual practice rather than a commodity. Curator Hernandez said of her approach, “My focus on the curation of the event stood within creating a holistic experience. In Ethereal Maison I always work with trying to bring expectators closer to in-habiting the art they are witnessing. Pairing Cremate Incense scents with every two films acted as a sequence designed to bring us into the emotions of the work itself.”
Contemporary films like Ruby Bailey’s Endlessity, which the filmmaker describes as a film that “explores selfhood in our neo-schizo-digital-chaos, and the claustrophobic solidity of the body as it imagines a utopic elsewhere” and Ola Adediji’s Last Night in IRL, a 2024 BFI Future Film Festival nominee were screened with the scent, Lovers Rock, which evokes the reggae scene of South London through sandalwood, spices, and resinous aromas.
Stuck in the Motherboard, Marisa Musing
Marisa Musing’s Stuck in the Motherboard was also screened alongside Pearlyn Li’s Infinite Mother_v.1.0 with Creamate’s Mary Mother of God scent. Paterson, one of the film curators said of her selections, “Bringing together Pearlyn Li and Ruby Bailey, this program traces a larger spectrum of imagined selves, digital atmospheres, and world-built identities. I’m drawn to filmmakers who use utopian and dystopian visions, game logic, and speculative environments to rethink how we see ourselves.”
Going back in time, Maya Deren’s 1943 surrealist film Meshes of the Afternoon was curated alongside Yichu 1.0 by Yichu Li, a film that “examines how consciousness, memory, and selfhood mutate in an age of algorithmic life – inviting viewers into a dreamlike digital rite of passage.” The films were accompanied by Creamate’s Bigfoot scent, an earthy aroma that incorporates notes of cedar, pine, and damp soil.
Meshes of the Afternoon, Maya Deren
Other curations of the night included James Sibley Watson and Melville Weber’s 1928 film, Fall of the House of Usher alongside The Life and Death of 9413: A Hollywood Extra by Robert Florey and Slavko Vorkapic. These films were paired with a cedarwood and grapefruit scent named Middle Way from the London based fragrance studio.
Tatiana Martinez, another curator of Personas, added, “As technology continues to evolve, so do these standards and the ways we define ourselves. Together, these two films I chose for the film night (Yichu 1.0 and Last Night In IRL) highlight the constant transformation in how we see others and how we see ourselves.”
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