In February, 78-year-old filmmaker Martin Scorsese raised more than a few eyebrows when, in an essay on the work of legendary filmmaker Federico Fellini for Harper’s Magazine, he bemoaned that in our world, oversaturated with streaming platforms and algorithms, “the art of cinema is being systematically devalued, sidelined, demeaned, and reduced to its lowest common denominator, ‘content’.”  

Scorsese argued that the streaming universe had reduced the idea of cinema to just one in a long line of products that make up what the business people behind streaming giants Netflix, Disney Plus and Amazon Prime Video, refer to as “content,” an umbrella term that includes, “all moving images: a David Lean movie, a cat video, a Super Bowl commercial, a superhero sequel, a series episode”...

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