Cinema in the Digital Age

by Nicholas Rombes

Have digital technologies transformed cinema into a new art, or do they simply replicate and mimic analogue, film-based cinema? Newly revised and expanded to take the latest developments into account, Cinema in the Digital Age examines the fate of cinema in the wake of the digital revolution. Nicholas Rombes considers Festen (1998), The Blair Witch Project (1999), Timecode (2000), Russian Ark (2002), and The Ring (2002), among others. Haunted by their analogue pasts, these films are interested not in digital purity but rather in imperfection and mistakes—blurry or pixilated images, shaky camera work, and other elements that remind viewers of the human behind the camera.With a new introduction and new material, this updated edition takes a fresh look at the historical and contemporary state of digital cinema. It pays special attention to the ways in which nostalgia for the look and feel of analogue disrupts the aesthetics of the digital image, as well as how recent films such as The Social Network (2010) and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)—both shot digitally—have disguised and erased their digital foundations. The book also explores new possibilities for writing about and theorizing film, such as randomization.

Genres: Nonfiction, Film

266 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 1, 2008

About the author

Nicholas Rombes works in Detroit. His novels include The Absolution of Roberto Acestes Laing (Two Dollar Radio), The Rachel Condition (CLASH Books), and Lisa 2, v 1.0 (Calamari Archives). He's written for The Believer, The Oxford American, n+1 online, & Filmmaker Magazine and is author of Ramones, from Bloomsbury's 33 1/3 series and 10/40/70 from Zer0 Books.

Reviews

[snott · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book could have been a lot more concise. Rombes has a lot to say, but it's muddled in the repetition that this style of writing demands (the book is broken up into mini essays).

I found myself distracted by his case studies: looking at punk has been done-to-death (if punk isn't dead, academics writing about it should be), I never saw or cared about the blair witch project, and a lot of those Dogma 95 films are just plain unwatchable.

However, he's great at reading horror (which I'm also not really interested in), and his stuff on Harmony Korine is on point. I guess I'm just more interested in theory than practice when it comes to this sort of stuff.

[Steven Felicelli · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rombes has an astute and fully developed understanding of the way we work now (in the Arts, not just film). All the whats and wherefores of our meta-mania are unpacked, analyzed and synced up with digital cinema.

In addition to which, it is a thorough catalogue of contemporary meta-cinema (which is synonymous with serious filmmaking in the 21s Century - I can't think of any important unreflexive films made in the last 20 years). It's a great primer for the uninitiated, as well as a piece of heady theory for the cinephile.