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This book represents the culmination of Thomas Elsaesser's intense
and passionate thinking about the Hollywood mind-game film from the
previous two decades. In order to answer what the mind-game film
is, why they exist, and how they function, Elsaesser maps the
industrial-institutional challenges and constraints facing
Hollywood, and the broader philosophic horizon within which
American cinema thrives today. He demonstrates how the 'Persistence
of Hollywood' continues as it has adapted to include new twists and
turns, as well as revisions of past concerns, as film moves through
the 21st century. Through examples such as Minority Report,
Mulholland Drive, Source Code, and Back to the Future, Elsaesser
explores how mind-game films challenge us and play games with our
perception of reality, creating skepticism and (self-) doubt. He
also highlights the mind-game film's tendency to intervene in a
complex fashion in the political moment by questioning the dominant
power's intent to program both body and mind alike. Prescient and
compelling, The Mind-Game Film will appeal to students, scholars,
and enthusiasts of media studies, film studies, philosophy, and
politics.
New essays by leading scholars giving a new picture of the variety
of German expressionist cinema. This volume of fresh essays by
leading scholars develops a new approach to expressionist film. For
nearly half a century Siegfried Kracauer's From Caligari to Hitler
and Lotte Eisner's The Haunted Screen have shapedthe understanding
of the cinema of this period. However, fifty years on, there is a
growing awareness that a new account is overdue. This attempt to
rewrite the story of expressionist cinema begins with a
fundamentally new interpretation of Dr. Caligari, and together with
fresh views of other expressionist classics, offers new
perspectives on important alternative film styles and genres that
emerged in films by such eminent directors as Ernst Lubitsch, Joe
May, Fritz Lang, Karl Grune, F. W. Murnau, and E. A. Dupont. In
pursuing such variety, the book strives for a picture of the cinema
in the early years of Weimar that in thematic as well as stylistic
terms reflects the vibrant, multifaceted cultural and political
developments of the period. The book is a joint venture of the
Centre for European Film Studies at the University of Edinburgh,
the Institute for Film Studies at the University of Mainz, and the
German Film Museum in Frankfurt. The late Dietrich Scheunemann was
Professor of German at the University of Edinburgh and wrote and
edited several books on German literature and on film and media.
What is the relationship between cinema and spectator? This is the
key question for film theory, and one that Thomas Elsaesser and
Malte Hagener put at the center of their insightful and engaging
book, now revised from its popular first edition. Every kind of
cinema (and every film theory) first imagines an ideal spectator,
and then maps certain dynamic interactions between the screen and
the spectator's mind, body and senses. Using seven distinctive
configurations of spectator and screen that move progressively from
'exterior' to 'interior' relationships, the authors retrace the
most important stages of film theory from its beginnings to the
present-from neo-realist and modernist theories to psychoanalytic,
'apparatus,' phenomenological and cognitivist theories, and
including recent cross-overs with philosophy and neurology. This
new and updated edition of Film Theory: An Introduction through the
Senses has been extensively revised and rewritten throughout,
incorporating discussion of contemporary films like Her and
Gravity, and including a greatly expanded final chapter, which
brings film theory fully into the digital age.
In German Cinema - Terror and Trauma Since 1945, Thomas Elsaesser
reevaluates the meaning of the Holocaust for postwar German films
and culture, while offering a reconsideration of trauma theory
today. Elsaesser argues that Germany's attempts at "mastering the
past" can be seen as both a failure and an achievement, making it
appropriate to speak of an ongoing 'guilt management' that includes
not only Germany, but Europe as a whole. In a series of case
studies, which consider the work of Konrad Wolf, Alexander Kluge,
Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Herbert Achterbusch and Harun Farocki, as
well as films made in the new century, Elsaesser tracks the
different ways the Holocaust is present in German cinema from the
1950s onwards, even when it is absent, or referenced in oblique and
hyperbolic ways. Its most emphatically "absent presence" might turn
out to be the compulsive afterlife of the Red Army Faction, whose
acts of terror in the 1970s were a response to-as well as a
reminder of-Nazism's hold on the national imaginary. Since the end
of the Cold War and 9/11, the terms of the debate around terror and
trauma have shifted also in Germany, where generational memory now
distributes the roles of historical agency and accountability
differently. Against the background of universalized victimhood, a
cinema of commemoration has, if anything, confirmed the violence
that the past continues to exert on the present, in the form of
missed encounters, retroactive incidents, unintended slippages and
uncanny parallels, which Elsaesser-reviving the full meaning of
Freud's Fehlleistung-calls the parapractic performativity of
cultural memory.
