THE TERMINISTIC SCREEN Rhetorical Perspectives on Film (original) (raw)
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Philosophy of Film Without Theory, 2023
Is the philosophy of film without theory an oxymoron or a family of non-, anti-, and/or a-theoretical approaches with which to engage in film-involving philosophical scholarship and understanding? The goal of this collection is to argue for the latter and to do so by example. By demonstrating a mere handful of the many ways in which philosophy of film without theory might be pursued, in tandem with the insights born of these methods, this volume implicitly and explicitly challenges the contemporary academic assumption that engaging philosophically with film must be a theoretical activity. It also, we would argue, reminds us of the potential value of theory-free scholarship across the humanities as a way of practicing, pursuing, and celebrating humanistic understanding.
A Theoretical Defence of Film Theory and Criticism
Kinema: A Journal for Film and Audiovisual Media, Spring 1999
THE WORK OF INTERPRETATION: A THEORETICAL DEFENCE OF FILM THEORY AND CRITICISM READING on both critical theory and aesthetics has taught me is that anything -- namely art, and for my own personal purposes, movies -- can help us improve our moral wherewithal and self-understanding. Surely this is not what half of the artists intended their art to be used for, but nonetheless, critics and theorists do it all of the time, and with productive results. Yet, although those who believe in the didactic force of movies do so wholeheartedly, film theorists of the humanist sort are part of an overwhelming minority. This is especially true when weighed against the number of general moviegoers who see films as a means to get away from moral arguments, not to get into them. In other words, moviegoers often go above and beyond the duty of ignoring interpretive theories of movies; they...
in F. Colombo (ed.), Media and Communication in Italy: Historical and Theoretical Perspectives, Milan, Vita e Pensiero, pp. 32-45., 2019
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The Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory, 2019
In this chapter I review six contributions to the field of film theory published in 2018: Carl Plantinga's Screen Stories: Emotion and the Ethics of Engagement (Oxford University Press); Miklós Kiss and Steven Willemsen’s Impossible Puzzle Films: A Cognitive Approach to Contemporary Complex Cinema (Edinburgh University Press); Nicholas Godfrey’s The Limits of Auteurism: Case Studies in the Critically Constructed New Hollywood (Rutgers University Press); Peter Krämer and Yannis Tzioumakis’ The Hollywood Renaissance: Revisiting American Cinema’s Most Celebrated Era (Bloomsbury Academic); Dorothy Wai Sim Lau’s Chinese Stardom in Participatory Cyberculture (Edinburgh University Press); and Gina Marchetti’s Citing China: Politics, Postmodernism, and World Cinema (University of Hawaii Press).
Film Philosophising: A Ricœurian Methodological Approach
Film-Philosophy Conference 2016, University of Edinburgh (UK), July 6-8, 2016
Despite widespread interest in film philosophy, there is little research on film hermeneutics and into the effectiveness of a methodological approach to FaP. Ricœur’s philosophy offers us a hermeneutical methodology that can be fruitfully reapplied in the interpretation of film philosophical thinking. In fact, while theories in film philosophy often appear to be universalistic as they develop transcendent all-encompassing analyses of the film medium, a methodological approach can instead offer film scholars an inclusive framework that operates immanently with film, encouraging and supporting an open and effective dialogue between different perspectives. Consistently with John Mullarkey’s non-philosophy of cinema (2011) and in keeping with its performative nature, a film hermeneutic method seeks to re-enable the material parts of the Real of Film, interconnecting and reconciling different interpretations with each other. In the proposed method, the film world becomes the hermeneutical horizon from which the origin of a film and the history of its interpretations can emerge to be philosophically re-interpreted again. In this light, the film world is not (only) the narrative structure represented by film, but rather, in a broader sense and independently of the film genre, it is the perceived unity that supports the process of interpretation on the part of the filmgoer. In this paper, I present a possible Ricœurian hermeneutic method for film interpretation through which film philosophical thinking can be expressed and interpreted. In order to apply the method and show film philosophical interpretation in action, I use Allen’s Manhattan, Lars von Trier’s Dogville, and Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away as three examples of film world and different hermeneutic horizons.
