Philosophy of Film

The Problem of Cinematic Imagination

by Rafe McGregor

Contemporary Aesthetics 10 (2012).

The purpose of this paper is two-fold: to identify the problem of cinematic imagination, and then to propose a... more The purpose of this paper is two-fold: to identify the problem of cinematic imagination, and then to propose a satisfactory solution.  In part one I analyze the respective claims of Dominic McIver Lopes and Roger Scruton, both of whom question the scope of imagination in film, when compared to other art forms, on the basis of its perceptual character.  In order to address these concerns I develop a hybrid of Gregory Currie’s model of cinematic imagination and Kendall Walton’s theory of make-believe in section two.  Section three offers a reply to Lopes and Scruton, examining the problem in terms of the tension between the normativity of films as props and the employment of the creative imagination by audiences.  I conclude with a solution that admits of two incompatible conceptions of cinematic imagination.

Being in the Matrix. An Example of Cinematic Education in Philosophy

by Roman Meinhold

In: Prajna Vihara. Journal of Philosophy and Religion. Bangkok, Assumption University. Vol.10, No.1-2, 2009. ISSN 1513-6442

This paper examines the human condition as portrayed in the film trilogy “The Matrix”. Furthermore it shows the... more This paper examines the human condition as portrayed in the film trilogy “The Matrix”. Furthermore it shows the relevance of the movies educational contribution with regard to its criticism of contemporary life. The film reflects current threats to freedom experienced by movie-goers in a “real” world, heavily dependent on machines and electronic devices. It provides an example of an applied popularized philosophy. It incorporates philosophical themes in the plot – reality, existence, knowledge, belief, free will, determinism, and cultural critique – and makes these themes approachable and palatable for a wider audience. I will argue that such contribution, though sometimes flawed, should be welcomed by educators of philosophy.

A Storied Shooting: Liberty Valance and the Paradox of Sovereignty

by Joshua Dienstag

Su Dracula di Bram Stoker di F.F. Coppola ( ovvero Dracula, Gesù e la Sincerità)

by Ruggero Barberi

'There as many paths to the time-image as there are films in the world': Deleuze and The Lizard

by William Brown

Published in David Martin-Jones and William Brown (eds.), Deleuze and Film, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012, pp. 88-103.

This essay argues that the popular but banned Iranian comedy, Marmoulak/The Lizard (Kamal Tabrizi, Iran, 2004)... more This essay argues that the popular but banned Iranian comedy, Marmoulak/The Lizard (Kamal Tabrizi, Iran, 2004) troubles the distinction between Deleuze’s movement- and time-image categories. The essay also compares Deleuze’s work with that of Iranian philosopher Abdolkrim Soroush, arguing that both have in common a philosophy of becoming. Given that The Lizard has been read in the light of Soroush's work, and given that the two philosophers share becoming as a central tenet of their philosophy, the essay suggests that a Deleuzian reading of The Lizard is not inappropriate even though he is, so to speak, from the West and The Lizard is from the Middle East. Indeed, the essay also argues that not only can Deleuze help us to understand The Lizard but that The Lizard can also help us to understand Deleuze - by suggesting, as per a refrain oft-repeated in the film, that there are as many paths to the time-image as there are films in the world.

Introduction: Deleuze's World Tour of Cinema

by William Brown

Co-authored with David Martin-Jones.
Published in David Martin-Jones and William Brown (eds.), Deluze and Film, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012, pp. 1-17.

This essay introduces the edited collection Deleuze and Film, and argues that there are many versions of Deleuze... more This essay introduces the edited collection Deleuze and Film, and argues that there are many versions of Deleuze circulating in film studies.

CFP: International Film and Media Studies Journal: Acta Universitatis Sapientiae

by Ágnes Pethő

The International, peer-reviewed, open access journal of the Sapientia University (Cluj-Napoca, Romania) invites the submission of original, previously unpublished articles written in English. Articles in all areas of film and media studies are welcome. Deadline for the next issue: June 15, 2012. Previous issue available online here: http://www.acta.sapientia.ro/acta-film/, and here: http://issuu.com/actauniversitatissapientiae/docs/film4_2011

Black Matter, Lightning and Cuts. Structural Film as a Minoritarian Practice

by Matej T. Vatovec

Nature and the Will to Power in Malick’s 'The New World'

by Iain Macdonald

Published in D. Davies (dir.), Terrence Malick: The Thin Red Line, London, Routledge, 2009.

Terrence Malick’s metaphysics involves a materialism, roughly Nietzschean in character, that denies not only cultural... more Terrence Malick’s metaphysics involves a materialism, roughly Nietzschean in character, that denies not only cultural essentialism, but also any meaningful distinction between reason and nature. In other words, it denies the superiority or dominance of rational beings over nature by affirming the natural character of reason. The end result is that human reason turns out to be nothing more than an expression of the ‘blind’ rationality of nature — not an exception to the rule of nature but rather its unmitigated realization. In this sense, it is not that ‘all is life, and life is good’, as though life were eternally beautiful, good or true. On the contrary, all is struggle and conflict, a “war in the heart of nature”, as in The Thin Red Line, and one in which human beings play no special role, in spite of what we might think. It is just that we have the capacity to see this war for what it is.

