Philosophy Of Film Research Articles

From the "Cinematic Suture" to Experience in Film Theory: Historical and Philosophical Aspect

This article is devoted to the historical and philosophical foundations on which the "cinematic suture" as a concept from psychoanalysis became an object of the analysis of sensuality in the 20th century. The relevance of the research is related to the need to pose the problem of a gradual movement from cinema as an object of perception to the analysis of the spectator`s role in the film philosophy of the last century. The connection of the subject with the discourse of the film through the "suture" is considered according to the scenario of J. Lacan, J.-A. Miller and J.-P. Oudart. The impact, as well as the differences between the "classical" and the modern version of "the system of suture" are called. The thesis is put forward that the expansion of the context of such concepts as the "cinematic suture" may lead to the loss of its theoretical framework in the history of psychoanalysis and structuralism in film theory. Analytical and comparative methods are used in this article to find the prerequisites that in the 1950s and 1990s shifted the discussion of realism from film criticism to the level of theory and philosophical problem. The scientific novelty consists of substantiating the continuity of the "suture" concept with realism and the impression of reality in contemporary film theories. The illustrative field of the reality effect, the impression of reality and the cinematic "suture" is expanded and complemented by audiovisual features of different genres using the example of the analysis of the satirical comedy by Elem Klimov "Welcome, or No Trespassing" (1964). As a result, it is concluded that the anticipation of the viewer's reaction and his spatial identity in the film serve not only as a criterion for evaluating the cinematic experience as a sensory one, but also as a sign of the difference between several periods of comprehension and criticism of "the system of suture" from each other. It is proved that the turn of the XX-XXI centuries in the theory and philosophy of cinema was marked by criticism of the idea of the spectator as a "reader" of movies, which at an early stage of the development of "the system of suture" was no less universal and prescriptive than realism.

HEIDEGGER’S PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE CINEMATIC EXPERIENCE BOOK REVIEW: LOHT S. PHENOMENOLOGY OF FILM: A HEIDEGGERIAN ACCOUNT OF THE FILM EXPERIENCE. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2017.

In my review, I analyze the main points of Shawn Loht’s book “Phenomenology of Film: A Heideggerian Account of the Film Experience” (2017), in which the author makes not only an attempt to develop the phenomenology of cinema, but also to substantiate it as a kind of philosophy—philosophy through watching a movie. The content of the book can be reduced to three major components: 1) clarifying M. Heidegger’s attitude to cinema and evaluating the contribution of his philosophy to the analysis of cinema; 2) revealing cinema viewing as one of the ways of human existence; 3) substantiating cinema art as revealing the truth of being. To implement these tasks, Sh. Loht develops the phenomenology of cinema as a kind of cinema philosophy. Despite the fact that Heidegger expressed his negative attitude towards cinema and photography in his work “Time of the World Picture,” since they serve to technically represent the world, turn it into a picture and strengthen the position of a person as a representative subject, Loht substantiates the understanding of cinema as an artistic creation, which, according to Heidegger’s philosophy of art, reveals the truth of being. Using such concepts of Heidegger’s presence analytics as being-in-the-world, project, understanding, disposition, interpretation, speech, S. Loht describes the motion picture as a thing in the world that Dasein encounters, and the cinematic experience as a way of human existence. The author understands phenomenology as a method that focuses on phenomena as a person experiences them. Loht concludes that movies are fundamentally phenomenological. The subject of the phenomenology of cinema is the space between the viewer and the screen, the discovery and understanding that the viewer produces. The phenomenology of cinema is the phenomenology of the presence of the moviegoer. The core question is, is it possible to philosophize with the help of cinema? Loht answers in the affirmative, but this philosophizing will be phenomenology. The viewer philosophizes while watching the film, which is based on the self-understanding of the presence, the philosophical reflections of the viewer are caused by the film.

