High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Gene Youngblood, (30 May 1942 – ) is an internationally known theorist of media arts and politics, and a respected scholar in the history and theory of alternative cinemas. His Expanded Cinema (1970), the first book to consider video as an art form, was influential in establishing the field of media arts as a recognized artistic and scholarly discipline. He is also widely known as a pioneering voice in the media democracy movement, and has been teaching, writing and lecturing on media democracy and alternative cinemas since 1970.