How Post-cinema can be the Bridge Between the Analogue and the Digital

Violette Simard

Being in the midst of the post-cinematic era, where everything feels artificial and digital, it can be tempting to resort back to melancholic nostalgia and long for a romanticized version of the past when everything was authentic and analogue. But it is important to remember not mistake this post-cinema-age to be exclusively digital. This is a period where the old and the new meet in the middle, as suggested by Denson and Leyda, and where the classical rules of cinema are loosened to leave space for exploration.

            Indeed, as suggested by Denson and Leyda, post-cinema is much more than just digital: it “allows for internal variety while focusing on the cumulative impact of newer media” (Denson and Leyda, p.2). It is the accumulation of the aesthetic, technical, and technological progress in cinema over the years. Post-cinema helps resituate the current cinematic developments as part of the larger historical narrative of film, instead of simply breaking it up into categories of past/present/future, as Rodowick does it. For him, the glorious past of cinema is analogue and authentic, whereas the present/future of cinema is digital and inauthentic (Rodowick, p.27). The history of film or cinema shouldn’t be approached in a linear manner. Using “before and after” as exclusive opposites isn’t necessarily helpful when exploring cinematic developments; it creates the illusion that the old methods are disappearing when in fact, not only are they evolving, but they’re still here. The following two examples I think embody this conflict between analogue and digital that the post-cinematic era poses: Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time in Hollywood (2019), and Sam Levinson’s Euphoria (2019).

            Using analogue filming techniques is still an artistic choice that directors/cinematographers opt for to this day. Tarantino’s latest (or last) film proves that. Beyond making the late-60s-centred plot appear more authentic, using 35mm in this case helps bring the story to life in the digital era (“Shot on Kodak 35mm, Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’”). Once Upon a Time in Hollywood a movie about the film industry transitioning out of its Golden Age and was made/released during a time when this exact issue is still relevant.

            An argument like Rodowick’s perceives the history of cinema as linear, and therefore encourages an anxiety around the extinction of older mediums. When the fact is, the development of cinema is not that simple, as Denson and Leyda highlight. The old and the new, the past and present, are not separate. Technological advancements do not preclude the use of previous methods. The analogue and the digital can meet somewhere in the middle.

Bibliography:

Åkervall Lisa. “Shane Denson and Julia Leyda (Eds), Post-Cinema: Theorizing 21st-Century Film; Cinéma & Cie, Vol. 16, No. 26/27 (2016), Ed. Miriam De Rosa and Vinzenz Hediger; Malte Hagener, Vinzenz Hediger and Alena Strohmaier (Eds), the State of Post-Cinema: Tracing the Moving Image in the Age of Digital Dissemination.” Screen, vol. 59, no. 1, 2018, pp. 132–136., https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/hjy008.

Rodowick, David Norman. The Virtual Life of Film. E-book, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007, https://hdl-handle-net.proxy3.library.mcgill.ca/2027/heb08243.0001.001

“Shot on Kodak 35mm, Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’”. Kodak Motion Picture, May 17 2019, https://www.kodak.com/en/motion/blog-post/quentin-tarantino-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood.