Children Reinventing Cinema
Snapshots from the Early 21st Century
Children today discover a new digital drawing tool, the camera-crayon, at a very young age. They appropriate devices such as compact cameras and mobile phones and make their own media artifacts in their play. Expanding on a media-archaeological approach to film history, this book maps children’s playful and imaginative knowledge of contemporary media culture and explores their filmmaking practices that push the boundaries of forms and formats.
News
On November 12, Public Trust is organizing a screening program Children Reinventing Cinema from 6 to 8 p.m. More information about the program can be found here.
Reviews
In Children Reinventing Cinema: Snapshots from the Early 21st Century, Schneider and Strauven dare to take children’s media play seriously, asking not what children learn from media, but instead what media scholars can learn from examining the ways children play with cinema technologies. In their fascinating study, they examine a cinema made by children without instruction from adults, outside of educational settings. They move from media archeology into the seldom-considered domestic spaces of kitchens and playrooms, pioneering meaningful analyses of the way children envision, create, and “play” cinema.
— Anya Ekaterina, The Velvet Light Trap (Fall 2026)
Children Reinventing Cinema stands out as one of the compelling feminist provocations into media-archaeological research to date. Focusing on hands-on media practices not only invites further work on children’s overlooked negotiations of film and media culture(s) and histories but also answers recent calls for multi-sensorial and embodied approaches to media research at large.
— Ava Witonsky, Millennium Film Journal (Spring 2026)
A review from the Columbia Spectator about the book launch can be read here.
