The book attempts to consider cinema in the context of cultural transformations of the 20th century. Noting the transition process at the cultural level in the past century, the author tries to fit cinema into it. The transitional situation means the extinction of the culture that emerged in the late Middle Ages and the birth of an alternative, future-oriented culture. Because of this, the aesthetic experience of the new, technical art that emerged at the beginning of the 20th century turns out to be ambivalent. Acting as a means of mass communication, cinema functions as a means of sensual culture, which corresponds to a hedonistically minded mass audience. At the same time, following the new, emerging culture, cinema begins to cultivate the supersensual element so characteristic of the Middle Ages. The latter trend is manifested in the activity of myth and archetype in cinematic thinking, which also have a religious basis. Despite the processes of de-Christianization and secularization unfolding in the second half of the 20th century - both in Western and domestic cinema - aesthetics correlated with alternative culture are being brought to life. But this aesthetic is not entirely new. In reality, there is a transformation of aesthetics, which for a long time emanated from Aristotelian discourse, into the aesthetics of Platonism. In the activity of archetypal thinking characteristic of Russian cinema, the author tries to identify the Byzantine complex, which makes it possible to demonstrate the Platonic essence of film aesthetics.

The book is intended for art critics, cultural experts, sociologists, philosophers and historians.