Film, Servers, Bodies: A Materialist Ontology of the Cinematic Machine

The article proposes a rethinking of traditional film theories by shifting the focus from screen images to the material infrastructure of cinema: technologies, economies, spaces, and social practices. It analyzes how film philosophy can account for these “invisible” elements by drawing on Bruno Latour’s actor–network theory, Michel de Certeau’s concepts of everyday practice, and Hito Steyerl’s theory of “poor images.” Special attention is given to the transition from analog to digital cinema, where streaming algorithms, piracy, and cloud technologies transform the modes of film production and reception. Within Alain Badiou’s materialist dialectics, cinema is interpreted not as a static object but as a process in which infrastructure, audiences, and economic mechanisms interact, producing “truth” as moments of collective experience or cultural rupture. The study concludes that cinema should be understood as a complex material–social phenomenon in which aesthetics is inseparable from the conditions of its existence.

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