For over 25 years now there has been a frantic murmur that ripples through the crowd the moment the fate of film and cinema is mentioned. An announcement, an assertion, a warning that the Great Digital Revolution is coming. It is coming, they say, as if referring to a threatening storm on the horizon and urging the crew to batten the hatches and take shelter below. And so the world of cinema marches on, as we wait in the near-darkness of its flickering glow for something dramatic to happen, straining our ears for signs of the coming deluge and hearing only the gentle click of celluloid streaming from one reel to another on sturdy old projectors. Or — could that be the distinctive hiss of a running VCR? Is that low hum the sound of a video camera being operated, perhaps part of a closed circuit television system discreetly displayed at a public venue near you? The almost inaudible whirr of a DVD spinning in its player, being shown in the theater via an electronic projector?
Wake up, comrades, because the storm is upon us, and the evidence will be on display at this year's Film South Asia documentary festival in Kathmandu, whose theme presciently centres on the digital revolution. Well, it is not upon us so much as within and amongst us, a revolution that may not have lived up to the emphatic warnings in the sense that it is not blowing into town with bells and whistles, nor accompanied by thunder and lightning. That particular era in the evolving status of digital cinema — a time when the world was overcome with a single minded wonder of the medium, a time of self conscious video art that usually featured video itself as the main attraction – has actually already come and gone. The true revolution has not.
Even in those early stages filmmakers and budding artists were able to move beyond basic video fascination relatively quickly, making 'home videos and other records of daily life that showed an appreciation for the 'ramifications of digital film technology in terms of its convenience and affordability, and setting the stage for current conditions. For, over time, the use of digital equipment became so ubiquitous that it no longer even seemed necessary to reference or acknowledge the medium while working with it, and that is whet a major shift occurred, albeit a subtle one.
The qualities of digital that had instigated the first wave of change in the cinematic world and somewhat rightly earned it a reputation as the technology of the people, a leveller in the art of filmmaking and the non-filmmaker's relationship with the camera, led it into a state of complete integration into our society. We recognise the presence of video-cameras, are aware of the digital editing process, and identify special effects or animation created artificially by computers, but remain largely untroubled by them. Our familiarity with the wonder that was digital film technology has caused it to become an unconsciously accepted presence in the world – even outside filmmaking – and that, really, is radical, and has in turn allowed artists to use the medium with much more freedom, savvy, and flexibility.