Book Review - Philosophers on Film from Bergson to Badiou, edited by Christopher Kul-want (original) (raw)
Related papers
”Living pictures": Bergson, cinema, and film-philosophy
The Bergsonian Mind, 2021
Bergson was the first philosopher to think and write about the cinema; and the impact of his writing and thought – both for his philosophy and for film-theory – should not be underestimated. Yet the role of the movies in Creative Evolution is often seen as a damning of cinema by film-theorists, as well as being habitually overlooked by philosophers. The aim of this chapter is to re-evaluate these two perspectives. In the first instance, by presenting Bergson’s experience of cinema as something that helped shape Creative Evolution, the deployment of film therein becoming a central conceptual figure for his philosophy and also providing insights to his attitudes toward science and art. In the second instance, by tracing the uses and abuses of cinematic Bergsonism from the earliest days of film-theory right up to the present. The central claim is that both Bergson’s philosophy and cinema were born of the same historical forces. Accordingly, film becomes Bergson’s greatest ally in the evolution of his metaphysics, and concomitantly, his philosophy anticipates the evolution of cinema.
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
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
Toward an Anarchist Film Theory: Reflections on the Politics of Cinema
Anarchist Developments in Cultural Studies, 2010
Cinema, like art more generally, is both an artistic genre and a politicoeconomic institution. On the one hand there is film, a medium which disseminates moving images via the projection of light through celluloid onto a screen. Individual films or "movies," in turn, are discrete aesthetic objects that are distinguished and analyzed vis-à-vis their form and content. On the other hand there is the film industry-the elaborate network of artistic, technical, and economic apparatuses which plan, produce, market, and display films to audiences. Since its inception, both the aesthetic and political aspects of cinema have been subject to various forms of theoretical analysis which have been subject to critique in turn. In this paper I offer a brief survey of these analyses and critiques followed by a sketch of an alternative approach to film theory. Drawing upon the ideas of Foucault and Deleuze, this "anarchist" film theory seeks to present a viable critical methodology while at the same time elucidating the liberatory potential of film.
Palgrave Handbook for the Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures, 2019
The purpose of this essay is to analyse both the history and different metaphilosophies lying at the heart of the divide between Analytic and Continental film philosophy. It charts the genealogy of two philosophical ‘worldviews’ so to speak, while also updating and tempering the ‘divide’ with examples of contemporary practice from working film philosophers that transcend various divisions, both thematic and conceptual. Beyond the function of surveying where film philosophy has come from alongside how it has developed more recently, the essay will, therefore, also forward the proposition that, amongst contemporary practitioners of film philosophy, there is a vast amount to share from all sides in what they practice or actually do, rather than in what they say about what they do (especially as the latter is aligned with certain avowed philosophical lineages that place more emphasis on difference rather than commonality).