Brown brilliantly introduces the concept of non-cinema as anti-thesis, remainder and emergent condition of a post-colonial world dominated and impoverished by the logistics of capital-cinema. Non-cinema investigates zones of invisibility at the margins of spectacle, in the poor image, and in the poor world, while also providing a powerful survey of global (non-)cinema, its various attributes and its urgent commitments to socially transformative modes of relation. The book is a significant theoretical elaboration and critique of the world-media system, that also collects and concentrates globally distributed, often liminal, instances of struggle, inspiration and liberation. * Jonathan Beller, Professor and Director, Graduate Program in Media Studies, Pratt Institute, USA *
Whether we understand it as 'acinema', 'paracinema', or 'post-cinema', William Brown's extremely important text on all such non-cinemas is deeply impressive: its breadth of knowledge, both theoretical and geo-cultural, has clearly demonstrated Brown to be the best thinker of non-standard cinemas working today. * John O Maoilearca, Professor of Film, Kingston University, UK *
William Brown's Non-Cinema is a brilliant speculative history of cinema acting out against itself, against every convention and institution of film. This masterpiece unfolds everywhere else, forming the contours of a cinema that is not one, but rather a series of interventions that articulate the deep values that forge a cinema in spite itself, a total cinema understood as the very limits of cinema, non-cinema. * Akira Mizuta Lippit, Professor of Literature and Film, University of Southern California, USA *
'Prompted by the digital explosion which allowed for the excluded to come into the picture, William Brown took on the challenge of navigating through and making sense of the multitude - that is, the images and sounds of those who populate the outside of the narrow frame of capitalism. Truly global in scope and erudition, Non-Cinema takes us on a revelatory journey through the hidden audiovisual jewels from Afghanistan, Iran, China, the Philippines, Uruguay, France, the UK, the US, culminating in Nigeria with the ultimate non-cinematic production of Nollywood. Exemplary in its intellectual ambition and analytical acumen, this is a must-read book by one of today's most original audiovisual specialists.' * Lucia Nagib, Professor of Film, University of Reading, UK *
Non-Cinema is a ground-breaking book that provides a remarkable analysis of the political and ethical issues at stake in the global postcinematic profusion of digital film practices. * Screen *
