Abstract

This short essay from 2010 considers the fate of intelligent, in-depth film criticism in the digital age. Refusing the pessimistic prognosis that film criticism as an institution is dead or dying because of the decline of available jobs in the print media, and the eclipse of celluloid projection as the ideal mode of film-viewing, this piece asks us to embrace the possibilities and affordances of the Internet. These advantageous, new conditions include: a more genuine internationalism in film criticism than has ever existed; a glimpse of what a progressive democracy of critical views would be; and an explosion of experimental forms of criticism, both in literary and audiovisual modes. This historical change is viewed from the position of being Australian.

Keywords: Film criticism, Internet, internationalism, digital culture

An experiment in writing about film: select three different, arbitrary time codes (in this case the ten minute, 40 minute, and 70 minute mark), freeze the frames, and use that as the guide to writing about the film. What if, instead of freely choosing what parts of the film to address, one let the film determine this? Constraint as a form of freedom – a new method of film criticism, freed of the old tyrannies of continuity. The discontinuity of the digital age, demanding a new way of seeing. A new way of writing.