Philosophy of Film

Jean-François Lyotard's film philosophy stems from his theory of “libidinal economy” expounded in the 1970s. He presents the basic characteristics of the film as libidinal dispositif by analyzing the representative space of theater and the division and the function of triple space. Back to the moving nature of cinema, Lyotard puts forward two types of film forms against the libidinal dispositif: immobility and agitation in the experimental films and underground films. For feature films and historical essay films，excessive accumulation of the representations of reality will lead to the so called“metamorphose of seduction”. In Italian neo-realism films，those shots of ordinary items such as pan that describe everyday experience will break through the authority of libidinal device and express the sovereignty of film oriented toward future. This paper is wrote in Chinese.

PALABRAS CLAVE: Homeland, Sully, Clint Eastwood, locura, compromiso,
héroe

Mediante el análisis de algunas escenas seleccionadas del último capítulo de la sexta temporada de Homeland y de la película Sully, reflexiono sobre el origen etimológico del término “compromiso” y su relación con la figura del héroe. ¿Son ámbitos diferenciados, irreconciliables o, en momentos determinados, él héroe puede lidiar con cierta locura que implicaría la realización del acto heroico, de un compromiso con su sociedad?.

KEYWORDS: Homeland, Sully, Clint Eastwood, madness, engagement, hero

Through the analysis of selected scenes from the last chapter of Homeland's sixth season and the film Sully, I reflect on the etymological origin of the term “commitment” and its relation to the hero‟s character. Do they belong to different or irreconcilable areas, or at certain moments, can the hero deal with a certain madness that would imply the accomplishment of the heroic act, of a commitment to his/her society?.

This essay aims to understand the relations between Stanley Cavell’s theoretical generalities regarding the medium of film and his readings of individual films, with a particular focus on his writing on color in his book The World Viewed. I argue that a specific idea of color as connected to abstraction (as well as a correlative idea of black-and-white as connected to figuration) grounds the relations between Cavell’s general statements about color and his readings of individual color films, and that this conception of color helps to bring out the level of medium specificity required for understanding Cavell’s notion of “projecting” a world. I likewise argue that this idea of color and abstraction lies behind Cavell’s claims about projecting a “unified” world in his writing on color’s connection with fantasy and futurity, in his approach to Jean-Luc Godard’s films, and even in his writing on color that follows The World Viewed.

Films have been claimed to play the role of philosophical thought experiments. Thought experiments use hypothetical scenarios to motivate certain philosophical conclusions, so the hypothetical scenarios depicted in films can, it is claimed, perform much the same role. A complication with this proposal is that the role of thought experiments in philosophy is itself contentious. Worries have been raised about whether thought experiments are characteristic of philosophical thinking and whether they are capable of justifying philosophical conclusions. These worries complicate the analogy between film and thought experiment in at least two ways. First, if thought experiments are not characteristic of philosophy then the intellectual contributions of film may fail to be distinctively philosophical. I overcome this worry by using subject matter as a criterion of philosophical thought experiment. Second, there are difficulties with the claim that thought experiments can warrant philosophical conclusions. If thought experiments are bad tools for doing philosophy, then it seems film can only make bad contributions to philosophy. I suggest that the putative limitations of thought experiments are surmountable, and that film may be especially well-placed to surmount them.

Language: Norwegian

Master avhandling

Avhandlingens første del presenterer og drøfter queer teori og queer analysestrategi, mens avhandlingens andre del undersøker ulike queer aspekter ved den danske regissøren Pernille Fischer Christensens spillefilm En Soap. Filmen har en vitalitet som er forbundet med at både estetikken og meningsinnholdet vanskelig lar seg fange inn og beskrive ved hjelp av tradisjonelle metoder og begreper. Christensen benytter elementer fra ulike kunstformer, sjangere og tradisjoner til å komponere et utpreget personlig filmspråk. Gjennom en rekke strategier utfordres innarbeidede kulturelle forestillinger; som forventninger om at det skal gå et forholdsvis entydig skille mellom bruddestetikk og mainstream og forventninger om at det skal være et avklart forhold mellom kropp, kjønnsidentitet og seksuell orientering. Avhandlingen viser hvordan problematiseringen av kjønn og seksualitet er nært forbundet med at filmen tilbyr en egenartet estetikk.
Avhandlingen argumenterer også for at teksttolking er en performativ aktivitet – en handling hvor teksttolkeren siterer og feilsiterer, eller opprettholder og bryter, praksiser og tenkemåter innenfor den vitenskapelige tradisjonen. Siktet er derfor ikke å gjennomføre en uttømmende fortolkning, men å åpne for og utforske en mulig tilnærming til filmens iscenesettelse av kjønn, begjær og mellommenneskelige relasjoner.

