Mature
Length11h 12m
About this audiobook
What is cinema, and why does it matter now more than ever? In Defense of Cinema is a personal manifesto, not a book of film criticism. Drawing on three decades across Bollywood, USC's Entertainment Technology Center, and the film industry, the author argues that cinema is more than entertainment; it is a transformative human experience. Through reflections on masters including Tarkovsky, Bergman, Kubrick, Fellini, Kiarostami, Ray, Kieślowski, and Campion, the book explores what makes great cinema possible, then confronts the challenges posed by generative AI, algorithmic culture, and the erosion of human craft. For filmmakers, technologists, and anyone who has ever left a theater changed, this is both a defense of cinema's past and a call to protect its future.
Audiobook details
GenreEducation and Learning, Technology
Length11 hrs 12 mins
Narrated byRecorded Track
FormatAudiobook
Publish dateJul 4, 2026
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1Chapter 1
19Bergman — The Face as Territory
2PART ZERO — The Diagnosis
20Kubrick — The Architecture of Inevitability
3Before the Collapse
21Fellini — The Set as the Inside of His Mind
4The Artist’s Betrayal
22Kiarostami — Cinema as Question
5Why Cinema Specifically
23Ray — Cinema as Witnessing
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6A Guide to Hell and Back
24Kieślowski — Cinema as Moral Weather
7PART ONE — The Definition
25Campion — The Piano, the Single Summit
8Cinema Defined — The Standard
26Iñárritu — The One-Summit Wonder
9Before the Projector
27Coppola — The Singular Summit
10The Medium Arrives
28Arnold — Fish Tank
11The Auteur as Initiate
29Von Trier
12PART TWO — The Industry
30Moodysson — Cinema as Unbearable Love
13Art, Commerce, and Science / Hollywood
31PART FOUR — The Threat
14The Cookie Cutter and the Colonized Mind
32The Age of AI
15The Three Deceits
33The Captured World — Silicon Valley and the Weaponized Mind
16Hollywood and the New Guard
34PART FIVE — The Charge: The Unreturnable Journey
17PART THREE — The Witnesses
35NOTES ON SOURCES
18Tarkovsky — The Door Long Unused
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