Meryem Ersoz writes: "It seems to me that the loss of aura has been "filled in" by the upcoming generation of students by a love for technology for its own sake...an excitement about competing visual technologies - laser disk, video, digital imaging - and what that competition means in terms of democratizing access to creating visual imagery and the control of its production. I'm not passing judgment on whether this posture is good or bad, as much as I'm struggling to say that there are generational differences towards film/cinema v. "other" technologies which seem to be at the heart of this discussion and which are worth considering. Aesthetic judgment is, after all, historically produced, . . . " This is a good point to consider. Even a well-equipped classroom with a 35 mm. projector will never replace the particular aura of a viewing experience. Those who have grown up knowing only shoebox multiplexes will never know what it was to see even the most mundane of film on a really *big* screen in an ornate or at least semi-ornate theater with carpets and ushers and all the rest. Nor, on the other hand, can a classroom replicate the amateur screenings in basements and coffeehouses and the like that fueled the fires of independent filmmakers and critics like Bazin. In a somewhat similar way, we can never recover the knowledge, attitudes and tastes of the original audience for Jane Austen or Charles Dickens, read in installments by the fire. Something is lost in the transition--but something new is created as well. Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN) ---- To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]