About

Grime Ethics Media is a small film society in Cincinnati, run by Justin Sovine. It started as a music project in the city’s experimental scene, and the name stuck when it turned to film.

What we show

Independent and experimental film: animation made by one person over years, work that has played festivals abroad and never had a night here, films that are better with a crowd. We don’t have a genre. We have a test: would we want to see this with sixty strangers in a dark room, and would they thank us after.

How a screening works

We rent a real theater for one night. The theater sells the tickets and runs the projector; we bring the film, the words, and the people. Doors open, someone says a few sentences about why you are here, and then the lights go down. That’s it. No ads, no panel, no pitch.

Our first was Interface at the Esquire Theatre in October 2025. Fifty-six people came.

Why

Because a film is different in a room. Alone, on a laptop, you can pause it, half-watch it, give up on it. In a theater with sixty people who chose to be there, you can’t, and the film gets to do what it was made to do. Someone laughs at the wrong moment, someone gasps at the right one, and afterward you talk about it on the sidewalk. That part, the sidewalk, is most of why we do this.

Write to us about anything above.