The cinematic medium, by virtue of its technology, encapsulates 24 versions of potential movement per second. Within the same shot, each frame is an earlier version of the frame about to be seen. Seriality is constitutive in the very material of the cinema, i.e., its film strip. The cinema's “self-differing” elements might be identified as its specificity (Krauss, 2000: 44) but its differences are countered in favor of continuity during the screening process (Bellour, 1979; Baudry, 1985 [1970]; Usai, 2001). A parallel process of difference, repetition and denial also exists in the cinema's imaginary archive. This imaginary archive exists in the spectator's mind and is comprised of all the texts that have been absorbed, thus enabling the production of a network of comparisons among them. One of the significant undercurrents of cinematic history is that of serial repetitions and their variations, so often overlooked. It is my intention to slow down the flow of new films and new data and trace one of the most persistent serial repetitions in the history of cinema.

When we talk of series of repetitions in any medium, however, we have to distinguish between auto-repetition, which is controlled and highly conscious, and cultural repetition which is not always conscious, certainly not controlled, and occurs in the public domain outside of “lab-controlled” conditions. Autorepetition can be exemplified by Andy Warhol's series of paintings of Marilyn Monroe (1962, 1964, 1979-1989) or the Campbell's soup tins (1962, 1968, 1970), by Hitchcock's own remake of THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (the first in 1943 with Edna Best and Leslie Banks and the second in 1954 with Doris Day and James Stewart) or by Tom Tykwer's LOLA RENNT (RUN LOLA RUN) in 1998.