The End of Cinema?

Abstract

Is a film watched on a video screen still cinema? Have digital compositing, motion capture, and other advanced technologies remade or obliterated the craft? Rooted in the hypothesis of the “double birth of media,” the book takes a positive look at cinema's ongoing digital revolution and reaffirms its central place in a rapidly expanding media landscape. It begins with an overview of the extreme positions held by opposing camps in the debate over cinema: the “digitalphobes” who lament the implosion of cinema and the “digitalphiles” who celebrate its new, vital incarnation. Throughout, the book reminds readers that cinema has never been a static medium but a series of processes and transformations powering a dynamic art. From the book's perspective, the digital revolution is the eighth major crisis in the history of motion pictures, with more disruptions to come. Brokering a peace among all sides, the book emphasizes the cultural practice of cinema over rigid claims on its identity, moving toward a common conception of cinema to better understand where it is headed next.

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