Cinema

These essays mark the hundredth anniversary of the first projected film screening to a paying audience in Britain, by the Lumiere Cinematographe at the Polytechnic Institution in Regent Street, London, on February 21, 1896. Among the 24 contributors are: David Robinson, who writes about the aspiration toward cinema; John Barnes, Richard Brown, Roland Cosandey, John L. Fell and Andre Gaudreault, who discuss different aspects of the Lumiere Brothers' output; Martin Sopocy on intertitles; Charles Barr on Griffith; Roberta E. Pearon on why we love early cinema more than ever; Barry Salt on traditional and future film language; Mark Shivas and Christopher Williams on relations between film and television; and John Chittock, David Mingay and Paul Schrader on the challenges of the digital era. Sylvia Harvey links the ideas of Andre Bazin with an account of the current state of European cinema and interpretations of four contemporary features to ask the question, "What is cinema?"