Screening in the streaming age
Screen Studies 2026: Making do - From Metropolis to Thunderbolt | Screening in the streaming age | [Draft of article for the 2026 Film Studies Screen Studies Association of Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand (SAAANZ) conference, 1 December 2026, University of Melbourne] The promise of cinema, 1896 (top) / 2026 (bottom). Screening in the streaming age - when too much is not enough! Michael Organ ....... Introduction Film screening has come a long way from the days of the Edison Kinetoscope in the 1890s when a viewer had to manually turn a handle and look down a telescope-style tube, and then from silent to sound in the 1930s, black and white to colour, nitrate to celluloid, 16mm to 70mm Panavision. These changes were overlain by a perceptively slow transition from the projection era of the twentieth century on to non-physical, digital means of access such as television, optical media - video tape, laser disc, DVDs - and streaming in the new millennium. The latter t...
