What Cinema Is!
explores the powerful and
demanding conception of film formulated in Qu'est-ce que le cinéma?, the famous
collection of André Bazin's writings from 1958 to 1962. Dudley Andrew, Bazin's
biographer and brilliant exegete, follows the thread of this idea by investigating
the three basic activities in film: recording, editing and projection. Situating
the emergence of these activities in the intellectual context of Bazin's day
and age (André Malraux, Roger Leenhardt, Jean-Paul Sartre), Andrew reveals
unknown facets of Bazin’s conception of cinema,
demonstrates its fecundity during the second half of the 20th century,
and juxtaposes it with highly contemporary films. Over the course of a concise survey
of film history and theory, he puts forward a salutary rebuttal of claims that
the seventh art has declined. Far from undermining the identity of the medium, he
argues, the upheavals of the transition to the digital age have paved the way
for film to realize its true nature and purpose: to adapt to reality in order
to explore it more fully and effectively.
Author: Dudley Andrew
Translated from the English by
Olivier Mignon
Original title: What Cinema
Is! Bazin's Quest and its Charge, Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.
Graphic design: Studio Otamendi
Published in 2014
In French
13 x 19 cm
208 pages
ISBN: 978-2-930667-08-9
EAN : 9782930667089
