A Compass in a Moving World (on genres and genealogies of film theory) (original) (raw)
Related papers
Introduction: Philosophy of Film, With and Without Theory
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.
THEORIZING FILM THROUGH CONTEMPORARY ART: EXPANDING CINEMA
Theorizing Film Through Contemporary Art: Expanding Cinema, 2020
As the cinematic experience becomes subsumed into today's ubiquitous technologies of seeing, contemporary artworks lift the cinematic out of the immateriality of the film screen and separate it into its physical components within the gallery space. How to read these reformulations of the cinematic medium - and their critique of what it is and has been? In Theorizing Cinema Through Contemporary Art: Expanding Cinema, leading film theorists consider artworks that incorporate, restage, and re-present cinema's configuration of the key categories of space, experience, presence/absence, production and consumption, technology, myth, perception, event, and temporality, so interrogating the creation, appraisal, and evolution of film theory as channeled through contemporary art. This book takes film theory as a blueprint for the moving image, and juxtaposes it with artworks that render cinema as a material object. In the process, it unfolds a complex relationship between a theory and a practice that have commonly been seen as virtually incompatible, renewing our understanding of each and, more to the point, their interactions.
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...
Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image 1
Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image 1. Lisbon: Nova Institute of Philosophy - Nova University of Lisbon., 2010
Welcome to the inaugural issue of Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image, an international journal devoted to the philosophical inquiry into cinema. Since its beginnings, cinema has been the subject of philosophical investigation on the both sides of the Atlantic. Early in the twentieth century, Henri Bergson (1907) and Hugo Munsterberg (1916) offered, arguably, the first deep philosophical reflections on the recently born art. From the outset, their inquiries reflected different philosophical engagements and traditions. Bergson's ideas were highly influential in continental Europe and inspired a significant amount of artistic production that persisted, at least until the beginning of the Second World War. Munsterberg's pioneering study was almost forgotten, until the revived interest from cognitive film theorists in the nineties. During the twentieth century, in continental Europe, cinema inspired deep philosophical investigations about its nature, functioning, and reception-integrating, for the most part, the influences of
Inaugurating Philosophy of Film Without Theory
Aesthetic Investigations, 2020
Philosophy of film without theory is a methodology that aims to motivate and legitimise the current and future development of a range of a-, non-, and anti-theoretical ways of working at the intersection of film and philosophy. We contrast philosophy of film without theory with the main traditions of theoretically orientated philosophy of film, as well as philosophically inflected film Theory and film-philosophy. We also draw attention to the range of philosophical practices and pursuits that distinguish philosophy (in general) without theory and contemporary ©
October, 2022
Two film theorists, D. N. Rodowick and Murray Smith, have recently addressed the place of the natural sciences in the study of film and art, and they reach diametrically opposed conclusions. Rodowick argues that natural scientific explanations have little or no role to play in the study of film and art as "cultural practices," while Smith advocates a "naturalized aesthetics of film," which he describes as "an approach that . . . treats [film] as a phenomenon which is likely to be illuminated by various types of scientific as well as traditional humanistic research." In this paper, I argue that, while both views contain important insights, they are ultimately mistaken. Rodowick overlooks the important role the natural sciences can play in explaining the perceptual, cognitive, affective and bodily capacities that shape and constrain our engagement with art as well as the properties of artworks that elicit and inform this engagement. Nevertheless, this does not mean, I maintain, that aesthetics should be naturalized, as Smith believes, given that the types of explanations standardly proffered in film studies and other humanistic disciplines can be autonomous from those of the natural sciences in the sense of being explanatorily self-sufficient.
Cinema: journal of philosophy and the moving image
2016
Welcome to the inaugural issue of Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image, an international journal devoted to the philosophical inquiry into cinema. Since its beginnings, cinema has been the subject of philosophical investigation on the both sides of the Atlantic. Early in the twentieth century, Henri Bergson (1907) and Hugo Munsterberg (1916) offered, arguably, the first deep philosophical reflections on the recently born art. From the outset, their inquiries reflected different philosophical engagements and traditions. Bergson's ideas were highly influential in continental Europe and inspired a significant amount of artistic production that persisted, at least until the beginning of the Second World War. Munsterberg's pioneering study was almost forgotten, until the revived interest from cognitive film theorists in the nineties. During the twentieth century, in continental Europe, cinema inspired deep philosophical investigations about its nature, functioning, and reception-integrating, for the most part, the influences of
The Work of Interpretation: A Theoretical Defence of Film Theory and Criticism
Kinema, 1999
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 are repulsed by such theories. What most people believe is that movies are fiction, and because of that, they teach us nothing.