{"product_id":"what-is-cinema","title":"What Is Cinema?","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"field\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"field-value\"\u003eBazin's central argument is deceptively simple and permanently unsettling: cinema has an ontological relationship to reality that no other art form possesses. The photograph — and by extension the film — is not a representation of the world but an impression of it, a trace of light that actually touched the thing being recorded. This means that every formal choice a filmmaker makes — the cut, the close-up, the long take, the deep focus shot — is not just aesthetic but ethical, a claim about how reality should be rendered and who has the right to interpret it. Bazin co-founded Cahiers du Cinéma and mentored the French New Wave directors who turned his theory into practice. His championing of Italian Neorealism — films made in the streets with non-professional actors about the actual lives of working-class people — is the direct ancestor of every documentary, every community filmmaking project, every DoCR workshop that hands a camera to a child and says: your reality is worth recording. The foundational text of film literacy as a political practice. Read alongside Brecht on Theatre and the two books together are the complete theoretical foundation of what DoCR is building.\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"field\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Punk and Pedagogy","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45204024787142,"sku":null,"price":35.94,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0706\/9066\/8742\/files\/what-is-cinema.jpg?v=1762913414","url":"https:\/\/punkandpedagogy.com\/products\/what-is-cinema","provider":"Punk and Pedagogy","version":"1.0","type":"link"}