Cinephilia in the Age of the Post-Cinematographic

Abstract

One can describe the age we have entered –the age of smart-phones and tablets, of LCDs and LEDs, of DVD and VOD, of streaming and files– as the post-cinematographic in which the film has become immanent to our lives, thinking and behaviour, while the traditional site at which the images and sounds would encounter the spectator, the cinema, is slowly but steadily shifting into obsolescence. Cinephilia as a temporally and spatially situated practice that is capable of bridging the gap between individual and collective spectatorship, is not dead, but has –under the present conditions of digital networks– transformed markedly. It would be naïve to reduce the post-cinematographic state of cinephilia to a matter of websites, portals and platforms. What the article proposes instead is to consider works that are enabled by the conditions of the digital –the ideas, tools and capabilities that characterize early 21st Century image culture. While it is impossible to chart the transformations and novelties of present-day cinephilia in total, these examples hopefully show some possible avenues in which cinephilia might develop. Cinephilia is characterized by its capability to reframe and repurpose the different temporalities and emotional registers that the cinema has offered in the past, but is increasingly opening up in the digital present and future. Both the object of affection as well as the manner of reception are flexible and malleable through new digital techniques, manners of circulation and a different configuration of the field in general.