What Is Cinema?

Cinema is a global industry that has spawned numerous world-renowned filmmakers, directors, and actors. Movies have the ability to bridge cultural gaps, introducing audiences to new perspectives, traditions, and ways of life. In addition, movies serve as a medium for social commentary, sparking conversations and generating debates about important issues like gender, race, and inequality.

Andre Bazin, the founder of the renowned film journal Cahiers du cinéma and a major force in post-World War II film studies and criticism, asked the question "Qu'est-ce que le cinéma?" (What is Cinema?) This book explores the evolution of this art form as it moved from the novelty short films of those early pioneers to the Hollywood factory-like production of discrete, 90-minute narrative feature films that dominate contemporary mainstream and international markets.

For Bazin, the development of cinematic language was a process that encompassed all of the arts, but whose primary object was to redefine the spatial-temporal illusionism of baroque art and of the theater. He missed the point, however, that this was an Esthetic Reformation rather than a counter-revolution.

His aspirations were rooted in the Symbolist belief that a metaphysical unity pervaded all reality and all art and that cinema, with its capacity to visualize this unity, was a kind of sacred medium. But, as the authors of this volume show, his ideas were dated and, more importantly, his sense of the possibilities of cinema as an evolving art was distorted by his commitment to a specific, pre-Structuralist metaphysics.