Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/957795
DGA QUARTERLY 29 I T ' S E A S Y T O S E E W H Y we're being told that we're in the Era of Disruption. Just search the term "disruptor" on the Internet and you're faced with millions of results. Disruption pops up in almost any discus- sion about where culture is and where it's headed. This applies especially to the movie business, where a deceptively simple ques- tion is being raised again and again: What's a movie, anyway? The term used to be shorthand for "mov- ing image," but that definition could be ap- plied much more broadly today: from vir- tual reality to video games, from YouTube content to computer-generated animation, from work delivered on streaming plat- forms to features shown in the the- ater, whether it be digitally or on film reels (yes, they're still around) run through projectors. For some, the crucial what-is-a-movie question came to a head in 2017, when Showtime broadcast David Lynch's Twin Peaks: The Return. As the recent marathon cinema screening at the Museum of Modern Art suggested, Lynch and co-creator Mark Frost had made a movie. Variety reporter Will Tizard quoted Lynch in November, before the MOMA screening, that the new Twin Peaks edition is "an 18-hour movie. Television and cinema to me are exactly the same thing. Telling a story with motion, pictures and sound." But for many other directors, the crux of "what is cinema" is based entirely upon the shared theatrical experience. Countering Lynch's sentiment, director Christopher Nolan—known for such widescreen extravaganzas as Dunkirk and Inception—argues that the definition of cinema cannot be separated from the platform for which it was intended. "Because many people have been talking about this notion of what makes a movie nowadays, and because people know how firmly I be- lieve in the film-going experience in the cinema," says Nolan, "I've been asked about this. Cinema is a medium. You shift away from that, and it becomes something else. As streaming services proliferate and court A-list filmmakers, the DGA Quarterly asked feature directors and industry leaders how directors intend for their films to be exhibited and what defines a theatrical film experience in 2018 By Robert Koehler PHOTO (OPPOSITE): SHUTTERSTOCK; ILLUSTRATION: EDEL RODRIGUEZ