What is Cinema?

Cinema, to me, is an escape from reality and afterwards, can transform our reality. Growing up as an immigrant whose parents came from a poor country, I was all too used to viewing media strictly as educational or informative. Only when I started school did I discover that the world of “entertainment” is a much more powerful tool than I was led to believe. Even a show like the hit sitcom “Friends”, my parents would watch not for entertainment but for educational value on what American culture was like. They watched it to learn and so did I, until I realized that there is value in simply enjoying. In my imagination, I could pretend that I was also a character on a tv show or a movie. It is not an uncommon phenomena that when a person walks out of a movie theater after watching a film, they feel like they are still “in” it. In this way, there is a sense that it alters our reality at least for a little while and thus creates this "escape" phenomena. Combining the educational aspect of cinema with the alternate reality or entertainment aspect is a step towards more interesting film theories.