Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film

Cinephilia
clerk. His own filmmaking is very much indebted to the
Blaxploitation genre of American cinema, which by revisiting,
he has helped to redeem from the dustbin of
history. Is this videophilia? Or is it the cinephilia of the
collector, whose obsessive and passionate movie watching
is yet another foray into the politics of good taste? At the
other end of the taste spectrum one can point to visual
artists such as Bill Viola (b. 1951), Cindy Sherman
(b. 1954), Stan Douglas (b. 1960), and Jeff Wall
(b. 1946), who are unambiguously driven by cinephilia,
even if they do not make movies or write about them.
Their photographic and video works engage directly with
the fullness of the cinematic experience and explore its
seductive properties in important and innovative ways.
Perhaps the most significant aspect of twenty-firstcentury
cinephilia is the release of restored film titles on
DVD. Not only is the wealth of film history—once
hidden away in dusty archives—becoming widely available,
but in addition, digital technologies have in many
instances improved the image quality, thus bringing us
even closer to the myth of total cinema. The digital
image is supposedly free of scratches and blemishes,
taking us into a new dimension of transparency and
awe-inspiring, trance-inspiring film viewing. The enhancement
of the soundtrack through new technologies likewise
extends the power of the film to absorb its viewer.
Meanwhile, the stylishly packaged DVD is yet another
version of the cinephiliac fetish, collectible, like the video
before it, by the obsessive cinephile. If cinephilia refers to
the ‘‘knowledge’’ of cinema alongside a ‘‘loving’’ relationship,
then digital technologies are also responsible for a
renewed intellectual engagement with movies in the various
forms of online journals, voice-over commentaries,
fan Web sites, and interactive DVD features.
Thomas Elsaesser makes a distinction between two
phases of cinephilia: where ‘‘take one’’ involved the total
immersion in the image, ‘‘take two’’ refers to the ‘‘fan
cult’’ cinephilia of the collector aided by new technologies.
Both forms, though, involve a ‘‘crisis of memory’’ for
Elsaesser, for whom the love affair with cinema is always
an anxious love (p. 40). Cinephilia in this formulation
refers to the way that modern memory is mediated by
technologies of recording, storage, and retrieval. In trying
to get closer to the cinema, it inevitably becomes more
distant, more mediated, and more fractured; if this was the
lesson of Screen theory in the 1970s, inspired in no small part
by Christian Metz, the cinephile’s anxiety has been revived
through the infinite archive of cinema history (p. 41).
Cinephilia is in many ways alive and well, continuing
to flourish in the hundreds of film festivals that take
place every year around the world. There may no longer
be a consensus about the category of the ‘‘good film,’’ but
film culture continues to thrive nonetheless. Celluloid is
a material medium, subject to decay, but the love of
movies is not likely to disappear any time soon. Nor
are the debates around cinephilia and its significance.
As a critical enterprise, it will always entail a cultural
politics of taste, but as an affliction, it signifies the desire
for the cinematic ‘‘good object,’’ a desire that stimulates
the study of film alongside its production.
SEE ALSO Archives; Art Cinema; Criticism; Journals and
Magazines; Technology
FURTHER READING
Adad, Paula. ‘‘ ‘Objects Became Witnesses’: Ève Francis and the
Emergence of French Cinephilia and Film Criticism.’’
Framework 46 (2005): 56–73.
Barthes, Roland. ‘‘Upon Leaving the Movie Theatre.’’ In Apparatus:
The Cinematographic Apparatus, Selected Writings, edited by
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. New York: Tanam Press, 1980.
Bazin, André. ‘‘The Myth of Total Cinema.’’ In What Is Cinema?
Vol. 1. Translated by Hugh Gray, 17–40. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1967.
Elsaesser, Thomas. ‘‘Cinephilia, or The Uses of
Disenchantment.’’ In Cinephilia: Movies, Love And Memory,
edited by Marijke De Valck, and Malte Hagener, 27–44.
Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2005.
Erickson, Steve, et al. ‘‘Permanent Ghosts: Cinephilia in the Age
of the Internet and Video.’’ Senses of Cinema 4 (2000) and 5
(2000). http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/00/5/
cine5.html.
Hillier, Jim, ed. Cahiers du Cinéma, the 1950s: Neo-Realism,
Hollywood, New Wave. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1985.
Keathley, Christian. Cinephilia and Hstory or the Wind in the
Trees. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006.
Metz, Christian. The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the
Cinema. Translated by Celia Britton et al. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1982. Translation of Le Signifiant
imaginaire. Psychanalyse et cinéma (1977).
Michelson, Annette. ‘‘Gnosis and Iconoclasm: A Case Study of
Cinephilia.’’ October 83 (1998): 3–18.
Porton, Richard. ‘‘The Politics of American Cinephilia: From the
Popular Front to the Age of Video.’’ Cineaste 27 (2002):
4–10.
Rosenbaum, Jonathan, and Adrian Martin, eds. Movie Mutations:
The Changing Face of World Cinephilia. London: British Film
Institute, 2003.
Sontag, Susan. ‘‘The Decay of Cinema.’’ New York Times, 25
February 1996.
Vogel, Amos. Film as a Subversive Art. New York: Random
House, 1974.
Willemen, Paul. Looks and Frictions: Essays in Cultural Studies
and Film Theory. London: British Film Institute, 1994.
Catherine Russell
302 SCHIRMER ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FILM