Ontology Of Film Research Articles

La cineteca di Babele. Per una nuova ontologia del film

Moving from a cinematic reinterpretation of Borges’s Library of Babel, I attempt to provide a new answer to the old ontological question: “What kind of being is a film?”. This answer, which takes into account the coming of digital era, is developed through a comparison with Carroll’s philosophy of motion pictures. While discussing, criticizing and trying to complete his theory, I will examine the concept of a film under four different aspects: as a material object, as an ideal object, as a mental object, and as a social object. Finally, our ontology of film will be applied to clarify some traditional theoretical dualisms: i.e. film vs. reality, film vs. narration, film vs. discourse, film vs. art.

The afterimage – traces of otherness in recent Singaporean cinema

In this essay, Ho Tzu Nyen attempts to unearth a subterranean narrative that threads through three films produced by three male Singaporean directors – namely Mee Pok Man (1995) by Eric Khoo, 15 (2003) by Royston Tan, and Zombie Dogs (2004) by Toh Hai Leong. This narrative of unconsciously repeated motifs that migrate from film to film is in turn analyzed as a recurrent symptom that haunts a number of Singaporean cinematic productions from the 1990s onwards. This symptom, which can be summarily described as a paranoid relationship to ‘otherness’, makes manifest a variety of psychic tendencies such as morbid fear of impotence, misogyny, and fetishization of the social other. For Ho, such impulses are in turn intricately linked to what he, following the literary critic Harold Bloom, calls ‘The Anxiety of Influence’. For Bloom, every poet embarks upon his career after a prior encounter with another poet, or poem. As a result, the ‘late‐coming’ poet inevitably suffers from a sense of threatened autonomy, because his profoundest insights and deepest desires are always already elucidated by another. For the Singaporean filmmaker, Ho argues that this ‘anxiety’ in relation to the cinematic tradition takes on a peculiar nature and a doubled pressure, for the canon that inspires them is perceived as being something essentially foreign. Hence the Singaporean filmmaker makes cinema as though he is stuttering in a foreign tongue. Therefore, the concept of ‘the anxiety of influence’ is modulated and compounded with a ‘postcolonial anxiety’. In addition, Ho also draws upon the concepts of the philosopher Gilles Deleuze in an attempt to sketch out an ontology of cinema that at once functions in a deconstructive relationship to ‘auteur‐driven’ modes of analyses, while avoiding what he perceives as the overly ‘sociological’ bent that characterizes much of the existing corpus of writings on Singaporean cinema.

A Shacklean Approach to the Demand for Movies

Film has a number of characteristics that define it as a commodity-type and hence distinguish it from other commodity-types.4 Not only is film non-diminishable in consumption (because it is consumed in the mind of the viewer), but also the images that make up a film are infinitely reproducible and, in the era of digital technology, reproducible at near zero marginal cost. Furthermore, each film is to some extent novel in that its constitutive images are each unique and so is the ordering of the images into the sequenced continuity that makes the film meaningful to (but not, ipso facto, liked by) the consumer.5 Hence, prior to the consumption of a film, consumers cannot have a complete idea of the visual and aural cinematic utility that they are going to experience, nor of their reaction to that experience. Films are thus experience goods: an experiential divide exists between the two mental states of awareness, namely expectation and realization, both of which entail a learning process based on previous experience (Nelson, 1974, p. 745). A final element in the ontology of film as a commodity is the rapidly diminishing utility of film in consumption. That is, once consumed in theatrical release, films are rarely revisited theatrically by consumers, who commonly prefer the anticipation of new cinematic pleasure to the repeat viewing of old pleasures.

Death 24x a Second: Stillness and the Moving Image

With the advent of the digital and the consequent perception of a new malleability in representation and information, attention has shifted in film studies to the photographic base of cinema – its material distinctiveness and the specific nature of cinema's cultural intervention in the twentieth century. Following the marginalization of Bazin's work that accompanied the analysis of the ideological complicity of realism in 1970s film theory, the emphasis for many years had been on the optical (Renaissance perspective) rather than the chemical aspect of cinema, and on space (mise-en-scene, the frame) rather than temporality. However, in an age of intermediality a new engagement with notions of cinematic specificity has emerged. This is not a commitment to an essence or ontology of film, but rather a closer examination of film's materiality and its historical promise that ultimately returns to Bazin and to the indexicality of the medium.1 At stake is our understanding of cinema's relation to temporality and historicity.

