RETHINKING THE CINEMA: THE DIGITAL-CINETHEQUE

Abstract

The thesis started out as an inquisition into the relevance of cinemas today. With the advent of digital technology, the production and exhibition of films have been radically challenged. A featured film can now be produced with a small digital camera and then watched over the internet on a personal computer.

Will the cinema become obsolete then?

This thesis posits that the cinema still has a particularly social function to play, as the collective experience of its spectatorship fulfils a communal need that is not about to be relinquished. The thesis put forth an ‘altered’ and enhanced collective cinematic experience through the intervention of a programmatic insertion.

The thesis proposes a ‘digital cinetheque’, a program that seeks to assimilate pedagogical function i.e. a filmic institution, within the confines of an entertainment typology that is the cinema. The proposed facility has two main film components, namely film-screening and research/production facilities.

The design strategy entails employing the circulation as a mediating element to navigate between the two components, thereby effecting a symbiotic matrix within which interactions (visually) and activities (physically) take roots. In addition, a hybrid narrative comes from the juxtaposition of other occurrences within this facility, like associative functions such as the film-related bookstore, café, VCD/DVD retails etc.