'Driving into the Void: Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry'

by Hamish Ford

Journal of Humanistics and Social Sciences, Vol 1 (1), 2012, pp. 1- 27.
<http://www.jhss.eu/article/view/10327/pdf&gt;

This article explores Abbas Kiarostami’s Ta'm e guilass/Taste of Cherry (1996) as arguably the most problematic of the... more This article explores Abbas Kiarostami’s Ta'm e guilass/Taste of Cherry (1996) as arguably the most problematic of the director’s films for dominant Western, particularly Anglophone, accounts of his cinema. First introducing the special challenges brought about by the celebrated Iranian filmmaker’s distinct formal devices, the article’s select analysis of Taste of Cherry begins by considering its heightened use of the car as both a perceptually destabilising space and ethically slippery cinematic mechanism. I then home in on the crucial and rarely addressed construction-site sequence, notably its expansion of space and stretched temporality, and explore how this aesthetic centerpiece (or epicentre) of the film fundamentally impacts an understanding of the subsequent and much more commonly quoted ‘taste of cherries’ monologue. Finally I approach the famous ending, with reference to prominent critical readings, before offering an alternative description and emphasis on the movement from celluloid through sheer black and into pixilated analogue video, highlighting how this extraordinary transformation affects our experience of an already, if thus far subtly, reflexive work. Often dominated by discussion of its final minutes, multiple published accounts of the film describe a hopeful, religious, or utopian vision of social-political reconciliation and/or cinema’s redemptive power. I offer Taste of Cherry as one of the most subtly and confronting negativity-engaging films produced over the last four decades.

The hermeneutics of film essay or the Heidegger's "Besinnung" as the key concept for the exploration of essay

by Jan Motal

The 5th International Conference of Doctoral Studies of Theatre Schools, Theatre Faculty, JAMU, Brno, 2011.

"The Walking Dead" as Mass Shock Therapy

by Paul Boshears

Published at "In Media Res" March, 2012

In Media Res challenges authors to find a media object online and curate this object within a weekly theme. Authors... more In Media Res challenges authors to find a media object online and curate this object within a weekly theme. Authors have only 400 words in which to communicate their thinking about the media.

In this writing we consider the significance of Atlanta and its recent history to understand why this particular city acts as the backdrop for this internationally-popular program. What has happened in Atlanta to transform it from a "Noplace" as the recent arts survey calls it, to Everyplace?

Being in The Dreamers

by Gestur Hilmarsson

A paper written for a course on philosophy of film, taught by Prof. Róbert H. Haraldsson in the fall of 2010. Not a final version.

An attempt to phrase and tackle the question on just how justified a viewer is when reading into a film, for example... more An attempt to phrase and tackle the question on just how justified a viewer is when reading into a film, for example philosophically. As primary examples I use and tie together themes from Bernardo Bertolucci's 2003 film The Dreamers and Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialist magnum opus Being and Nothingness.

The Film’s setting Notes for a pedagogy of the space/environmental functions of film

by Sara Iommi

Sara Iommi, The Film’s setting. Notes for a pedagogy of the space/environmental functions of film, in AA.VV., Cine clube de Avanca Edition’s “Colecção Comunicação em Debate”, 2011, pp 834 - 842.

The primary target of my work is to investigate the concept of film space, starting from the meanings of words. The... more The primary target of my work is to investigate the concept of film space, starting from the meanings of words. The terms environment and space have different meanings and different implication for film analysis.
During the last century, the technological revolution has changed our way to conceive spatiality. Despite Western anthropocentrism, the “age of simultaneity" brings this topic back to its centrality. A methodological approach based on Cultural Studies and referring to the modern European cinema (Gilles Deleuze, in the eighties, defined it not stricly narrative and found many examples of “empty space”) proposes interesting research material.
Increasing urbanization and space travels have a strong influence on post-modern cinema. If the cinema is the art of visibile, it is therefore very important to investigate the relationships between interiors and interiority and also the boundary line between imagine and imagination. Furthermore, I am interested in the relationship between a character and background in the meaning construction. The aim of my study is to try to define how much the furniture and the various other objects are relevant for the drawing of the different characters. I would investigate in what way the geographical area, the landscapes and even the weather may reflect cultural identity and emotional conditions.

