Ever since the centenary of cinema there have been intense discussions in the field of film studies about the imminent demise of the cinematic medium, endless articles championing the spirit of genuine cinephilia have proclaimed the death of classical cinema and mourned the end of an era, while new currents in media studies introduced such buzzwords into the discussions as “remediation” (Bolter and Grusin), “media convergence” (Jenkins), “post-media aesthetics” (Manovich) or “the virtual life of film” (Rodowick). By the turn of the millennium, the whole “ecosystem” of media had been radically altered through processes of hybridization and media convergence. Some theorists even claim that now that the term “medium” has triumphed in the discussions around contemporary art and culture, the actual media have already deceased, as digitized imagery absorbs all media. Moving images have entered the art galleries and new forms of inter-art relationships have been forged. They have also moved into the streets and our everyday life as a domesticated medium at everybody’s reach, into new private and public environments (and into a fusion of both via the Internet). Consequently, should we speak of an all pervasive “cinematic experience” instead of a cinematic medium? What really happens to film once its traditional medium has shape shifted into various digital forms and once its traditional locations, institutions and usages have been uprooted? What do these re-locations and re-configurations really entail? What are the most important new genres in post-media moving pictures? Is it the web video, is it 3D cinema, is it the computer game that operates with moving image narratives, is it the new “vernacular” database, the DVD, or the good old television adjusted to all these new forms? How does theatrical cinema itself adapt to or reflect on these new image forms and technologies? How can we interpret the convergence of older cinematic forms with an emerging digital aesthetics traceable in typical post-media “hosts” of moving images? These are only some of the major questions that the theoretical investigation and in-depth analyses in this volume try to answer in an attempt at exploring not the disappearance of cinema but the blooming post-media life of film.

Encompassing experimental film and video, essay film, gallery-based installation art, and digital art, Jihoon Kim establishes the concept of hybrid moving images as an array of impure images shaped by the encounters and negotiations between different media, while also using it to explore various theoretical issues, such as stillness and movement, indexicality, abstraction, materiality, afterlives of the celluloid cinema, archive, memory, apparatus, and the concept of medium as such. Grounding its study in interdisciplinary framework of film studies, media studies, and contemporary art criticism, Between Film, Video, and the Digital offers a fresh insight on the post-media conditions of film and video under the pervasive influences of digital technologies, as well as on the crucial roles of media hybridity in the creative processes of giving birth to the emerging forms of the moving image. Incorporating in-depth readings of recent works by more than thirty artists and filmmakers, including Jim Campbell, Bill Viola, Sam Taylor-Johnson, David Claerbout, Fiona Tan, Takeshi Murata, Jennifer West, Ken Jacobs, Christoph Girardet and Matthias Müller, Hito Steyerl, Lynne Sachs, Harun Farocki, Doug Aitken, Douglas Gordon, Stan Douglas, Candice Breitz, among others, the book is the essential scholarly monograph for understanding how digital technologies simultaneously depend on and differ film previous time-based media, and how this juncture of similarities and differences signals a new regime of the art of the moving image.

Fiftieth anniversary reissue of the founding media studies book that helped establish media art as a cultural category. First published in 1970, Gene Youngblood’s influential Expanded Cinema was the first serious treatment of video, computers, and holography as cinematic technologies. Long considered the bible for media artists, Youngblood’s insider account of 1960s counterculture and the birth of cybernetics remains a mainstay reference in today’s hypermediated digital world. This fiftieth anniversary edition includes a new Introduction by the author that offers conceptual tools for understanding the sociocultural and sociopolitical realities of our present world. A unique eyewitness account of burgeoning experimental film and the birth of video art in the late 1960s, this far- ranging study traces the evolution of cinematic language to the end of fiction, drama, and realism. Vast in scope, its prescient formulations include “the paleocybernetic age,” “intermedia,” the “artist as design scientist,” the “artist as ecologist,” “synaesthetics and kinesthetics,” and “the technosphere: man/machine symbiosis.” Outstanding works are analyzed in detail. Methods of production are meticulously described, including interviews with artists and technologists of the period, such as Nam June Paik, Jordan Belson, Andy Warhol, Stan Brakhage, Carolee Schneemann, Stan VanDerBeek, Les Levine, and Frank Gillette. An inspiring Introduction by the celebrated polymath and designer R. Buckminster Fuller—a perfectly cut gem of countercultural thinking in itself—places Youngblood’s radical observations in comprehensive perspective. Providing an unparalleled historical documentation, Expanded Cinema clarifies a chapter of countercultural history that is still not fully represented in the arthistorical record half a century later. The book will also inspire the current generation of artists working in ever-newer expansions of the cinematic environment and will prove invaluable to all who are concerned with the technologies that are reshaping the nature of human communication.