New Philosophies of Film: Thinking Images
2011
The relationship between film and philosophy has become a topic of intense intellectual interest. But how should we understand this relationship? Can philosophy renew our understanding of film? Can film challenge or even transform how we understand philosophy? New Philosophies of Film explores these questions in relation to both analytic and Continental philosophies of film, arguing that the best way to overcome the mutual antagonism between these approaches is by constructing a more pluralist film-philosophy grounded in detailed engagement with particular films and filmmakers. Sinnerbrink not only provides lucid critical analyses of the exciting developments and contentious debates in the new philosophies of film, but also showcases how a pluralist film-philosophy works in the case of three challenging contemporary filmmakers: Terrence Malick, David Lynch, and Lars von Trier. Table of Contents Preface \ Introduction: Why Did Philosophy Go To The Movies? \ Part I: The Analytic-Cognitivist Turn \ 1. The Empire Strikes Back: Critiques of “Grand Theory" \ 2. The Rules of the Game: New Ontologies of Film \ 3. Adaptation: Philosophical Approaches to Narrative \ Part II: From Cognitivism to Film Philosophy \ 4. Cognitivism Goes to the Movies \ 5. Bande à part: Deleuze and Cavell as Film-Philosophers \ 6. Scenes from a Marriage: Film as Philosophy \ Part III: Cinematic Thinking \ 7. Hollywood in Trouble: David Lynch’s INLAND EMPIRE \ 8. ‘Chaos Reigns’: Anti-cognitivism in Lars von Trier’s Antichrist \ 9. Song of the Earth: Cinematic Romanticism in Malick’s The New World \ Coda: ‘The Six Most Beautiful Minutes in the History of Cinema’\ Bibliography \ Filmography \ Index. Reviews: Reviewed by Jason M. Wirth in Notre Dame Philosophy Reviews (November 2012): http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/35702-new-philosophies-of-film-thinking-images/ Reviewed by Deborah Knight in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol 70, no. 4 (Fall 2012): 401-403. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1540-6245.2012.01531\_5.x/abstract [DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6245.2012.01531_5.x] Reviewed by Adam Melinn in Philosophy in Review, vol. 32, no. 5 (2012): 428-430 http://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/pir/article/view/11591 Reviewed by Jane Stadler in the British Journal of Aesthetics: http://bjaesthetics.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/07/31/aesthj.ays025.extract" "Both an excellent introduction and an original contribution to the field, New Philosophies of Film: Thinking Images covers a large range of theoretical positions with impressive adroitness. By offering incisive philosophical analyses alongside brilliant film readings, Sinnerbrink achieves that rare thing, a true marriage of the abstract and the concrete that will be of huge value to scholars and students alike." Professor John Mullarkey, Kingston University, London, UK "Robert Sinnerbrink’s New Philosophies of Film is a captivating, challenging, smart, and highly readable exploration of the aesthetic encounter between cinema and philosophy. As an introduction to the recent philosophical turn in film studies, the book offers a rich and insightful critical perspective on many influential developments in film theory such as cognitivism. As a contribution to the emerging field of philosophical engagement with film New Philosophies of Film shows that films can do more than just illustrate or serve as metaphors for philosophical ideas. Films are philosophically valuable in themselves insofar as they can engage in philosophizing as ‘thinking agents’. Furthermore, films can invite us to invest in them philosophically, to meet them in dialogue as philosophical discussion partners. This idea comes alive in Sinnerbrink’s exceptionally vivid examples, in which he analyzes the philosophical-aesthetic receptivity to the work of such filmmakers such as David Lynch, Lars von Trier and Terrence Malick. This book is a ‘must read’ not only for philosophers and film scholars, but also for anyone seriously enthusiastic about cinema." Tarja Laine, Assistant Professor, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. "New Philosophies of Film is an ambitious attempt to overcome the Analytic-Continental divide in theorizing about film and to develop a new understanding of the relationship between film and philosophy. Beginning with a critical overview of recent developments in the philosophy of film and ending with interpretations that present film as a new mode of thinking, this book breaks new ground and will have to be reckoned with by anyone interested in film and philosophy." Thomas E Wartenberg, Professor of Philosophy, Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts, USA."""