In German Cinema - Terror and Trauma Since 1945, Thomas Elsaesser
reevaluates the meaning of the Holocaust for postwar German films
and culture, while offering a reconsideration of trauma theory
today. Elsaesser argues that Germany's attempts at "mastering the
past" can be seen as both a failure and an achievement, making it
appropriate to speak of an ongoing 'guilt management' that includes
not only Germany, but Europe as a whole. In a series of case
studies, which consider the work of Konrad Wolf, Alexander Kluge,
Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Herbert Achterbusch and Harun Farocki, as
well as films made in the new century, Elsaesser tracks the
different ways the Holocaust is present in German cinema from the
1950s onwards, even when it is absent, or referenced in oblique and
hyperbolic ways. Its most emphatically "absent presence" might turn
out to be the compulsive afterlife of the Red Army Faction, whose
acts of terror in the 1970s were a response to-as well as a
reminder of-Nazism's hold on the national imaginary. Since the end
of the Cold War and 9/11, the terms of the debate around terror and
trauma have shifted also in Germany, where generational memory now
distributes the roles of historical agency and accountability
differently. Against the background of universalized victimhood, a
cinema of commemoration has, if anything, confirmed the violence
that the past continues to exert on the present, in the form of
missed encounters, retroactive incidents, unintended slippages and
uncanny parallels, which Elsaesser-reviving the full meaning of
Freud's Fehlleistung-calls the parapractic performativity of
cultural memory.
While Hollywood's success - its persistence - has remained constant
for almost one hundred years, the study of its success has
undergone significant expansion and transformation. Since the
1960s, Thomas Elsaesser's research has spearheaded the study of
Hollywood, beginning with his classic essays on auteurism and
cinephilia, focused around a director's themes and style, up to his
analysis of the "corporate authorship" of contemporary director
James Cameron. In between, he has helped to transform film studies
by incorporating questions of narrative, genre, desire, ideology
and, more recently, Hollywood's economic-technological
infrastructure and its place within global capitalism. The
Persistence of Hollywood brings together Elsaesser's key writings
about Hollywood filmmaking. It includes his detailed studies of
individual directors (including Minnelli, Fuller, Ray, Hitchcock,
Lang, Altman, Kubrick, Coppola, and Cameron), as well as essays
charting the shifts from classic to corporate Hollywood by way of
the New Hollywood and the resurgence of the blockbuster. The book
also presents a history of the different critical-theoretical
paradigms central to film studies in its analysis of Hollywood,
from auteurism and cinephilia to textual analysis, Marxism,
psychoanalysis, and post-industrial analysis.
While Hollywood's success - its persistence - has remained constant
for almost one hundred years, the study of its success has
undergone significant expansion and transformation. Since the
1960s, Thomas Elsaesser's research has spearheaded the study of
Hollywood, beginning with his classic essays on auteurism and
cinephilia, focused around a director's themes and style, up to his
analysis of the "corporate authorship" of contemporary director
James Cameron. In between, he has helped to transform film studies
by incorporating questions of narrative, genre, desire, ideology
and, more recently, Hollywood's economic-technological
infrastructure and its place within global capitalism. The
Persistence of Hollywood brings together Elsaesser's key writings
about Hollywood filmmaking. It includes his detailed studies of
individual directors (including Minnelli, Fuller, Ray, Hitchcock,
Lang, Altman, Kubrick, Coppola, and Cameron), as well as essays
charting the shifts from classic to corporate Hollywood by way of
the New Hollywood and the resurgence of the blockbuster. The book
also presents a history of the different critical-theoretical
paradigms central to film studies in its analysis of Hollywood,
from auteurism and cinephilia to textual analysis, Marxism,
psychoanalysis, and post-industrial analysis.