Cinema, philosophy and paideia

ABSTRACT I here read the Iranian film Hit the Road through the eyes of the French philosopher Alain Badiou. In doing so, I hope to illuminate the triadic link between cinema, philosophy and paideia (ethical-political education). To explore, I adopt a philosophical methodology with the double ambition to reveal the latent pedagogies of the film and to acquire insights on the distinctiveness of a Badiouan conception of cinema. My questions are to what degree and in what ways cinematic experience can be said to promote ethical-political formation. I start by portraying Badiou’s cinematic philosophy. Next, I expose how Hit the Road confronts us with a hidden real. Third, I close the paper by considering Badiou’s idea of cinema as an influential form of ethical-political education.

Antimmanent Images: Sarah Maldoror's Sambizanga , Anti-Black Temporal Prohibition, Thinking Deleuze and Afropessimism with Cinema

Abstract: This essay stages a three-way encounter between the 1972 anticolonial film Sambizanga , Gilles Deleuze's philosophy of cinema, and a Fanonian and Afropessimist critique of the human. Directed by the Black Caribbean-French filmmaker Sarah Maldoror (1929–2020), who recently passed away from complications of COVID-19, Sambizanga dramatizes a moment in the Black Angolan revolutionary struggle against Portuguese colonialism. This essay explores how the images of Sambizanga both exemplify key aspects of the modernist time-image, as formulated in Deleuze's two books on cinema (1986, 1989), and simultaneously demonstrate the time-image concept's inadequacy in describing global fundamental aspects of Black film; Sambizanga materializes a problematization of the cinematic image itself, and demands a new kind of movement. This reading of Maldoror's film facilitates an encounter between Deleuze and Afropessimism, pointing toward an antimmanent orientation. By appropriating a Deleuzian approach to cinema—the analysis of images as presentations of movement and time—for Afropessimist ends, the essay extends Frank Wilderson's (2010) critique of progressivist film narrative to indict the most basic material components of cinema. Utilizing Fanon's auto-theorizing on time and space in Black Skin, White Masks (1952/2008) to denaturalize temporal capacity itself and argue for its fundamental anti-Blackness, the essay locates within Sambizanga two related images of Blackness: the image of incoherence and the image of persistence.

Clown politics: history, populism, and tragic farce

ABSTRACT Contemporary right-wing populism mixes comic performance with authoritarian and reactionary sentiments in troubling ways, as much recent work has observed. We might thus be said to be living in an era of ‘tragic farce’ in which Marx’s famous distinction between genres of historical action has collapsed. To engage with these questions, this article focuses on the clown as a figure in which aesthetics and politics intersect in crucial ways. Through readings of Adorno, Deleuze, Agamben and Žižek, I show how the clown has been an enduring concern for theory. I also analyze Todd Phillips’ 2019 film Joker, including the furor that greeted its release, in order to argue for a mode of aesthetic populism in which the category of ‘people’ remains a virtual or potential category that can drive artistic practice. To describe this, I draw on what Deleuze, in his philosophy of cinema, termed fabulation.

Нормативность в философии киноискусства (обзор конференции)

The article is devoted to the All-Russian scientific conference "Normativity in the Philosophy of Cinema", organized jointly by Volgograd State University, Lomonosov Moscow State University, and the Russian Philosophical Society. Lomonosov Moscow State University and the Volgograd branch of the Russian Philosophical Society. The participants of the conference focused their attention on the fact that cinema inevitably reflects the nature of normativity because, in accordance with the traditions of European dramaturgy, the storyline is based on the event of disorder, and the conflict structure requires that the figure of the violator is opposed by the antagonist, that is, the follower and defender of the social norm. At the same time, cinetext can reflect both the author's ideas and purely typical notions of law prevailing in culture. At the same time, the cinema, among other things, can be used as an experimental ground for working out a new way of social action. In addition to the philosophical approach proper, interdisciplinary approaches to the problems in question were presented: legal, historical, sociological, and theological. In the framework of the thematic sessions and plenary lectures of the conference, various aspects of philosophical comprehension of cinema in general and the idea of normativity as its substantial leitmotif were discussed, including genre specificity (crime films, horror, serials); the works of certain masters (A. Tarkovsky, F. Fellini, M. Scorsese, W. Anderson, M. Zakharov, E. Ryazanov, G. Daneliya, etc.); national codes of film cultures; reflection of historical events, including traumatic ones, and their processing by means of film language; representation of religious symbols and meanings in cinema; normative modes of perception of a film production. Thus, we have seen that cinema, as a fractal way of seeing modern culture, is an exceptionally rich and grateful material for philosophical thinking.