This course will examine the surreal, whimsical, grotesque, and weird films of director Tim Burton. We will come to know his body of work as a series of narrative, visual, and thematic preoccupations that have influenced a variety of film artists. Students can expect to examine a varied body of work from a mix of critical lenses, including class, race, gender, sexuality, and disability.

In films, dreams become a matter of space because the dreamer’s perception of space is not limited by those categories that are necessary for the perception of space in waking life, which are that of the subjective and the objective. The dream space is neither objective nor subjective. Through this dreamlike perception, space becomes what I would call aesthetic. The overcoming of subjective and objective, the peculiar “aesthetic” perception, is true not only for space but also for time. Dreams are not produced by an objectivizing stylization of the reality of waking life into the reality of dreams, but the “dream style” emerges autonomously.

Американский режиссер Уэс Андерсон в декабре 2014 года выпустил в прокат очередной шедевр — «Отель Гранд Будапешт». С одинаковым энтузиазмом фильм приняли и публика, и критика — как раз тот случай, когда сложность конструкции, техническая и художественная, не только поспособствовала балансу киногении и движения, но и не вызвала снижения оценки среднего зрителя (предельно высокой). Подобные достижения способны оценить такие опытные аналитики арт-рынка, как Борис Гройс, для которого внимание поп-вкуса означает: искушённый месседж достиг всех возможных адресатов.
Успех объясняется и совпадением ряда факторов, первый из которых – продуманная эстетическая режиссёрская парадигма, чьи составляющие совершенствуются с каждым новым фильмом. Речь идет о некоей идеальной модели визуальности, в которой сведены определяющие компоненты, делающие кинематограф приоритетным искусством. Мир Андерсона выстроен с тщательностью демиурга, что создаёт впечатление природной отлаженности функционирования механизма фильма: элементы организованны в систему подсознательно, будто в улье. Системы значений визуальных знаков подведена под действие категории Возвышенного — полюса диалектической пары «Прекрасное/Возвышенное» у Канта. Можно допустить спонтанность этого действия, но, вероятнее, Андерсон конспектировал «Критику способности суждения» во время изучения философии в Техасском университете в Остине. Режиссёр не даёт комментариев по поводу созданной им системы, предпочитая оставаться стороной оппозиции «объясняющий/показывающий», но его универсум включает дискурсивные элементы, достраивающие визуальные знаки до некоторой предельной полноты очевидности.

The films of Nuri Bilge Ceylan are always groping for the general condition of ‘humanity’ – that vague anachronism, ever the object of contempt for contemporary philosophers. It is now commonplace to hear that authorship, modernity, subjectivity, history and humanity are outmoded concepts of a bygone era. Yet, in countless art films of recent years, we continue to note a dominant thematic preoccupation with recognition, anxiety and subjectivity, begging the question: If we have departed from the humanist regime of art and philosophy, why do its primary concerns continue to dominate? In this article, I wish to analyse Ceylan’s oeuvre as a continuation of the themes and aesthetics of humanist film-makers and philosophers. With in-depth discussion of the themes and aesthetics of the breadth of his oeuvre, I argue that Ceylan’s films are humanist because they focus on human subjectivity as a matter of conflict: between our notion of selfhood and the world around us. In opposition to claims of some flaccid ‘liberal humanism’ derided by posthumanists like Hayles (1999), I wish to argue that Ceylan’s humanism persists with a critical condition intrinsic to the human, denying an escape into a historically rupturing, post-ist logic.

