Flickers of Film / Nostalgia in the Time of Digital Cinema

I'm happy to announce that my next book has been contracted with Rutgers University Press, entitled Flickers of Film / Nostalgia in the Time of Digital Cinema. I suspect the plan is to have it out by the end of 2015, but I can't confirm that for sure. I'll be spending most of the next month on revisions, with the deadline of having the final manuscript to Rutgers by mid-January.

Flickers of Film is an ambivalent polemic about the uses of nostalgia for the fading medium of film in an cinematic age where the production and distribution of movies are increasingly dependent upon digital technologies. Although the dependence on nostalgia can serve as a reassuring aesthetic guide through this period of profound technological change, it can also cloud many of the distressing economic shifts within the movie industry that are representative of larger changes in the post-industrial era of late capitalism. I'll have more to say about it in the next few weeks.


Material from Chapter 2 will be appearing in the forthcoming issue of Jump Cut, probably as early as the end of this month.

Table of Contents

             Introduction /

                        Self Theorizing Nostalgia

1)      I’ll (Always) Be Back /

                  Virtual Performances, or the Cinematic Logic of Late Capitalism

2)      They Saw No Future /

New Nostalgia Films and Digital Exhibition

3)      Digital Decasia/

Degrading Film, Database Histories and the Value of Reflective Nostalgia

4)      Going Home . . . For the First Time /

Pixar Studios, Digital Animation, and the Limits of Reflective Nostalgia

5)      TRON Legacies /

Nostalgia Blockbusters and Disney in the Age of Transmedia Storytelling

 

6)      Game (Not) Over /

Videogame Pastiche & Nostalgic Disavowals in the Post-Cinematic Era

Conclusion /

      On Clouds and Be Kind Rewind