Thinking Outside the Black Box

This book explores contemporary artists' filmmaking within the context of film theory and practice. Remembering Cinema focuses on artists' filmmaking exhibited in gallery spaces since 1990; or 'gallery films'. It argues that although they have chosen a different space for experiment, gallery films should not be expelled from film theory's critical frame, since they explore and expand our understanding of what cinema has been, is now and could be. Therefore, while the auditorium has increasingly been seen as the space for the death of cinema, in the art gallery the cinematic is revived, renewed and remembered. Through a comprehensive assemblage, discussion and analysis of the proliferating field, this book is the first to fully comprehend gallery films' unique explorations of narrative, spectatorship, time, space, film history and identity. In investigating the gallery as the preferred space for experiment in contemporary cinema, Remembering Cinema also questions the actual and theoretical spaces within which cinema practice and cinema studies have circulated and been constructed. This is the first fully comprehensive study of the growing field of films made for the gallery space since 1990. It is the only exploration of contemporary artists' filmmaking that seriously interrogates the work in relation to film theory and film practice. It is an important consideration of 'the cinematic' that considers other spaces in which cinema practice and cinema studies have circulated and been constructed.