Uvod Kad se javi neka nova teorijska struja, reakcije na nju pretežno su dvojake. Poneki u novoj teorijskoj struji razabiru nov kut gledanja i nove probleme, te im to otvara plodne teorijske perspektive. Ponuđena teorijska rješenja shvaćaju tek kao radna rješenja koja treba podvrći provjeri, dotjerivanju, mijenjanju i razradi. Količina neriješenih problema i njihova složenost ih ne straši već potiče na zdušniji teorijski rad. Drugi, međutim, pokušat će shvatiti novu teoriju na temelju njenih trenutačnih dostignuća i teorijskih rješenja. Ako su ta rješenja na razini dotadašnjeg razmišljanja i ako su ponegdje plodna, odat će priznanje novoj teoriji. Ali ako to ova nisu i ako su teorijski problemi uglavnom neriješeni i empirijski nepoduprti, bit će skloni odbaciti novu teorijsku struju kao nekorisnu. I jedan i drugi pristup je koristan po novu struju. Prvi, jer djelatno razvija njene teorijske mogućnosti, nastojeći je poboljšati. Drugi, jer svojom skepsom i odmakom britko upozorava na neriješene probleme nove struje i tako ne dozvoljava površnost i nesamokritičnost koja je ponekad pratilja početnog poleta u formiranju nove teorijske struje. Uvođenje semiotičke struje u razmišljanje o filmu aktiviralo je obje ove reakcije. Semiotika je doista postala zaraznom teorijskom strujom, u koju su se mnogi uključili, nadahnuti njenim perspektivama. Ali je izazvala i kritičke vanjske reakcije u onih koji u postojećim semiološkim radovima nisu uspijevali pronaći prihvatljiva i plodna rješenja, već samo komplikaciju i programatska preuveličavanja. Premda je diskusija između ova dva stava bila implicitna od njihova formiranja, postala je izričita a ponegdje i objedinjena tek od nedavno, i to posebno prodorom semiologije na anglosaksonsko područje. Danas, semiologija filma, premda još uvijek ne posve oformljena, nije više u zelenoj mladosti. Iza nje je već petnaestak i više godina praktičnog teoretiziranja, te ima dovoljno materijala da se na njemu pokušaju svesti računi, da se pokuša općenito raščistiti status semiologije u tradiciji teorije filma. To ću pokušat učiniti u ovom tekstu. Tipovi teoretiziranja o filmu Povratno promatrajući povijest teoretiziranja o filmu, može se razlučiti nekoliko tendencija. One nisu međusobno isključive nego, štoviše, dosta vezane, ali opet i dovoljno različite i razmjerno neovisne da bi se o njima moglo posebno govoriti. Korisno je, tako, razlikovati dva globalna trenda u razmišljanju o filmu: filozofiju filma i empirijsku teoriju filma ili filmologiju. 1
Tekst je izvorno objavljen 1981. (Zbornik trećeg programa Radio Zagreba, br. 6/1981, str. 137-145, Zagreb: Radio Zagreb), pretiskan je u knjizi Turković, Hrvoje. 1986. Strukturalizam, Semiotika, Metafilmologija-Metodloške rasprave; Zagreb: Filmoteka 16; te u mrežnom izdanju te knjige-kao e-knjiga: Turković, Hrvoje. 2012. Strukturalizam, Semiotika, Metafilmologija. Metodološke rasprave. Zagreb: Društvo za promicanje književnosti na novim medijima; https://elektronickeknjige.com/biblioteke/online/strukturalizam-semiotika-metafilmologija/

