Introduction

In recent years, a renewed, diverse interest in the history and theory of film technology has emerged within film studies. Culminating in the weeklong IMPACT (The Impact of Technological Innovations on the Historiography and Theory of Cinema) conference, ¹ from which many of the chapters in this collection are drawn, and the founding of the inter-university TECHNÈS International Research Partnership on Cinema Technology, ² this research encompasses not only the history and operation of the various devices that constitute the production and exhibition of film, but also the effect of these advances on cinema experiences, study, and theorization. This line of questioning thus involves examining the dialectical relationships that exist between the materiality of technology, its surrounding discourses, and the integration of these as an experience and enduring element of consciousness, which continually transforms the way cinema and the world is apprehended. It also involves, as several chapters in this collection show, a rethinking of the concept of film technology.