What Cinema Is! offers an engaging answer to Andre Bazin''s famous question, exploring his ''idea of cinema'' with a sweeping look back at the near century of Cinema''s phenomenal ascendancy.

• Written by one of the foremost film scholars of our time
• Establishes cinema''s distinction from the current enthusiasm over audio-visual entertainment, without relegating cinema to a single, older mode
• Examines cinema''s institutions and its social force through the qualities of key films
• Traces the history of an idea that has made cinema supremely alive to (and in) our times