How do we make sense of cinema and the audiovisual’s place in a post-cinema world? If a movie is shown elsewhere to a movie theatre does that make it not cinema? In his book The Lumiѐre Galaxy (2015), Francesco Casetti explores the idea that cinema in the 21^st century has ‘relocated’ itself from its traditional medium of the theatre and settled itself within the many other mediums that we interact with today.

That is not to say we are only talking about cinematic movies being relocated but rather that cinema is relocated “in television series, documentaries, advertisements, musical clips…” (Casetti, 2015:19) and arguably on any other screen based medium. In essence anything we use that displays moving images such as phones, tablets, billboards, home projectors have become part of what makes up cinema. Casetti explains that “[c]inema has always been a way of seeing and a way of living” (2015:20) which I am inclined to agree with. Arguably, we experience cinema in all screen mediums because our way of living is surrounded by screens in contrast to people living in the early 20^th century who’s experience of cinema was to physically visit a theatre screen.

An outdoor cinema situated in an underpass

A drawn example of an early cinema theatre

To follow on, the idea of ‘experience’ was important to Casetti (2015) as without the experience of cinema in its original form we would be unable to relocate its concept across the wide range of current mediums for moving image. This is arguably not in a personal sense but a collective sense of a way of life; the experience of those who first witnessed an original cinema would pass it to their descendants whose experience passes down again and again reaching us now in the landscape of post-cinema. “It is in this way we can think of “being at the cinema” and “watching a film” even in bright light in front of a digital screen” (Casetti, 2015: 28).

James Hutchinson (BA 33662498)

References

Casetti, F. (2015) The Lumiѐre Galaxy: Seven Key Words For The Cinema To Come. New York: Columbia University Press