Cinema is more than just the movie. It is a dispositif that couples two elements: an enclosed space, separated from the everyday world, and a screen whose moving images reestablish contact with the reality from which spectators have been severed. Why this retreat from the world? And why this reconnection with reality through images? Francesco Casetti (Yale University) aims at answering these pervasive theoretical questions. Thus, his lecture focuses on cinema as a protective medium, able of replacing our exposure to the world with a mediated immediacy. This idea of protection and mediation in modern media will be enriched with an analysis of Joe Dante’s Matinee (US 1993) – a perfect metaphor for our times, Casetti claims.