Death 24x a Second: Stillness and the Moving Image

Abstract

With the advent of the digital and the consequent perception of a new malleability in representation and information, attention has shifted in film studies to the photographic base of cinema – its material distinctiveness and the specific nature of cinema's cultural intervention in the twentieth century. Following the marginalization of Bazin's work that accompanied the analysis of the ideological complicity of realism in 1970s film theory, the emphasis for many years had been on the optical (Renaissance perspective) rather than the chemical aspect of cinema, and on space (mise-en-scene, the frame) rather than temporality. However, in an age of intermediality a new engagement with notions of cinematic specificity has emerged. This is not a commitment to an essence or ontology of film, but rather a closer examination of film's materiality and its historical promise that ultimately returns to Bazin and to the indexicality of the medium.1 At stake is our understanding of cinema's relation to temporality and historicity.