German cinema of the 1920s is still regarded as one of the 'golden ages' of world cinema. Films such as The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, Dr Mabuse the Gambler, Nosferatu, Metropolis, Pandora's Box and The Blue Angel have long been canonised as classics, but they are also among the key films defining an image of Germany as a nation uneasy with itself. The work of directors like Fritz Lang, F.W. Murnau and G.W. Pabst, which having apparently announced the horrors of fascism, while testifying to the traumas of a defeated nation, still casts a long shadow over cinema in Germany, leaving film history and political history permanently intertwined. Weimar Cinema and After offers a fresh perspective on this most 'national' of national cinemas, re-evaluating the arguments which view genres and movements such as 'films of the fantastic', 'Nazi Cinema', 'film noir' and 'New German Cinema' as typically German contributions to twentieth century visual culture. Thomas Elsaesser questions conventional readings which link these genres to romanticism and expressionism, and offers new approaches to analysing the function of national cinema in an advanced 'culture industry' and in a Germany constantly reinventing itself both geographically and politically. Elsaesser argues that German cinema's significance lies less in its ability to promote democracy or predict fascism than in its contribution to the creation of a community sharing a 'historical imaginary' rather than a 'national identity'. In this respect, he argues, German cinema anticipated some of the problems facing contemporary nations in reconstituting their identities by means of media images, memory, and invented traditions.
German cinema of the 1920s is still regarded as one of the 'golden ages' of world cinema. Films such as The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, Dr Mabuse the Gambler, Nosferatu, Metropolis, Pandora's Box and The Blue Angel have long been canonised as classics, but they are also among the key films defining an image of Germany as a nation uneasy with itself. The work of directors like Fritz Lang, F.W. Murnau and G.W. Pabst, which having apparently announced the horrors of fascism, while testifying to the traumas of a defeated nation, still casts a long shadow over cinema in Germany, leaving film history and political history permanently intertwined. Weimar Cinema and After offers a fresh perspective on this most 'national' of national cinemas, re-evaluating the arguments which view genres and movements such as 'films of the fantastic', 'Nazi Cinema', 'film noir' and 'New German Cinema' as typically German contributions to twentieth century visual culture. Thomas Elsaesser questions conventional readings which link these genres to romanticism and expressionism, and offers new approaches to analysing the function of national cinema in an advanced 'culture industry' and in a Germany constantly reinventing itself both geographically and politically. Elsaesser argues that German cinema's significance lies less in its ability to promote democracy or predict fascism than in its contribution to the creation of a community sharing a 'historical imaginary' rather than a 'national identity'. In this respect, he argues, German cinema anticipated some of the problems facing contemporary nations in reconstituting their identities by means of media images, memory, and invented traditions.
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Hito Steyerl: I Will Survive (Paperback)
Hito Steyerl; Edited by Doris Krystof, Florian Ebner, Marcella Lista; Text written by Tom Holert, …
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R1,250
R900
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Save R350 (28%)
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What is the relationship between cinema and spectator? This is the
key question for film theory, and one that Thomas Elsaesser and
Malte Hagener put at the center of their insightful and engaging
book, now revised from its popular first edition. Every kind of
cinema (and every film theory) first imagines an ideal spectator,
and then maps certain dynamic interactions between the screen and
the spectator's mind, body and senses. Using seven distinctive
configurations of spectator and screen that move progressively from
'exterior' to 'interior' relationships, the authors retrace the
most important stages of film theory from its beginnings to the
present-from neo-realist and modernist theories to psychoanalytic,
'apparatus,' phenomenological and cognitivist theories, and
including recent cross-overs with philosophy and neurology. This
new and updated edition of Film Theory: An Introduction through the
Senses has been extensively revised and rewritten throughout,
incorporating discussion of contemporary films like Her and
Gravity, and including a greatly expanded final chapter, which
brings film theory fully into the digital age.
Hydrogen bonds represent type of molecular interaction that
determines the structure and function of a large variety of
molecular systems. The elementary dynamics of hydrogen bonds and
related proton transfer reactions, both occurring in the ultra fast
time domain between 10-14 and 10-11s, form a research topic of high
current interest.