This paper will address Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta’s The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum (1975) together with Walter Benjamin’s “Critique of Violence” – and its interpretation by Slavoj Žižek in Violence – in order to explore the concepts of mythic and divine violence within the film. First, I will explore the “law-preserving” and “law-making” powers of the state exerted by both the police and, more importantly, the press in the film as forms of mythic violence, which suggest a rapport between Benjamin’s text and Althusser’s well-known concepts of repressive and ideological state apparatus. I will furthermore attempt to approach this question at the level of genre: in the melodramatic excesses of Schlöndorff and Trotta’s film, I will suggest – via Thomas Elsaesser’s genealogy of melodrama in “Tales of Sound and Fury” – that it is possible to discern the functioning of mythic violence as the sudden reversals of fortune and egregious suffering that are fundamental to the genre. I will then ask whether, through Katharina’s acts of resistance and final, murderous outburst, the film could open up a potential space for divine violence. If – as Benjamin and Žižek suggest – it cannot be objectively defined, then can Katharina Blum at least point to the possibility for divine violence as, in Žižek’s terms, the counter violence to the excess of state power? By offering us, as spectators, a moment where we sympathise with – if not actively urge – the murder of Katharina’s tormentor, the tabloid hack and agent of institutional oppression, Werner Tötges, might the film place us in a position (as we could speculate did Katharina) to “wrestle with [the commandment “Thou shalt not kill”] in solitude and (…) to take upon [ourselves] the responsibility of ignoring it”?

John Locke famously argues for the “memory theory” of personal identity.  I argue this can be seen in the film Memento (directed by Christopher Nolan). Specifically, I argue that the plot of Memento is ambiguous, in that the main character (Leonard Shelby, played by Guy Pearce) seems to have two histories. As such, Memento is but a series of puzzle cases that intend to illustrate that, although our memories may not be chronologically related to one another, and may even be fused with the memories of other persons, those memories still constitute personal identity. Just as Derek Parfit argues, perhaps there is no personal identity as such, since only survival (in some degree) matters to us. In Memento, Leonard Shelby is not identity to his former self, but survives to some extent.

In seinem zukunftsweisenden Text The Cyborg’s Dilemma: Embodiment in Virtual Environments (1997) entwickelte Frank Biocca das Konzept des progressive embodiment. Mit diesem Theoriekonzept entwirft Biococa ein interaktionistisches Modell des mediatisierten Raumes, in welchem sich physischer Körper und technologische Apparatur über ein komplex gestaltetes Interface miteinander verbinden lassen. Diese Verbindung bleibt allerdings nicht ein rein technisches Kalkül, sondern mündet direkt im kognitionsphilosophischen ›Cyborg’s Dilemma‹ und der damit verbundenen Problemstellung, wie sich das subjektivierte Ich während der rezeptiven Verkörperung innerhalb digitaler Bildsimulationen autonom von der artifiziellen Präsenz des Technischen abgrenzen kann. Dies führt zu der bereits europhänomenologisch anmutenden Frage: »Where am ›I‹ present?«.
Mit Blick auf aktuelle Medientechnologien – vor allem in Bezug
auf immersive Interfaces und Displays – lässt sich plausibel vom
progressive embodiment oder von Medien der Verkörperung in zweifacher Hinsicht sprechen: Zum einen unterstützen die von Biococa genannten Interfaces die virtuelle Verkörperung der Rezipienten in den simulierten Bildraum hinein; und zum anderen entwickeln sich die Medien immer stärker zu ›Körpern der Bilder‹, indem sie eine multimodale und damit sinnlich-extensive Repräsentation erlauben.

Le monstre joue un rôle essentiel dans The Philosophy of Horror de Noël Carroll, l’ouvrage de référence pour la philosophie anglo-saxonne du cinéma d’horreur. Il n’est donc pas étonnant que ce livre ait suscité une réflexion sur l’essence du monstre, qui mobilise autant les ressources de la philosophie la plus traditionnelle, que l’expérience des films d’horreur les plus contemporains. Cet article vise à présenter cette réflexion et à défendre la nécessité d’un « changement focal » conceptuel qui accompagne les mutations cinématographiques du monstre.

Solaris (1972) and Stalker (1979) by Andrei Tarkovsky as well as The Matrix (1999) by the Wachovski brothers are science fiction films with a highly metaphysical appeal. In addition, all three films deal with the possible falseness of what we generally suppose to be a “reality.” In The Matrix, a reality of millions is declared to be due to cognitive manipulations effectuated by machines and computers and thus not real; in Solaris, a strange kind of non-reality penetrates reality and creates doubts about the “cognitive correctness” of reality; and Stalker evokes, though in an ambiguous and ironical way, a spiritual reality more real than ordinary reality.

