Los Angeles Documents the Virtual: Xan Cassavetes and Thom Andersen Between Docutainment and Machinima‪.‬

INTRODUCTION In 1975, Raymond Bellour wrote that cinema constituted "an unattainable text," a text that unlike the written word was fleeting and ephemeral because it was unquotable. (1) Obviously, after developments in consumer level digital video of the last twenty years, this is no longer true in the same way for amateurs or professionals: citing films for visual essays is getting easier. Only a few steps are required to take video from a dvd and import that video into non-linear editing software, re-edit, add voiceover, and text. It is being done by children. And this is to say nothing of redistributing that video on the internet. Working on the same laptop the whole time. One interesting example that I will not discuss here is the use of green screen and simulacral mock-ups of film settings that place theorist Slovoj Zizek inside the film clips he analyzes in The Pervert's Guide to Cinema.