The World Heard: Casablanca and the Music of War

482 Early versions of this essay were presented to the music of the Americas study group, the junior historians workshop, and the American culture workshop at the University of Michigan. I am grateful to these colleagues for their commentaries and suggestions. I would also like to thank Michael Szalay, Naomi Silver, Rob Genter, John Behling, and John Carson for their careful readings of earlier drafts. 1. Stanley Cavell, TheWorld Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film (1971; Cambridge, 1979), p. 85; hereafter abbreviatedWV. The World Heard: Casablanca and the Music of War

Toward an Ontology of Film: A Phenomenological Approach

Our intention is to focus attention upon the nature of the film medium and the peculiar possibilities that it affords. We will approach the study by a double method: a phenomenological inventory, and a comparison with other cognate artforms. The comparison with other artforms, most especially painting, theater, and the novel, will show the peculiarities of film.

Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, and the Culture of the Great Depression

Previous articleNext article No AccessDorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, and the Culture of the Great DepressionJames C. CurtisJames C. Curtis Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Winterthur Portfolio Volume 21, Number 1Spring, 1986 Published for the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, Inc. Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/496257 Views: 309Total views on this site Citations: 9Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1986 The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur MuseumPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Michael Drewett ‘I Will Do What I Can Do’: Peter Gabriel and the Documentation of Human Rights, Journal of Human Rights Practice 10 (Jul 2022).https://doi.org/10.1093/jhuman/huac046 Bibliography, (May 2022): 453–550.https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119632214.biblioMichael D. Murray Mise en Scène and the Decisive Moment of Visual Legal Rhetoric, SSRN Electronic Journal (Jan 2019).https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3325423Valerie Heffernan, Gay Wilgus Introduction: Imagining Motherhood in the Twenty-First Century—Images, Representations, Constructions, Women: A Cultural Review 29, no.11 (Mar 2018): 1–18.https://doi.org/10.1080/09574042.2018.1442603Evan D.G. Fraser Coping with food crises: Lessons from the American Dust Bowl on balancing local food, agro technology, social welfare, and government regulation agendas in food and farming systems, Global Environmental Change 23, no.66 (Dec 2013): 1662–1672.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2013.09.001Rafe McGregor A New/Old Ontology of Film, Film-Philosophy 17, no.11 (Dec 2013): 265–280.https://doi.org/10.3366/film.2013.0015Brian Haley Better for Whom? The Laborers Omitted in Goldschmidt's Industrial Agriculture Thesis, Human Organization 69, no.11 (Mar 2010): 97–106.https://doi.org/10.17730/humo.69.1.3375617u38k6727jMarouf Hasian Iconic Materials, Hermeneutics of Faith, and the Postmodern Reproduction of Public Democracies, Review of Communication 8, no.11 (Jan 2008): 1–15.https://doi.org/10.1080/15358590701670412Thomas Cripps The Romance of the Dogfight: A Cautionary Tale for Historians, Prospects 17 (Jul 2009): 105–135.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0361233300004683

The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film (Enlarged Edition)

The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film (Enlarged Edition)

The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film.

Foreword to the Enlarged Edition Preface 1. An Autobiography of Companions 2. Sights and Sounds 3. Photograph and Screen 4. Audience, Actor, and Star 5. Types Cycles as Genres 6. Ideas of Origin 7. Baudelaire and the Myths of Film 8. The Military Man and the Woman 9. The Dandy 10. End of the Myths 11. The Medium and Media of Film 12. The World as Mortal: Absolute Age and Youth 13. The World as a Whole: Color 14. Automatism 15. Excursus: Some Modernist Painting 16. Exhibition and Self-Reference 17. The Camera's Implication 18. Assertions in Techniques 19. The Acknowledgment of Silence More of The World Viewed Notes Index

The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film

The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film

Reflections on Cavell's Ontology of Film

Reflections on Cavell's Ontology of Film

"The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film," by Stanley Cavell

"The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film," by Stanley Cavell

The World Viewed. Reflections on the Ontology of Film.

The World Viewed. Reflections on the Ontology of Film.

The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film

The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film

Reflections on Cavell's Ontology of Film

Reflections on Cavell's Ontology of Film