In this book addressing scientists and graduate students in
physics, chemistry and biology, the ultra fast dynamics of hydrogen
bonds and proton transfer in the condensed phase are reviewed by
leading scientists, documenting the state of the art in this
exciting field from the viewpoint of theory and experiment. The
nonequilibrium behavior of hydrogen-bonded liquids and
intramolecular hydrogen bonds as well as photo induced hydrogen and
proton transfer are covered in 7 chapters, making reference to the
most recent literature.
Hydrogen bonds represent type of molecular interaction that
determines the structure and function of a large variety of
molecular systems. The elementary dynamics of hydrogen bonds and
related proton transfer reactions, both occurring in the ultra fast
time domain between 10-14 and 10-11s, form a research topic of high
current interest.
In this book addressing scientists and graduate students in
physics, chemistry and biology, the ultra fast dynamics of hydrogen
bonds and proton transfer in the condensed phase are reviewed by
leading scientists, documenting the state of the art in this
exciting field from the viewpoint of theory and experiment. The
nonequilibrium behavior of hydrogen-bonded liquids and
intramolecular hydrogen bonds as well as photo induced hydrogen and
proton transfer are covered in 7 chapters, making reference to the
most recent literature.
This book represents the culmination of Thomas Elsaesser's intense
and passionate thinking about the Hollywood mind-game film from the
previous two decades. In order to answer what the mind-game film
is, why they exist, and how they function, Elsaesser maps the
industrial-institutional challenges and constraints facing
Hollywood, and the broader philosophic horizon within which
American cinema thrives today. He demonstrates how the 'Persistence
of Hollywood' continues as it has adapted to include new twists and
turns, as well as revisions of past concerns, as film moves through
the 21st century. Through examples such as Minority Report,
Mulholland Drive, Source Code, and Back to the Future, Elsaesser
explores how mind-game films challenge us and play games with our
perception of reality, creating skepticism and (self-) doubt. He
also highlights the mind-game film's tendency to intervene in a
complex fashion in the political moment by questioning the dominant
power's intent to program both body and mind alike. Prescient and
compelling, The Mind-Game Film will appeal to students, scholars,
and enthusiasts of media studies, film studies, philosophy, and
politics.
This groundbreaking inaugural volume for the Thinking Cinema series
focuses on the extent to which contemporary cinema contributes to
political and philosophical thinking about the future of Europe's
core Enlightenment values. In light of the challenges of
globalization, multi-cultural communities and post-nation state
democracy, the book interrogates the borders of ethics and politics
and roots itself in debates about post-secular, post-Enlightenment
philosophy. By defining a cinema that knows that it is no longer a
competitor to Hollywood (i.e. the classic self-other construction),
Elsaesser also thinks past the kind of self-exoticism or
auto-ethnography that is the perpetual temptation of such a
co-produced, multi-platform 'national cinema as world cinema'.
Discussing key filmmakers and philosophers, like: Claire Denis and
Jean-Luc Nancy; Aki Kaurismaki, abjection and Julia Kristeva;
Michael Haneke, the paradoxes of Christianity and Slavoj Zizek;
Fatih Akin, Alain Badiou and Jacques Ranciere, Elsaesser is able to
approach European cinema and assesses its key questions within a
global context.His combination of political and philosophical
thinking will surely ground the debate in film philosophy for years
to come.
Terahertz (THz) radiation with frequencies between 100 GHz and 30
THz has developed into an important tool of science and technology,
with numerous applications in materials characterization, imaging,
sensor technologies, and telecommunications. Recent progress in THz
generation has provided ultrashort THz pulses with electric field
amplitudes of up to several megavolts/cm. This development opens
the new research field of nonlinear THz spectroscopy in which
strong light-matter interactions are exploited to induce quantum
excitations and/or charge transport and follow their nonequilibrium
dynamics in time-resolved experiments. This book introduces methods
of THz generation and nonlinear THz spectroscopy in a tutorial way,
discusses the relevant theoretical concepts, and presents
prototypical, experimental, and theoretical results in condensed
matter physics. The potential of nonlinear THz spectroscopy is
illustrated by recent research, including an overview of the
relevant literature.
Metropolis is a monumental work. On its release in 1925, after
sixteen months' filming, it was Germany's most expensive feature
film, a canvas for director Fritz Lang's increasingly extravagant
ambitions. Lang, inspired by the skyline of New York, created a
whole new vision of cities. One of the greatest works of science
fiction, the film also tells human stories about love and family.
