Introduction
The site theendofcinema.com is a supplement to the book The End of Cinema? A Medium in Crisis in the Digital Age (Columbia University Press, 2015), written by André Gaudreault and Philippe Marion. It is intended for readers who wish to learn more. Here you will find additional information, recent developments and bibliographical references, along with other supplementary information topped up with hyperlinks, pictures and videos. This additional information, which we were unable to incorporate in the printed version of the book, is being presented online in order to make possible its optimal use. Designed in the first place to carry over the reading of the book to a site adapted to a variety of mobile devices, this electronic supplement is accessible to everyone with an Internet connection who wishes to consult its highly varied and constantly evolving content.
Readers of the printed book will notice the remark “Find out more” at the end of each footnote and are invited to visit the complementary site, where they will easily find the supplementary information indicated by using the menu found in the Contents (located on the right hand side of the home page), where the footnotes are grouped by chapter and by page. It is also possible to do a keyword search.
Overview of the book
Will digital media kill the cinema?
Overwhelmed by the digital tsunami, which is radically blurring the boundaries between media (cinema, television, graphic novels, the Internet, smart phones, etc.), cinema, it is said, is in the process of dying: the warmth of the photochemical image has given way to the coldness of pixels, and the not-film, with its satellite transmissions, has begun to overrun theatres once the domain of cinema. And yet cinema is everywhere: it is stored on new devices and shown on new screens. And yet we may wonder whether a film on DVD seen on a video screen is still cinema, or whether the encoded images of digital compositing and motion capture are still a part of the medium cinema.
Building on their hypothesis of the “double birth of media,” the authors of The End of Cinema? A Medium in Crisis in the Digital Age examine the convulsions cinema’s identity is undergoing today and offer keys for understanding the impact of the digital on the present-day media universe. Are we witnessing a third birth of cinema?
About the authors
André Gaudreault is a full professor in the Département d’histoire de l’art et d’études cinématographiques at the Université de Montréal, where since 1992 he has headed up the research group GRAFICS. Director of the journal Cinémas since 1999, he is also the co-founder, with Denis Héroux, of the Observatoire du cinéma au Québec. In 2013 he received a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship, enabling him to continue his research into the impact of the digital revolution on cinema’s identity. Find out more
Philippe Marion is a regular professor in the École de communication at the Université catholique de Louvain. His research focuses on media narratology and the comparative analysis of visual media and media discourses. He is a founding member of the Observatoire du récit médiatique, of the Laboratoire d’analyse des systèmes de communication d’organisation and of the École de journalisme de Louvain.
Launch
Remarks (in French) on the book by the two authors and the series editor of the “Cinéma/Arts visuels” book series published by Armand Colin at the book launch held on 14 October 2013 at the Palimpseste bookstore in Paris.
About the e-mails reproduced on this site
In order to make available the personal e-mails quoted in the book, we have copied their content in an HTML format. The text of these e-mails having been reproduced exactly as they were written, apart from a few minor corrections, we request readers’ indulgence and ask them to keep in mind that these informal exchanges were not intended for publication.
Contributors
Directors
André Gaudreault
Philippe Marion
Editorial coordinator
Simon Thibodeau
Scholarly coordinator
Rémy Besson
Publication assistant
Emmanuel Jory
Translator
Timothy Barnard
Legal counsel
Aldine Calveyrac
Web conception, design and programming
Jules Renaud
GRAFICS coordinator
Kim Décarie