Live Cinema: Cultures, Economies, Aesthetics

Live Cinema is a term used to capture a diverse range of experiences that incorporate a ‘live’ element in relation to a film’s exhibition. The live augmentation of cinema screenings is not a new phenomenon, indeed this tendency is present throughout the entire history of cinema in the form of live musical accompaniments to silent screenings, showmanship practices, and cult film audience behaviours. The contemporary revival of experiential cinema captured within this volume presents instances where the live transcends the mediated and escapes beyond the boundaries of the auditorium. Our contributors investigate film exhibition practices that include synchronous live performance, site specific screenings, technological intervention, social media engagement, and all manner of simultaneous interactive moments including singing, dancing, eating and drinking. These investigations reveal new cultures of reception and practice, new experiential aesthetics and emergent economies of engagement. This collection brings together fifteen contributions that together trace the emergence of a vivid new area of study. Drawing on rich, diverse and interdisciplinary fields of enquiry, this volume encapsulates a broad range of innovative methodological approaches, offers new conceptual frameworks and new critical vocabularies through which to describe and analyse the emergent phenomena of Live Cinema.