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

Instead of cinephany, it would perhaps be better to speak of cine-hierophany as a way of preserving the sense of the sacred (hieros in Greek) in the name, all the more so in that what is at stake in our comments is this “sacred” quality that films seen in movie theatres have for cinephiles and the “desacralisation” of cinema brought on by the advent of digital technology. On this note, we cannot avoid mentioning the neologism “filmophanic” coined by Souriau (to describe “every aspect of the presentation of a film projected for viewers in a movie theatre”), a term that has a fairly direct connection (projection, viewers, movie theatre) with the issue that connects the elements we discuss here. See Étienne Souriau, “Préface,” in Étienne Souriau, ed., L’univers filmique (Paris: Flammarion, 1953), p. 8.

It is also possible to explore in greater depth this topic and the specific questions to which we refer here by consulting Magali Boudissa’s article “La bande dessinée entre la page et l’écran: vers un renouvellement narratif de la BD à l’ère des technologies numériques,” Cinéma & Cie. International Film Studies Journal 14-15 (Spring-Fall 2010): 85-94.

The article can be found at the address http://www.erba-valence.fr/modules/enseign/jpb/theoriecran.htm. In it the author describes the “outward face” of the “screen object support” in the following terms: “an animated, abstract and magic surface, an amnesiac surface which captivated with a luminescence we didn’t know before, one so different from the archaic light of the traditional lamp emitting light from a centre. Creating a sheet of electronic light, it also creates an experience unlike our most deep-rooted relations with surfaces.”

The video can be found at the following address: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRMNfwndtok.