When Did Cinema Become Cinema? Technology, History, and the Moving Pictures

This chapter explores the technological and discursive conditions under which cinema attained its singular identity as “cinema.” In contrast with André Gaudreault’s paradigms of ‘kine-attractography’ and ‘institutional cinema’, which locates the emergence of cinema with the advent of institutional norms in 1910, the year 1903 is instead proposed as a pivotal moment in this process of definition. During this year, the three-blade shutter began its widespread integration within motion picture machines, which sharply reduced the flicker effect and created a more absorbing cinematic experience. When film discourse became pervasive in newspapers and film trade publications, “cinema” had already undergone a reconceptualization that granted it a new a status, that of cinema, separate from other media and practices.