A century of electronic cinema

Abstract

The prospect of the electronic distribution and exhibition of theatrical motion pictures has provoked fearful, even apocalyptic, warnings from some in the contemporary Hollywood industry. While the immediate prospects for, and consequences of, the end of celluloid-based exhibition are unclear, the shift to digital cinema has already complicated some of the fundamental business models, industry practices, and power relations within the film and television industries. Digital exhibition has inspired some filmmakers and industry observers to imagine an industry less dominated by the major studios, with new untraditional venues for exhibition, and new opportunities for exhibitors to contract directly with filmmakers and develop alternative programming and uses for traditional public cinemas, including sporting events, music concerts, business conferencing, and video gaming. At the same time, electronic cinema has encouraged the growth of in-cinema advertising and has threatened the long-established practice of staggered release dates across the theatrical and domestic exhibition markets, and some in the motion picture industry worry that electronic cinema will collapse the distinct aesthetic forms and audience practices of domestic television and public cinema-going. Electronic cinema's prospective confounding of traditionally distinct business models, textual forms, and viewing protocols has not been fully taken on board by media scholars, and the current proliferation of technological platforms, business models, and viewing practices related to the consumption of moving images beyond the domestic space of traditional television will have profound implications for the objects and methods of study in our discipline.