Remote Work as Deleuzian Cinematography: Organizationality Beyond the Frame

Increasingly, work and management happen in remote and decentered ways. The Covid-19 crisis has both made visible and amplified this trend. While they are in front of their computers, trapped between the frames of their screens, workers are more and more part of a cinematographic experience they do not choose or become mere activities in a broader assemblage of images. In the latter situation, work and management become signs, flows, activities at the surface of screens. How to describe this cinematographic experience? Here, we come back to the philosophy of cinema offered by Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze. We stress their differences and complementarities. In the context of remote work, which we also call “screen work”, we show how the concept of depth (in particular in Deleuze's philosophy) can be particularly helpful to understand the temporalities and spatialities at stake in decentered new work imageries.

Cinema and human dignity: Pope Francis’s cinematic proposal and its relationship with filmic personalism

This article considers whether the Pope Francis’s proposal in his approach to cinema as a subject for reflection, i.e., as a suitable media for presenting ideas, can be related to an interpretation of the best cinema that highlights the dignity of the person, particularly the most fragile and defenceless, and which thereby helps us train our gaze on true humanity. To answer this question, the meaning of Hollywood’s ‘filmic personalism’ as a cinematic philosophy and its relationship with film studies will be analysed. Following from this, the cinematographic phenomenology of film studies of French personalism will be related to Hollywood’s film personalism to show that there are elements of deep convergence around defending cinema as an art that serves personal dignity, despite certain aspects of difference. This will be particularly visible in the interrelationship that can be traced between Italian neorealism and Hollywood filmic personalism, proving that neorealism was a form of personalism for some Italian writers. At the same time, we keep in mind that there are current expressions of filmic personalism. We conclude with solid arguments that are given to establish an approach between the cinematic proposal of Pope Francis and filmic personalism.

An Analysis of the Aesthetics of Temporal Space in Jia Zhangke's Films in the Perspective of Deleuze's Film- Philosophy

This paper examines Jia Zhangke's aesthetics of time and space based on Deleuze's cinema philosophy as a theoretical foundation. The paper's central thesis is that Jia Zhangke creates an aesthetic of space and time in film through the presentation of temporal images. Through an analysis of Jia Zhangke's The Good Man of Three Gorges, The World, and Xiao Wu, it is argued that Jia not only provides a practical example of Deleuze's philosophical theory of cinema but also portrays a complex and realistic social spectacle in the context and culture of China.

Philosophical aspect of culturological study of cinema

This article focuses on the issue of developing a separate trend in cinema studies — the philosophy of cinema. The experience of the auteur cinema, related to direct visualization of the philosophical underones in films, and its relation to such philosophical movements as the philosophy of life, existentialism, postmodernism, etc, creates a neccessity to develop such a trend. The article underlines some specific problems of cinema that require philosophical research. This is, first, the problem of the cinematic experience that the authors put under scrutiny discussing the collective monograph “Cinematic experience. History — theory — practice”, produced by the philosophers from St. Petersburg. Secondly, it is the specifics of time in cinema, for the discussion of which the authors address the concepts of A. Bergson, M. Heidegger and G. Deleuze. Thirdly, the article raises the question of corporeality, this topical philosophical problem today — here it is discussed in relation to cinema. The intrusion of technology into the communication of cinema with the mass audience noticeably destroys the existing connection between the rational and the sensual, the spiritual and the corporeal principles in thinking and in the perception of art.