Thomas Elsaesser explores the cultural phenomenon of Metropolis:
its different versions (there is no definitive one), its changing
meanings, and its role as a database of twentieth-century imagery
and ideologies. In his foreword to this special edition, published
to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the BFI Film Classics series,
Elsaesser discusses the impact of the 27 minutes of 'lost' footage
discovered in Buenos Aires in 2008, and incorporated in a restored
edition, which premiered in 2010.
This book offers a comprehensive scholarly examination of Vincente
Minnelli, one of American cinema's central filmmakers.Widely known
for innovative films like ""Meet Me in St. Louis"", ""An American
in Paris"", and ""The Band Wagon"", Vincente Minnelli also directed
classic film comedies like ""Father of the Bride"" and ""Designing
Woman"", and melodramas such as ""The Bad and the Beautiful"" and
""Some Came Running"". Though his work is beloved by filmmakers and
audiences alike, Minnelli has nonetheless received very little
critical attention in English. ""Vincente Minnelli: The Art of
Entertainment"" remedies this imbalance, offering the first-ever
comprehensive and scholarly examination of Minnelli's career within
a variety of discourses and methods.Bringing together a number of
previously uncollected and untranslated essays by some of the most
important scholars and critics in North America, Australia, and
Europe, ""Vincente Minnelli: The Art of Entertainment"" places
Minnelli's cinema in its rightful position at the forefront of film
history. In essays written over the last five decades, as well as a
number of new essays commissioned especially for this volume,
contributors consider Minnelli from a number of perspectives from
auteurism to genre studies and psychoanalysis to close textual
analysis.The volume is divided into four chronological sections,
Minnelli in the 1960s: The Rise and Fall of an Auteur; The 1970s
and 1980s: Genre, Psychoanalysis, and Close Readings; The 1990s:
Matters of History, Culture, and Sexuality; and, Minnelli Today:
The Return of the Artist. An introduction by Joe McElhaney
addresses the history of the reception of Minnelli's films,
situating this reception within larger questions of film theory,
criticism, and aesthetics.Too often dismissed as little more than a
stylist dependent on the resources of the studio system and the
structures of genre, Vincente Minnelli deserves a second look from
serious film scholars. ""Vincente Minnelli: The Art of
Entertainment"" demonstrates the remarkable and sustained rigor of
Minnelli's vision and will appeal to students and teachers of film
studies as well as fans of Minnelli's work.
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Ultrafast Phenomena, v. 12 - Proceedings of the 12th International Conference, Charleston, SC, USA, July 9-13, 2000 (Hardcover)
Thomas Elsaesser, S. Mukamel, M.M Murnane, N.F. Scherer
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R2,869
Discovery Miles 28 690
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This book presents the latest advances in ultrafast science, including ultrafast laser and measurement technology as well as studies of ultrafast phenomena. Pico- and femtosecond processes relevant in physics, chemistry, biology and engineering are presented. Ultrafast technology has had a profound impact in a wide range of applications, among them imaging, material diagnostics and transformation and high-speed optoelectronics. This book summarizes the results presented at the 12th Ultrafast Phenomena Conference and reviews the state of the art of this important and rapidly advancing field.
What are the most appropriate theories and methods for analysing
contemporary American cinema? In this book Thomas Elsaesser and
Warren Buckland answer this question by taking an innovative
approach to writing about individual movies: in each of the main
chapters they examine the assumptions behind one traditional theory
of film, distil a method of analysis from it, and then analyse a
contemporary American movie. They then go beyond the traditional
theory by analysing the same movie using a more current theory and
method. This book has identically structured, coherent chapters,
which overcomes the dogmatism of subscribing to one theory and
method, and instead encourages students to adopt a comparative,
pluralistic approach to film analysis. The traditional theories
include: mise en scene criticism, auteurism, structural analysis,
narratology, studies of realism, psychoanalysis, and feminism. The
more current theories include: new and post-Lacanian approaches to
subjectivity, cognitivism, computerised statistical style analysis,
the philosophy of modal logic, new media theory, and
deconstruction. Films analysed include: "Chinatown", "Die Hard",
"The Silence of the Lambs", "Pulp Fict
This groundbreaking inaugural volume for the Thinking Cinema series
focuses on the extent to which contemporary cinema contributes to
political and philosophical thinking about the future of Europe's
core Enlightenment values. In light of the challenges of
globalization, multi-cultural communities and post-nation state
democracy, the book interrogates the borders of ethics and politics
and roots itself in debates about post-secular, post-Enlightenment
philosophy. By defining a cinema that knows that it is no longer a
competitor to Hollywood (i.e. the classic self-other construction),
Elsaesser also thinks past the kind of self-exoticism or
auto-ethnography that is the perpetual temptation of such a
co-produced, multi-platform 'national cinema as world cinema'.
