Film Society of Lincoln Center:
CANON FODDER: As the sun finally sets on the century of cinema, by what criteria do we determine its masterworks?
Read the Preface and Introduction below. The entire article, one of the longest published in Film Comment history, can be found in the 2006 September/October issue.
Motion pictures were the dominant art for the 20th century. Movies were the center of social mores, fashion and design, politics—in short, at the center of culture—and, in so being, dictated the terms of their dominance to the other art forms: literature, theater, and painting were all redefined by their relationship to cinema. Movies have owned the 20th century.
It will not be so in the 21st century. Cultural and technological forces are at work that will change the concept of “movies” as we have known them. I don’t know if there will be a dominant art form in this century, and I’m not sure what form audiovisual media will take, but I am certain movies will never regain the prominence they enjoyed in the last century.
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