Contrary to the idea that social media isolates, it reinvents moments of collective sharing, such as movie screenings. On TikTok, Twitch, or YouTube, live streams broadcast films in real time, creating a shared experience where viewers interact. These practices, although operating on the fringes of copyright laws, reveal a deep desire to share emotions around cultural works. Cinema, even in its virtual form, remains a powerful vector for social connection.
Social Media, Cinema, and Television
It is often assumed that social media encourages people to retreat into themselves, into their individual bubbles. However, this view is primarily tied to a fear of the unknown, of the new, of innovation. This fear is entirely natural, as what is mysterious unsettles us. Fear is, above all, the fear of the unknown.
When it comes to the movie-going experience, this shared moment in a common space and time—whether alone or with friends—represents a real-time collective experience. It embodies a significant human force, a unique energy that emerges from this shared moment, much like attending a performance or a concert. In fact, in English, the movie theater is called a “theater,” the same word used for the stage. It is truly a place of spectacle, a shared space.
Television, with its uniform broadcast for everyone, has in some ways spatially expanded this sense of community. We know that what we are watching at the same moment is also being seen by others. This feeling is even stronger with live television, where the people on screen are experiencing the present moment alongside us.
The individualized access to media, made possible by the internet, has changed the game. Online, we are no longer tied to a common broadcast that everyone connects to simultaneously. Instead, each person seeks out content at their own pace. However, the internet also enables live streaming, and as we know, online live streams bring together smaller but highly engaged communities centered around very specific topics. These are niche audiences, rather than mass ones.
The Reinvention of Movie Screenings on TikTok and Twitch
With platforms like Twitch, TikTok, and even YouTube, which allow live streaming, interaction with viewers happens through text. The live stream unfolds before our eyes, while written messages from participants appear alongside it. Thanks to this live system, users have reinvented the movie screening experience.
As of early 2025, TikTok hosts live streams where users can tune in to watch mainstream films: classics featuring Louis de Funès, Pixar animations, movies like Harry Potter, and more. Much like traditional television, viewers can join mid-film, and a comment section allows interaction with other audience members. These live streams, originally hosted on Twitch, are repurposed on TikTok through a semantic trick. Legally, this practice is strictly prohibited, as the organizers do not hold the rights to the films. The trick involves staging the live stream’s introduction to make TikTok believe it is simply a live event and not the broadcast of a film.
This article is written in January 2025. It is highly likely that TikTok, once aware of this practice, will ban or censor these live streams to avoid conflicts with copyright holders. But that is not the focus here. What is fascinating is the strong desire of people to come together around works that form part of our shared culture and to experience their simultaneous broadcast.
It is truly beautiful to witness the power of cinema, of works designed to bring people together, continuing to do so through this reinvention of the “virtual” movie theater. These screenings gain their full value because others are present at the same time as me. Although these films are easily accessible online, they take on a unique flavor through the shared moment. The film becomes the instrument of a social experience centered around a common culture, allowing us to feel part of the human community through aesthetic and emotional engagement.
The Humanist and Democratic Role of Culture
This is the profound, humanist, and democratic role of culture that users themselves are reinventing. These users may do so out of sheer opportunism, to attract viewers to their channels and potentially earn some revenue from TikTok. But their motivations matter less than the fact that people find meaning and joy in gathering in these moments, regardless of the organizers’ intentions.
Since 2011, itinerant screenings have taken place in neighborhoods, in collaboration with local cinemas. Audiences are brought into the streets, where portable projectors display film excerpts or short films on city walls. These events share the emotion of being together in an unconventional way, complementing traditional cinema. They create deeply human connections, much like social media does.
These events always take place in the evening, after nightfall, as they could not function during the day—just as a movie theater must be dark for the screen to be visible. The group following the films grows over the course of the evening, welcoming passersby who stumble upon this shared moment and choose, on impulse, to join in for the rest of the screening or part of it.
The Power of Cinema as a Collective Experience
What draws these passersby is the fascination with cinematic projection and the social experience it creates. Works of art allow us, through cultural sharing, to feel our human community through aesthetic experience. We can sense this community in many other ways—through sports, professional activities, café outings, or museum visits—but the cinematic aesthetic experience, occurring in a shared time, is particularly powerful.
This experience is constantly being reinvented. I have reinvented it on city walls, and today, social media users are reinventing it online. These reinventions testify to the enduring power of cinema as a tool for bringing people together and fostering cultural sharing.
