Kinotopia: A history of cinematic democratisation for the digital age

This research takes a media archaeology approach to understanding the phenomenon of ‘cinematic democratisation’ that has attended the emergence of digital cinema. Looking at select moments from film history which include early Soviet Cinema, France’s Cinema of ’68 and Latin America’s Tercer Cine movement, the research conceptualises these episodes of counter-cinema as ‘utopian moments’ of film history to argue that cinematic democratisation is not endemic to the digital age but a tendency that can be traced throughout the history of the moving image.