New cinema history further distinguishes itself from conventional film history by turning toward the social and spatial dimensions of cinema. Traditional methods of film studies pay “close attention to the formal and ideological properties of film as a signifying system” by focusing on distinct film texts, performers, studios, exhibitors or directors. New cinema history, by contrast, decenters the content of films. It “attempt[s] to write cinema from below,” applying empirical methods more common in the broader field of media studies than in film studies. It focuses on the circulation, consumption and experience of moviegoing in order to observe cinema as a site of “social and cultural exchange.” 

Although new cinema history contains elements that are helpful for considering a post-cinematic space like Rev. Ike’s church, its emphasis on empirical research often elides the broader social and cultural histories associated with cinematic spaces. Additionally, its focus on the period of cinematic exhibition leaves unexplored the post-cinematic uses of movie theaters. One exception to these limitations is Janna Jones’s ethnographic research on the preservation activities associated with Southern movie palaces. She explores how preservationist groups must choose to wrestle with or blatantly ignore racial segregation in their theaters’ pasts. Jones asserts that preserving the discursive history by engaging the uncomfortable aspects of a theater’s cultural past is imperative to “foster[ing] community connectedness.” She argues that this can be achieved by linking movie palaces to the broader cultural histories of Southern downtowns and the American city. Jones’ work demonstrates the importance of being attentive to how regional media and cultural networks intersect with cinematic infrastructures. “Treat[ing] the past as a network,” as Alan Liu notes, encourages us to look beyond the history as it has been officially recorded to the marginal ways it was documented through ephemeral radio or television broadcasts, church newsletters, etc.

Focusing on the pasts and presents of networks is also premised on the advancements made by media archaeology. Media archaeological methods free film scholars from inflexible notions of the medium by encouraging us to trace “forking paths of possibility,” to discover alternative pasts and different potential futures.  Thomas Elsaesser notes that our encounter with a post-cinematic digital future makes us more open to alternative histories of early cinema that go beyond a fixation on medium specificity. While Elsaesser counteracts traditional notions of medium specificity with his formulation of “film history as media archaeology,” we can extend the metaphor to arrive at “(post) cinema history as network archaeology.” One way to challenge hegemonic understandings of cinema is to consider how cinema’s infrastructures act as nodes in the networked histories of other media. By considering how former cinema palaces are used as past and present places of broadcast media, and therefore nodes in the history of both cinematic and broadcast media, we can gain insight into cinema’s intermedial relationships to other media histories and the networks of cultural, religious and racial pasts that they may include. This understanding of (post) cinema history, attentive to the racial and intermedial dimensions of the movie palace-turned-church, can help us to understand the significance of the multi-layered, mediated history of United Palace Cathedral.

In bringing new cinema history and network archaeology together, it is important to integrate race as an analytic in considering how space and place influence how cinema (and post cinema) history is formulated. Cinema developed and grew in spatial terms, in movie theaters, palaces, storefronts, community centers – in spaces that were big and small, in locations rural and urban. Just as cinema “takes / took place,” race also has a role in how we experience that place. What’s more, place and its relationship to race changes over time. These historical shifts in both place and racial formation matter.