Review:

Screen dynamics – Mapping the borders of cinema

As the title of Gertrud Koch, Volker Pantenburg, and Simon Rothöhler’s edited collection SCREEN DYNAMICS: MAPPING THE BORDER OF CINEMA (Vienna: Austrian Film Museum, 2012) suggests, this volume provides an energetic, enthusiastic, and engaging journey through the particularities (and peculiarities) of cinema. Due attention is given to questions of cinematic spectatorship, the issue of cinema’s specificity, the relationship between the cinematic image and other screen images, as well as the impact that new technologies have on these images. Appropriate to the ‘volatile situation’ (p. 6) under discussion is the lively approach adopted by each of the 12 contributors. Indeed, it comes as no surprise that this collection is largely based on talks given at a conference in 2010, with the vigour and value of that initial debate nicely evidenced through shared beliefs, overlapping concerns, and recurring points of reference (for example, the concept of cinema as a utopian or heterotopian space appears several times).