The emergent digital era has posed a significant question: what is cinema? in a new and interesting direction, and for the first time in the history of film theory, the photographic process has been challenged as the fundamental concept of cinematic representation nowadays. For 150 years, the material basis of photography and film has been defined by the mechanical recording of (moving) images via the reflection of light on a sensitive chemical surface. Additionally, the representational natures of photographic and filmic media were deduced from the basic photographic or cinematographic processes. However, today’s digital processes have come to replace analogical representations, and forced a fundamental transformation to virtual representation based on numerical manipulation. To this extent, this paper attempts to examine the essence and substance of moving image in the post-cinematic era by applying the discourse of Lev Manovich, D. N. Rodowick, Thomas Elsaesser and Malte Hagener from contemporary points of view.