English 2270 explores the relationship between film and literature and the processes of adaptation. This semester we will examine film adaptations of plays, novels, short stories, children's books, comic books, and graphic novels. This is a challenging and rewarding course that introduces you to adaptation studies and also tests your writing skills and your ability to present ideas in a large group setting.

In marked contrast to more recent discussions of cinematic affect, this article seeks to affirm the ineluctably passive experience of moving-images. In particular, the essay returns to the tradition of psychology and art history that developed, in the later nineteenth and early twentieth century, around the concept of Einfühlung. On this basis, I argue that cinema constitutes a kind of prosthetic perception whereby the brain is inhabited and vehicularized by images that are not its own.

Philippe Grandrieux is one of cinema's only living true radicals and feted as one of the most innovative and important film makers of his generation. His consistently controversial work remains, however, relatively unknown outside of the international art film festival circuit. In this volume, the first book-length study of the work of Grandrieux in any language, Greg Hainge provides an overview and critical analysis of Grandrieux's entire career during which he has produced works for television, video installations, photography, performance pieces, documentary films, short films and prize-winning feature films. As well as providing an overview, the book argues that a critical appraisal of his work necessarily leads us to problematize many of the critical orthodoxies that have been formed in recent times, to reject the concept of a haptic cinema and to supplant this instead with the idea of a sonic cinema.

Dopo un lungo periodo di “disimpegno” dai temi politici e di rilevanza sociale che, in linea di massima, ha caratterizzato il cinema italiano tra gli anni ottanta e gli anni novanta assistiamo a un periodo di “rinascita” caratterizzato da un rinnovata necessità di confrontarsi con avvenimenti storici e fatti di attualità molto dibattuti dall’opinione pubblica e non ancora “assimilati” dal corpo sociale. Tra i fautori di questo nuovo fermento che si sta producendo nel cinema italiano contemporaneo vanno annoverati diversi registi tra cui: Marco Bellocchio (Buongiorno, notte del 2003), Nanni Moretti (Il caimano, 2006), Emanuele Crialese (Nuovomondo, 2006), Matteo Garrone (Gomorra, 2008), Paolo Sorrentino (Il Divo, 2008). Sarebbe un errore considerare l’impegno sociale e l’importanza etica di questi film solo sulla base di un realismo tematico (il terrorismo, i fenomeni migratori, il crimine organizzato, la commistione tra criminalità e politica, ecc.) e quindi tralasciando le modalità di rappresentazione e il discorso formale che le singole opere mettono in gioco. Pur condividendo l’interesse di critica e di pubblico che questi film hanno ricevuto, l’obiettivo del presente lavoro è quello di indagare, attraverso gli strumenti della semiotica strutturale, le modalità di costruzione e di rappresentazione del discorso politico concentrandosi su un singolo testo filmico. Il Divo (2008) sfrutta differenti modalità di testualizzazione della storia politica italiana con l’obiettivo di riattivare e rielaborare la memoria di eventi relativi al periodo di travagliata transizione dalla Prima alla seconda Repubblica. Soggetto privilegiato di questa “ricostruzione” è Giulio Andreotti (interpretato da Tony Servillo), uno dei principali protagonisti della storia politica italiana e rappresentante del più grande partito di massa, la Democrazia Cristiana. Per questo motivo, l’analisi si concentrerà sulle strategie di rappresentazione del “corpo del capo” e di spettacolarizzazione delle vicende che lo hanno coinvolto. A livello diegetico, non assistiamo alla pedissequa riproposizione di eventi ed esistenti, né ad una loro ricostruzione con il solo obiettivo di valutare le colpe o smascherare presunti colpevoli. In altre parole, Il Divo costruisce il suo discorso sulla storia politica italiana attraverso una messa in discussione costante dei testi che la hanno precedentemente veicolata o che ne erano parte integrante, in una tensione costante tra documentazione e rilettura di un passato traumatico. È il caso emblematico degli inserti audiovisivi in cui si “dà voce” alle lettere scritte da Aldo Moro durante la sua prigionia ad opera delle Brigate Rosse. Il film ne modifica in parte il contenuto e mostra gli effetti patemici sui soggetti politici a cui queste erano indirizzate. L’analisi si concentrerà inoltre sui modelli figurativi e sulle strategie narrative del monologo/confessione di Andreotti; la sequenza è un vero e proprio metadiscorso in cui emerge come la modalità del potere sia il valore centrale, se non l’unico, nella costruzione del discorso politico.

