The Lumière Galaxy - (Film and Culture) by Francesco Casetti (Paperback)

About the Book

Travels from the remote corners of film history and theory to the most surprising sites on the internet and in our cities to prove the ongoing relevance of cinema

Book Synopsis

Francesco Casetti believes new media technologies are producing an exciting new era in cinema aesthetics. Whether we experience film in the theater, on our hand-held devices, in galleries and museums, onboard and in flight, or up in the clouds in the bits we download, cinema continues to alter our habits and excite our imaginations.

Casetti travels from the remote corners of film history and theory to the most surprising sites on the internet and in our cities to prove the ongoing relevance of cinema. He does away with traditional notions of canon, repetition, apparatus, and spectatorship in favor of new keywords, including expansion, relocation, assemblage, and performance. The result is an innovative understanding of cinema's place in our lives and culture, along with a critical sea-change in the study of the art. The more the nature of cinema transforms, the more it discovers its own identity, and Casetti helps readers realize the galaxy of possibilities embedded in the medium.

Review Quotes

A brilliant and perceptive volume.... Essential.-- "Choice"

An exuberant, gracefully written book inviting us to understand the relocations, expansions, and reinventions of cinema and its possibly grand future in close, loving proximity to its rich past.--Holly Willis "Film Comment"

Francesco Casetti brilliantly navigates the digital transition, showing how cinema persists as an idea, a space, and a set of practices. Digital cinema is constantly in motion, elusive and evolving, and The Lumiére Galaxy provides us with the essential keywords for making sense of the changing dynamics of watching movies in a vast array of settings and on an endless variety of personal media devices. This book is vital for anyone engaged with the transformation of the cinematic experience in the digital age.--Charles Tryon, author of On-Demand Culture: Digital Delivery and the Future of Movies

This is a passionate defense of both cinema and cinema studies, written by someone with a thorough command of both film and media theory and driven by a passion for cinema that covers the latest and most advanced incarnations of the screen arts as well as their history. Intellectually astute, refreshing, and liberating, Casetti's work aims to give cinema a new lease on life both as a cultural object and an object of academic study.--Vinzenz Hediger, Goethe University Frankfurt

This welcome intervention in debates about the effect of digital technologies on cinema is strikingly original. Francesco Casetti refreshingly shifts the focus to the viewer's experience of the moving image in the new media landscape, offering a much needed riposte to those who have too quickly proclaimed the cinema to be dead.--Malcolm Turvey, Sarah Lawrence College

About the Author

Francesco Casetti is professor of film and media at Yale University. His most recent book is Eye of the Century: Film, Experience, Modernity.