Can the world be cinematic? And what would be implied in the dawning of a meta-cinematic
aesthetic in which the external reality itself must submit to the ontology of the
image/shot/sequence? Does the fact that the world (in whatever sense Black intends this) is
captured on film alter the relationship of an external reality to its reproduced image? Of
course it does. This chapter has attempted to theorise just such an alteration in the ontology of
the Real. A classical realist aesthetics is incompatible with the cinematic medium; an
engagement with a meaningful film aesthetics must confront a new ontology of the cinematic
Real.