Essay. Melodrama in Hollywood and World Cinema Course. Convener, Prof. Laura Mulvey, School of History of Art, Film and Visual Media (MA), Birkbeck College, University of London, January 2005. Revised & edited September 2020.
Exploring the myth of the fallen woman in classic Hollywood melodrama, via Jungian framework, tracing her historical, religious and literary antecedents, delving into the archetypal realms of the dark, wild feminine projected onto the screen, and her impact on the spectator, male and female. What these femme fatales, gold-diggers, seductresses, fallen angels, and furious housewives subversively revealed was a hidden narrative current underneath the official one, women's own dispossessed femininity, debased, fragmented and demonised, yet so powerfully vibrant and creative.
Keywords: femme fatale, fallen woman, melodrama, Hollywood, animus, anima, archetypal image, Jungian analysis, collective unconscious, projection, medium, moving image, film, myth.
Published Sep 2020 at lolaonfilm.com

In a central scene in 3-Iron, the female protagonist dissects her own photo and reconstitutes it in a cubistic fashion. While in this film the act of reframing seems to symbolize the establishment of a new identity, in other films by Kim Kiduk, various subject positions can be defined neither as re-compositions of disparate identities nor as splits of two polar opposites. Often we are confronted with situations in which the notion of the authentic subject has possibly been overcome. I attempt to understand these patterns evolving in Kim Kiduk’s films, within the Korean cultural context determined by the country’s division as well as occupations by foreign powers.
Critics have noticed the violence and the crude treatment of human relations in Kim’s films because here people seem “to act out of impulses” (Gombeaud, 2006:13). Though literature has extensively treated the relationship between Korean cinema and the country’s troubled past, few authors have attempted to connect Kim Kiduk’s emanations of violence to the problem of the divided nation. Even more surprising is the fact that, so far, few critics have put the problem of identity to the center of a study of Kim’s films, let alone attempted to link this theme to that of the Korean nation suffering from an identity crisis. Still it appears that the main theme in Kim’s films is that of “identity troubles”: most of his fifteen films deal with fundamental changes of personal identities through unusual encounters or situations.
The dissecting and reconstituting of portraits is one of the most recurrent themes in Kim’s films. The identity theme appears most clearly in Time where Sehie, fearing that her boyfriend Ji-woo will soon get bored of her and reject her, decides to undergo aesthetic surgery in order to approach him as a new person (Saehie). Though, socially speaking, Sehie and Saehie are different persons, they share identical lifeworlds. In many of Kim’s films, faces are dissected, reconstituted, and dissected again. Most of the time these procedures are applied to paper faces, but in Address Unknown Eun-ok’s eye is hurt by a knife, and in Time, real faces are submitted to the scissors.
It is clear that the acts of self-mutilation are metaphorical expressions of real social problems existing in the Korean nation. It will be shown that what is elaborated in Kim’s films is not the split of personalities into two segments but rather a play of signifying selves and others that lets any authentic identity entirely disappear and which comes amazingly close to both Roland Barthes’s and Jean Baudrillard’s systems of communication in which “signs are exchanged against each other rather than against the real” (Baudrillard, 1993:7).

The paper explores Tati's use of new film media in 'Playtime' in ways that reveal more fundamental modes of social, mimetic and situational mediation as performed in the film by architects, and architect-like characters, and by the architectural settings which Jacques Tati devised.

Análisis textual del universo Tim Burton. Escenas Fantasmáticas.

Análisis de varias escenas de la filmografía de Tim Burton acompañadas de
datos clave sobre el autor y sus influencias para el análisis de éstas.

Trabajo de Finde Grado para la consecución del Grado en Comunicación Audiovisual calificado con Matrícula de Honor.