University of Minnesota Press, ISBN 978-1517915223, English, 328 pages, 2024, USA

In the post-digital age, our idea of cinema is still that of a sequential movie whose only interactivity relates to the space and time in which it can be viewed, which, thanks to our pocket devices, is basically anywhere, anytime. The canon of an ‘interactive’ or even just ‘non-linear’ cinema has never been fully established, even though there have been many experiments with the non-linear and multilinear development of experiences in the field of so-called time-based media. Marina Hassapopoulou does justice to a number of them, with a unifying theory and an investigation that incorporates historical examples that are usually overlooked, through various modern, contemporary and outdated media formats that are nonetheless hosted relevant form of cinematic engagement, such as the 1967 Czechoslovakian Kinoautomat and the Troubles with Sex CD-Rom by Marina Gržinić and Aina Šmid. The experiential dimension is thoroughly detailed and explored, specifically analysing spectatorship in its discontinuous and participatory modalities involving the senses (external) and the cognitive (internal), leading to the author’s important concept of ‘procedural spectatorship’ and its declinations in different contexts. The nature of the relationship between man and machine today is multilinear and this book illustrates how far we have come visually.