Discussing key filmmakers and philosophers, like: Claire Denis and
Jean-Luc Nancy; Aki Kaurismaki, abjection and Julia Kristeva;
Michael Haneke, the paradoxes of Christianity and Slavoj Zizek;
Fatih Akin, Alain Badiou and Jacques Ranciere, Elsaesser is able to
approach European cinema and assesses its key questions within a
global context.His combination of political and philosophical
thinking will surely ground the debate in film philosophy for years
to come.
Since cinema has entered the digital era, its very nature has come
under renewed scrutiny. Countering the 'death of cinema' debate,
Film History as Media Archaeology presents a robust argument for
the cinema's current status as a new epistemological object, of
interest to philosophers, while also examining the presence of
moving images in the museum and art spaces as a challenge for art
history. The current study is the fruit of some twenty years of
research and writing at the interface of film history, media theory
and media archaeology by one of the acknowledged pioneers of the
'new film history' and 'media archaeology'. It joins the efforts of
other media scholars to locate cinema's historical emergence and
subsequent transformations within the broader field of media change
and interaction, as we experience them today.
Terahertz (THz) radiation with frequencies between 100 GHz and 30
THz has developed into an important tool of science and technology,
with numerous applications in materials characterization, imaging,
sensor technologies, and telecommunications. Recent progress in THz
generation has provided ultrashort THz pulses with electric field
amplitudes of up to several megavolts/cm. This development opens
the new research field of nonlinear THz spectroscopy in which
strong light-matter interactions are exploited to induce quantum
excitations and/or charge transport and follow their nonequilibrium
dynamics in time-resolved experiments. This book introduces methods
of THz generation and nonlinear THz spectroscopy in a tutorial way,
discusses the relevant theoretical concepts, and presents
prototypical, experimental, and theoretical results in condensed
matter physics. The potential of nonlinear THz spectroscopy is
illustrated by recent research, including an overview of the
relevant literature.
In the late 1960s, the cinema was pronounced dead. Television, like
a Biblical Cain had slain his brother Abel, bewitching the mass
audience and provoking an exodus - from the cinemas to the living
room. Some 30 years later, a remarkable reversal: rarely has the
cinema been more popular, as inner-city multiplexes record rising
attendances. And yet, rarely has the cinema's future seemed more
uncertain. 70-80 per cent of all films shown on commercial screens
come from Hollywood, launched with publicity campaigns costing more
than the total budget of most European films. Television, the
independent cinema's chief financier for the past decades, cannot
match these investments, not can it compete, even if it wanted to,
with the barrage of special effects. The New Media, virtual images,
the relentless digitization of reality, it is argued, are
responsible for the global concentration of production, which in
turn leads to the global uniformity of the products. Just as Cain
and Abel are about to bury their differences, then along comes
Cable to resolve them both into mere myriads of pixels. Beyond the
hyperbole and the metaphors, "Cinema Futures: Cain, Abel or Cable?"
presents an argument about predictions that tend to be made when
new technologies appear. Television did not swallow radio, just as
it did not replace the cinema. Yet each new technological medium
has certainly changed the place of the others in society and
affected their function. What do these precedents tell us about the
future of the cinema in the digital age, or rather for the future
of the "experience cinema", as it redefines itself in the home and
in public? The authors of this book are realistic in their estimate
of the future of cinema's distinctive identity, and optimistic that
the different social needs audiences bring to the media will ensure
their distinctiveness. The book also contains case studies, and
should be useful to anyone interested in a better understanding of
the changes facing the worlds of sound and vision.
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