The End of Cinema – A Medium in Crisis in the Digital Age

Thomas Elsaesser, “ The New Film History as Media Archaeology,” Cinémas 14, no. 2–3 (Spring 2004): 115. Our emphasis.

Jean-Philippe Tessé, “La révolution numérique est terminée,” Cahiers du cinéma 672 (November 2011): 6.

Stéphane Delorme, “D’une projection à l’autre.” Emphasis in the original.

We borrow the expression “fragmented cinema”(“cinéma éclaté”) from Guillaume Soulez, who organized a study day around the question with his colleague Kira Kitsopanidou and who prefers the term to “extended cinema.” The conference was entitled “Le cinéma éclaté et le levain des médias” (Fragmented cinema and the media catalyst), Institut national d’histoire de l’art, Paris, March 2012.

Hence its current crisis and hot-topic status at conferences.

This numbering system is something devised by the two authors of the present volume and has, of course, no scientific pretentions. Especially given that the number of deaths we will identify is arbitrary. For us it is a question above all of showing that these deaths were not true deaths (because, as everyone knows, you only die once—even if certain people maintain that the cinema was born twice . . .).