Penultimate Philosophy of Film and Film as Philosophy

by Tom McClelland

Published in Cinema: Jounral of Philosophy and the Moving Image

There are two respects in which the medium of film and the discipline of philosophy intersect. First, the philosophy... more There are two respects in which the medium of film and the discipline of philosophy intersect. First, the philosophy of film asks philosophical questions about the nature of film. Second, the notion of film as philosophy (FAP) proposes that films themselves can contribute to a range of philosophical debates. FAP raises some troubling conceptual problems. How is it possible for film to contribute to philosophical debate? And, if it is possible, why should we turn to film for those contributions rather than to traditional academic sources? I address these problems with a ‘Socratic Model’ of the role of film in philosophical debate. I argue that the representational limitations of motion pictures are compatible with film acting as a ‘midwife’ for philosophical insights in its audience. Furthermore, where a film fascilitates insights into the philosophy of film, I argue that it can be better positioned to prompt those realisations than an academic text. I put this model in to practice with an account of the philosophical value of Hitchcock’s Rear Window, which invites its audience to consider moral and epistemic issues surrounding the activity of film viewing.

"Beyond Adbusters: Can Subvertising Break Bricks?" (Souciant)

by Jason Adams

Souciant, December 2011.

***

Excerpt:

"In his essay on Debord’s films, Agamben does not simply oppose them in order to promote his own conceptions. Rather, he thinks with and against his interlocutor. For instance, while Agamben acknowledges that the Situationist critique of mediation is suspect, he still affirms that the aesthetic practice of détournement might suggest a process through which the paradoxes of representation could be radicalized. Since one of Debord’s primary media was cinema, Agamben focuses on this dimension in order to think through the manner in which it mobilizes the relation of reality and possibility, countering the static facticity deployed by “the media”: "Cinema does the opposite of the media. What is always given in the media is the fact, what was, without its possibility, its power: we are given a fact before which we are powerless. The media prefer a citizen who is indignant, but powerless. That’s exactly the goal of the TV news. It’s the bad form of memory, the kind of memory that produces the man of ressentiment. By placing repetition at the center of his compositional technique, Debord makes what he shows us possible again, or rather he opens up a zone of undecidability between the real and the possible. When he shows an excerpt of a TV news broadcast, the force of the repetition is to cease being an accomplished fact and to become possible again, so to speak. You ask, ‘How was that possible?’- first reaction – but at the same time you understand that yes, everything is possible." Agamben’s approach in other words, extracts particular forms of a medium such as cinema and, implicitly, specific examples of it such as Debord’s, from the conventional image of “the media” in order to assert that for all his critique of the spectacle, the most celebrated figure of Situationism used spectacular means to oppose it, and commendably so. Rather than interpreting this practice as a contradiction, he affirms the zone of indistinction between reality and possibility that is détournement, “turning expressions of the capitalist system against itself.” Implicitly then, Agamben suggests that Debord himself understood the plasticity of meaning even in spectacular images, at least when exposed to critical perception, and potentially without the assistance of additional alteration techniques. That is why Agamben follows Benjamin in considering even “un-détourned” advertisements as laden with as-yet unrealized possibility. By loosening the hold of identity, they serve as the “unknowing midwives of the new body of humanity”. What then, can we make of Adbusters and its subvertising culture? Is it cinema or is it “the media”? Lasn may have started as a filmmaker, but film is not necessarily cinema simply due to the medium. Cinema derives from the Greek word kinema, or movement. Thus it could be said that only that which refuses stagnation is cinematic in the deepest sense. Annual events like Buy Nothing Day, promoted as culminations of otherwise continuous efforts, have become increasingly predictable affairs, serving more often than not to chastise low-income and working class people for lack of access to the “choice”- based morality their accusers retain, thereby propping up the Feuerbachian/Platonist hierarchy critiqued by Ranciere. And while the magazine’s subvertising itself certainly did turn expressions of capitalism back against it over the last decades, they also restrained the process within a closed group bound more than anything by their chosen medium. What is different today is that the new meanings produced in subvertisements are nowhere near as easily contained within a single object. They have been plasticized, thereby enabling continuous alteration."

Propaganda in the moving camera: Triumph of the Will and Night Mail

by Debora Scatena

I did this paper for one of my courses, and I plan to publish it next year, since it has been judged fit enough for publication.

I dedicate this paper to the brother I lost to cancer, my husband, my two very kind editors. Without these important people I wouldn't have achieved this.

Many other make my life important, such as close friends and professors, and I thank them all just as much.

I am to present this paper at Words in Edgewise ( gathering organized to/for/by students of the MPhil program at MUN) on January 17, 2011.

How did documentary propaganda film influenced and was influenced by its surrounding in the 1930s?

This is... more How did documentary propaganda film influenced and was influenced by its surrounding in the 1930s?

This is the main question that this paper answer along with its developments up to our contemporary world.

'What Cinema Does'

by Hamish Ford

Book review, 'The Cinema Effect' by Sean Cubitt, RealTime, no. 60, April-May, 2004.

'The Ister: Search for the Source'

by Hamish Ford

RealTime, no. 64, December 2004-January 2005.

'Antonioni's "L'Avventura" and Deleuze Time-Image'

by Hamish Ford

Senses of Cinema, Issue 28, July-August 2003.