The Lumière Galaxy: Seven Key Words for the Cinema to Come

Film and Culture Series

by Francesco Casetti

Francesco Casetti believes new media technologies are producing an exciting new era in cinema aesthetics. Whether we experience film in the theater, on our hand-held devices, in galleries and museums, onboard and in flight, or up in the clouds in the bits we download, cinema continues to alter our habits and excite our imaginations. Casetti travels from the remote corners of film history and theory to the most surprising sites on the internet and in our cities to prove the ongoing relevance of cinema. He does away with traditional notions of canon, repetition, apparatus, and spectatorship in favor of new keywords, including expansion, relocation, assemblage, and performance. The result is an innovative understanding of cinema's place in our lives and culture, along with a critical sea-change in the study of the art. The more the nature of cinema transforms, the more it discovers its own identity, and Casetti helps readers realize the galaxy of possibilities embedded in the medium.

Genres: Film

312 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 24, 2015

Reviews

[J Earl]

This extremely passionate defense of the value and continued life of cinema makes for a very thought-provoking read. Some explanations beg for a slower more careful rereading, and you are rewarded with some enlightening ideas for doing so. Perhaps the biggest shift a student of film has to make to appreciate this work is presented early in the book, namely that Casetti is coming from a experiential perspective in his approaches and his definitions. This is not to ignore other aspects but rather to incorporate the those other aspects (such as technology) into a new working understanding of cinema that keeps it alive at the same time that it transforms both itself and its history.

This is definitely a work that will reward multiple readings and is rich in references to stimulate further reading and thought.

Reviewed from an ARC made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

[Holly Willis]

Francesco Casetti explores the state of contemporary cinema and its divergent new formations by using seven key words – relocation, relics/icons, assemblage, expansion, hypertopia, display, and performance – and shows how cinema is in the process of forming new relationships with spectators as it is activated in new spaces, as it encounters the art world, and as we gain a new sense of touch and tactility with images. Casetti offers an exuberant account, and invites us to understand cinema’s relocations, expansions, and reinventions as both a gesture toward the future while retaining an affectionate proximity to its vibrant past.

[Lucia Caporalini]

Interesting book about how cinema evolved and tried to stay alive among new devices.

[Steen Ledet]

Good, measured analysis of the institution of cinema, rather than how individual movies work today.

[Michael Drew]

The Lumière Galaxy offers a thoughtful reconsideration of what cinema means in an increasingly dispersed media environment.
Francesco Casetti moves beyond the traditional cinema apparatus to examine relocation, assemblage, expansion, display, and performance.
His framework accounts for films experienced in theaters, on personal devices, in galleries, museums, and other unexpected spaces.
Rather than treating digital transformation as the disappearance of cinema, Casetti asks how cinema persists by changing its forms and contexts.
The result is an engaging contribution to film theory, media studies, spectatorship, and post cinema debates.

[Noah Lederman Greis]

Read for a cinema studies course. Really good and surprisingly straightforward discussion of how digital media has changed the conditions for film. It’s already little dated here and there but only in minor ways.

[Mariano Mesti]

Casetti analizza con grande lungimiranza e lucidità la strada intrapresa dal cinema nell'era digitale. Ideale per chi vuole comprendere le trasformazioni del medium in questi ultimi decenni.