Today, film theory is at a crossroad. On the one hand, its body of concepts is growing thanks to the emergence of new perspectives and new situations to be taken into account. On the other hand, some of its traditional keywords are being strongly criticized, especially by the exponents of the so- called philosophy of film, because of their alleged inconsistency and inefficacy.

The growth of theory responds to a multifold impulse. First of all, the process of digitalization and media convergence, with their huge impact on film, urge theory to reckon with new questions and to dialogue with other disciplines equally interested in the same facts. The increasing use of new devices and platforms, from computers to smart- phones and to headsets like Oculus Rift, changes our perspectives on the film apparatus and recalls aspects that are more familiar to media studies. Film's migration into domestic spaces, urban squares or theme parks calls for an ecological sensibility that was formerly largely unknown in the field (although the configuration of movie theatres could have certainly already suggested that cinema is an environmental art). The development of new forms of vision, from 3- D to virtual reality, reshapes our approach to film reception and asks for a wider attention to processes that are currently undertaken by neurosciences. Film theory confronts unprecedented situations and adjusts its own methods and goals. As a consequence, it shares with other disciplines concepts like digitization, scale, network, hybridity, cybernetics, embodied cognition and the Anthropocene.

At the same time, the availability of never- explored archives provides the opportunity to gain a better grasp on the topics discussed in the past. This is true for the Western canon: one thinks of Abel (1988), an anthology on the first wave of French film theory, Andel and Szczepanik (2008), a collection of early Czech film theory, and more recently, Kaes, Baer and Cowan (2016), an anthology of German film theory until 1933. It is equally true for traditions that fall outside of it, as shown by current explorations of early Asian debates by Nornes and Gerow (2009), Bao (2015) and Fan (2015), which provide a much better sense of the issues at stake in the field and their transnational circulation.