Vienna Film Institute

Abstract

The development of the film as a medium is linked to the evolution of its technology; to the invention of apparatuses that create an illusion of movement with the help of image sequences. Film develops as a representation of the real and at the same time as a medium of storytelling and an image of the unreal. Film became an art form, a mirror of reality, a means of entertainment and dissemination of information, as well as a potent political instrument. Even before the advent of cinema at the end of the 19th century, the cinematographic gaze emerged: the influence of industrialisation on urban space and the advent of new means of transport transformed the visual experience of time and space. With moving images, a new view of passing urban spaces and landscapes is possible. With the first film screening by the Lumière brothers in Paris in 1895, film became a collective experience. At the same time, the reproducibility of film is linked to the techniques of its production. “This not only enables the mass distribution of film works in the most immediate way, it forces it,“ wrote Walter Benjamin in 1935. Due to its high production costs, Benjamin refers to film as the „acquisition of the collective”. With the technological progress in the 21st century, conditions for the production and distribution of films are changing a lot. What role does the collective play in this? What is happening to the collective experience of film through the influence of video formats on the internet and social media? How does film exist today as an art form? As a means of entertainment? As a political and social instrument between democratisation and abuse?