Philosophical aspect of culturological study of cinema

This article focuses on the issue of developing a separate trend in cinema studies — the philosophy of cinema. The experience of the auteur cinema, related to direct visualization of the philosophical underones in films, and its relation to such philosophical movements as the philosophy of life, existentialism, postmodernism, etc, creates a neccessity to develop such a trend. The article underlines some specific problems of cinema that require philosophical research. This is, first, the problem of the cinematic experience that the authors put under scrutiny discussing the collective monograph “Cinematic experience. History — theory — practice”, produced by the philosophers from St. Petersburg. Secondly, it is the specifics of time in cinema, for the discussion of which the authors address the concepts of A. Bergson, M. Heidegger and G. Deleuze. Thirdly, the article raises the question of corporeality, this topical philosophical problem today — here it is discussed in relation to cinema. The intrusion of technology into the communication of cinema with the mass audience noticeably destroys the existing connection between the rational and the sensual, the spiritual and the corporeal principles in thinking and in the perception of art.

The Act of Killing: Sins Appearing on the Surface of the Crystal-Image

As one of the critical concepts in Gilles Deleuze's philosophy of cinema, crystal-image makes visible the pure state of time that contains the real and the imaginary, the present and the past, the actual and the virtual in a way that cannot be distinguished from each other. This type of image, in which the virtuality of the past and the actuality of the present coexist, is of great importance in providing an audio-visual context that can be investigated to discover the connection between time and memory. In this article, firstly, based on Henri Bergson's views on time and memory, recollection-image and the use of flashback will be considered, and in connection with this, it will be explained what the crystal-image is. Then, it is aimed to reveal the characteristics of the perfect crystal-image, which is the first of the four types mentioned by Deleuze, through the analysis of The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, 2012), which is identified as one of the contemporary examples. In line with this goal, the self-confrontation of paramilitary gang leader Anwar Congo, who is the main character, through becoming a spectator of his own life due to the manifestation of the pure state of time within the crystal-image, will be explained by analyzing certain scenes selected from the documentary. In addition, the possibility of transmission of the crystallized personal memory to the silver screen independently and objectively from the fictional history that surrounds it will be investigated, and the possible practical benefits of crystal-image will be addressed through the change in the perception of the national and international public opinion regarding the Indonesian mass killings of 1965-1966 after the screening of the documentary.

Philosophical aspect of culturological study of cinema

This article focuses on the issue of developing a separate trend in cinema studies — the philosophy of cinema. The experience of the auteur cinema, related to direct visualization of the philosophical underones in films, and its relation to such philosophical movements as the philosophy of life, existentialism, postmodernism, etc, creates a neccessity to develop such a trend. The article underlines some specific problems of cinema that require philosophical research. This is, first, the problem of the cinematic experience that the authors put under scrutiny discussing the collective monograph “Cinematic experience. History — theory — practice”, produced by the philosophers from St. Petersburg. Secondly, it is the specifics of time in cinema, for the discussion of which the authors address the concepts of A. Bergson, M. Heidegger and G. Deleuze. Thirdly, the article raises the question of corporeality, this topical philosophical problem today — here it is discussed in relation to cinema. The intrusion of technology into the communication of cinema with the mass audience noticeably destroys the existing connection between the rational and the sensual, the spiritual and the corporeal principles in thinking and in the perception of art.

How Does a Thought Scream? The Possibility of the New as a Condition of Political Ontology in Gilles Deleuze’s The Time-Image

The paper deals with Gilles Deleuze’s The Time-Image not as an essay on the philosophy of cinema but as a theory of political ontology. The meaning of the concept of “scream” must first be clarified. This concept appears in Deleuze’s lectures from 1980 in the context of the sequence of cinema, thought and shock from the second volume of his book Cinema. To indicate the immanent political significance of Deleuze’s cinema studies, the article clarifies the conceptual difference between two types of cinema. The distinction between “the movement-image” and “the time-image” is examined as ontological rather than aesthetic. In particular, the paper shows the conservative effects of “classic” cinema in the context of Henri Bergson’s ontology. The critical potential of modern cinema, which Deleuze considers in The Time-Image, is a condition for undermining the logic of “habit,” which is reproduced by the cinema of “the movement-image.” The condition for a break with this logic is the effect of shock, which is produced by the distinctive characteristics of modern cinema. Deleuze finds the political significance of modern cinema in the context of the possibility of the New which is not predetermined by previous conditions. The rupture with the status quo is ensured by contrasting two concepts of the Whole viewed either as the Open or as the Outside. The difference between them is examined in connection with the critical distance from the ontology of Henri Bergson, which is an imaginary solution of the problem of the New and therefore the problem of conservatism in the universe of “classic” cinema. In order to identify the political significance of “the image-time,” it is necessary to indicate the constitutive role of temporal rupture in modern cinema. It is this logic that provides the effect of shock for thought and allows it to break away from permanent repetition.