Encompassing experimental film and video, essay film, gallery-based installation art, and digital art, Jihoon Kim establishes the concept of hybrid moving images as an array of impure images shaped by the encounters and negotiations between different media, while also using it to explore various theoretical issues, such as stillness and movement, indexicality, abstraction, materiality, afterlives of the celluloid cinema, archive, memory, apparatus, and the concept of medium as such. Grounding its study in interdisciplinary framework of film studies, media studies, and contemporary art criticism, Between Film, Video, and the Digital offers a fresh insight on the post-media conditions of film and video under the pervasive influences of digital technologies, as well as on the crucial roles of media hybridity in the creative processes of giving birth to the emerging forms of the moving image. Incorporating in-depth readings of recent works by more than thirty artists and filmmakers, including Jim Campbell, Bill Viola, Sam Taylor-Johnson, David Claerbout, Fiona Tan, Takeshi Murata, Jennifer West, Ken Jacobs, Christoph Girardet and Matthias Müller, Hito Steyerl, Lynne Sachs, Harun Farocki, Doug Aitken, Douglas Gordon, Stan Douglas, Candice Breitz, among others, the book is the essential scholarly monograph for understanding how digital technologies simultaneously depend on and differ film previous time-based media, and how this juncture of similarities and differences signals a new regime of the art of the moving image.

This book examines a set of theoretical perspectives that critically engage with the notion of postmodernism, investigating whether this concept is still useful to approach contemporary cinema. This question is explored through a discussion of the films written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, largely regarded as the epitome of postmodern cinema and considered here as theoretical contributions in their own right. Each chapter first presents key ideas proposed by a specific theorist and then puts them in conversation with Tarantino’s films. Jacques Rancière’s theory of art is used to reject postmodernism’s claims about the ‘death’ of the aesthetic image in contemporary cinema. Fredric Jameson’s and Slavoj Žižek’s dialectical thinking is mobilized to challenge simplistic, ideological readings of postmodern cinema in general, and Tarantino’s films in particular. Finally, the direct influence of Carol Clover’s psychoanalytical approach to the horror genre on Tarantino’s work is discussed to prove the director’s specific contribution to a theoretical understanding of contemporary film aesthetics.

Covering more than 40 films made since 2001 -- including "The Death of Mr Lǎzǎrescu," "The Paper Will Be Blue," and "Beyond the Hills" -- this pioneering collection is the first to contextualize New Romanian Cinema aesthetically, theoretically and historically. The book examines its approach to national and gender identity, and its unique convergence of ethics and aesthetics. With thorough bibliographic and filmographic references, and a comprehensive historical overview, the anthology is a systematic guide to New Romanian Cinema as a consolidated movement, highlighting its potential as a rich interdisciplinary field of study

Following a previous international conference at the Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, and the subsequent publication of a volume of studies with the title Film in the Post-Media Age (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012), which insisted, citing the words of Jacques Rancière, that the ecosystem of contemporary moving images should be understood not as a unified digital environment, but as a highly diversified, “multisensory milieu,” another conference was organised, focusing this time directly on the “multisensory” nature of moving images. Pairing the keywords “cinema” and “sensation”, an invitation was extended for presentations offering a closer examination of the sensual aspects of moving images in order to identify and map out at least some of the possible new directions perceived as taking shape as “sensuous” film studies. The questions contributors addressed included: What kind of paradigms, authors, and styles can be identified in the practice of a cinema exploring the palpable presence of bodies in film history? How can sensory, audiovisual perception and cognitive knowledge be connected when watching moving images? What does the experience of so-called haptic images entail in film and video art? How does an emphasis on sensations and the body relate to representations of social issues and cultural difference? How are representations of other arts in films, or the filmic image appearing as a painterly tableau perceived? How can new images incorporate a sensation of “old” images? What is the difference between haptic images and “hyper” cinema in the form of 3D movies? How can the new naturalistic trends in contemporary cinema be interpreted? What kind of sensual forms are devised for what is unrepresentable or impalpable? The conference took place between the 25th and 27th of May 2012, with the title The Cinema of Sensations, and attracted researchers from all over the world for what turned out to be three days of presentations on extremely varied subjects and lively discussions conducted in a memorably cheerful atmosphere. The present volume is the palpable outcome of these debates, and publishes a selection of articles that have been written for, or after, this conference.