Cinema in the Digital Age

by Nicholas Rombes

Does the digital era spell the death of cinema as we know it? Or is it merely heralding its rebirth? Are we witnessing the emergence of something entirely new? Cinema in the Digital Age examines the fate of cinema in this new era, paying special attention to the technologies that are reshaping film and their cultural impact. Examining Festen (1998), The Blair Witch Project (1999), Timecode (2000), Russian Ark (2002), The Ring (2002), among others, this volume explores how these films are haunted by their analogue past and suggests that their signature element are their deliberate imperfections, whether those take the form of blurry or pixilated images, shakey camera work, or other elements reminding viewers of the human hand guiding the camera. Weaving together a rich variety of sources, Cinema in the Digital Age provides a deeply humanistic look at the meaning of cinematic images in the era of digital perfection.

Genres: Nonfiction, Film

224 pages, Paperback

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.