PHILIPPE GRANDRIEUX’S TRANSVERSAL CINEMA

The article deals with the examination of philosophical reflections as to the interrelation of a film and philosophy. The purpose of article is to research the anthropological aspects of various directions in philosophy of cinema forming from the beginning of the XXI century. The presented research will also help to designate the feature of the articulation of “human body/visual image” in the modern philosophical and culturology conceptions. The examination of philosophy of cinema of the end of the beginning of the XXI century allows allocating of several strategies for understanding the subject “a body and image”. These strategies of philosophical anthropology of cinema do not present integrally all possible directions of conceptualization of the interrelation of an affect and image in Grandrieux’s films. Yet, the given schemes have drawn the basic configurations of dispositives, which distribute the economy of the human/animal, natural/artificial, inherent/cultural, human/technical. The specified strategies are evident not only in various philosophical conceptions, but also in theoretical research of cinema, which deal with the studies of the subject “a transversal and film”. In a number of modern philosophical conceptions, the transversal concept is defined even more broadly and is corresponded to the concept of actual. The transversal in Grandrieux’s films is an extension of the visual turn and is one of the most important tendencies of hot cognition. Therefore, in the philosophy of the beginning of the XXI century the interpretation of Grandrieux’s films is used in three nominal deuce: 1) image and affect; 2) dispositive and transversal; 3) vision and touch. These strategies of reconstruction of Grandrieux’s films do not present integrally all possible.

Cinema Philosophy, Modeling Method, and the Problems of Decadent Cinematic Work of Art

Cinema Philosophy, Modeling Method, and the Problems of Decadent Cinematic Work of Art

The pathic/haptic relationship in philosophy of cinema. The case of "Doubt" (John Patrick Shanley, 2008)

Partiendo de algunos pasajes del Tratado de la Argumentación de Perelman y Olbrechts-Tyteca y de la Retorica de Aristóteles, el artículo examina el papel de la componente emocional (denominada “pática”) en la experiencia fílmica. La discusión comporta tres pasos: 1) se recuerda el concepto de significación añadida que Kulesov y Canudo atribuyen al cine; 2) se muestra in situ, en relación con la película Doubt (J.P. Shanley, 2008), el modo en que actúa tal significación, lo que nos lleva al análisis del concepto de lo “háptico”; 3) se intenta buscar, mediante el uso de los instrumentos analíticos de la fenomenología husserliana, el origen de la componente pática. Se concluye que nuestro análisis indica la pertinencia de un nuevo concepto de racionalidad definido por la “razón pática”.Palabras clave: Experiencia fílmica, fenomenología, háptico, razón pática, significación.

The Cinematic Bergson: From Virtual Image to Actual Gesture

Deleuze’s film-philosophy makes much of the notion of virtual images in Bergson’s Matter and Memory, but in doing so he transforms a psycho-meta-physical thesis into a (very) unBergsonian ontological one. In this essay, we will offer a corrective by exploring Bergson’s own explanation of the image as an “attitude of the body”—something that projects an actual, corporeal, and postural approach, not only to cinema, but also to philosophy. Indeed, just as Renoir famously said that “a director makes only one movie in his life. Then he breaks it into pieces and makes it again,” so Bergson wrote that each philosopher only makes one “single point” throughout his or her whole career. And this one point, he then declares, is like a “vanishing image,” only one best understood as an attitude of the body. It is embodied image that underlies an alternative Bergsonian cinema of the actual and the body—one that we will examine through what Bergson’s has to say about “attitude” as well as “gesture” and “mime.” We will also look at it through a gestural concept enacted by a film, to be precise, the five remakes that comprise Lars von Trier’s and Jørgen Leth’s The Five Obstructions (2003). This will bring us back to the idea of what it is that is being remade, both by directors and philosophers, in Renoir’s “one film” and Bergson’s singular “vanishing image” respectively. Is the “one” being remade an image understood as a representation, or is it a gesture, understood as a bodily movement? It is the latter stance that provides a wholly new and alternative view of Bergson’s philosophy of cinema.

Dvasinio kino konceptas Gilles’io Deleuze’o filosofijoje Jūratė Baranova

[straipsnis ir santrauka lietuvių kalba; santrauka anglų kalba]
 Ar įmanoma, pasitelkus kino meno atvertas galimybes, ugdyti jautrumą vertybiniams apsisprendimams? Ar yra galimas kinas, kuris kreiptų žiūrovo nuostatas dvasinių vertybių link? Tikėtina, kad tai galbūt perteklinis reikalavimas meno žanrui, kuris arba nesiekia, arba nepajėgus realizuoti tokio pobūdžio užduočių. Gali būti, kad, netgi siekdamas įgyvendinti tokio lygmens užduotis, kinas yra nepajėgus savo priemonėmis jas atliepti. Straipsnis prasideda nuo provokuojančio klausimo: kodėl galima suabejoti „sakralaus meno“ galimybe? Religinio meno kaip kičinio oksimorono galimybę įžvelgia Tomas Sodeika, remdamasis neįmanomybės vaizduoti sacrum reprodukuojamuose vaizduose prielaida. Straipsnyje analizuojamas Gilles’io Deleuze’o (1925–1995) kino filosofijoje formuluojamas dvasinio pasirinkimo kino konceptas, keliant klausimą, ar jis negalėtų atverti lygiagrečios kičiniam religiniam kinui, bet visgi steigiančios religinės etikos vertybes refleksijos galimybės. Straipsnio autorė prieina prie išvados, kad Deleuze’as, pratęsdamas Søreno Kierkegaard’o įžvelgtą trijų dvasios lygmenų koncepciją ketvirtąja (laiko) ir penktąja (dvasios) dimensijomis, suranda dvasinio kino, lygiagretaus religiniam, kuris artimas revoliuciniam, apibrėžties galimybę. Tokio kino prielaidas Deleuze’as fokusuoja į prancūzų kino režisieriaus Roberto Bressono (1901–1999) kūrybą, tačiau straipsnio autorė jam priskirtų ir Ingmaro Bergmano (1918–2007), ir Andrejaus Tarkovskio (1932–1986), kaip, beje, ir šiame straipsnyje, ir Deleuze’o kino filosofijoje neminimo Krzystofo Kieslowskio (1941–1996) kūrybą. Tokio priskyrimo kriterijus būtų paties Deleuze’o siūloma Atverties kaip viseto, judančio tarp dviejų dimensijų (erdvinės ir laikinės), leidžiančio išvengti radikalaus materijos ir dvasios supriešinimo, paradigma. Bressono kinematografas straipsnyje pasitelkiamas kaip paties Deleuze’o išskirtas dvasinio kino vienas iš tipinių atvejų, atsispindintis ne tik Deleuze’o, bet ir Tarkovskio refleksijose. Pamatinė prielaida dvasinio kino steigčiai, autorės manymu, yra kaip būtina galimybė, Deleuze’o išskirta konkrečiame filme, iki galo neregima, bet galbūt fliuktuojanti anapus regimo lauko (hors-champ).

The Cognitive Value of Blade Runner


 
 The purpose of this essay is to argue that Blade Runner: The Final Cut (Ridley Scott, 2007) has cognitive value which is inseparable from its value as a work of cinema. I introduce the cinematic philosophy debate in §1. §2 sets out my position: that the Final Cut affirms the proposition there is no necessary relation between humanity and human beings. I outline the combination of cinematic depiction with distinctive features of the narrative’s peripeteia in §3. In §4, I explain the cognitive value of the peripeteia.