This article examines work by the artist Eduardo Paolozzi related to the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, arguing that Paolozzi’s print series As Is When, executed in 1964-65, together with work from nearly three decades later (Manuscript from Cassino), can be seen as a comprehensive examination of Wittgenstein’s earlier and later philosophy. Further, this article argues that Paolozzi’s take on Wittgenstein forms a new aesthetic ontology of “film”, embedding its reading of Wittgenstein in a reified Platonic cave, whose escaped philosopher (...) finds himself basking only in the light of the artificial sun of the flickering cinema light. (shrink)

From its beginning, film set forth a new scene for ethical and moral engagement. Formore than a century, film’s frame and image have opened fresh space for enactingethical and moral conflicts and dilemmas. To scholars and critics such as André Bazin, itbecame apparent that in film matters of aesthetics influence ethical and moral questions. As Dudley Andrew says: ‘In cinema, aesthetic issues leadimmediately to moral ones’ .Today, the connection between aesthetic and ethical issues in film acquires (...) newmeaning from the relationship between time and ethics as described so differently byGilles Deleuze, Paul Ricoeur, and Emmanuel Levinas. While only Deleuze directlyaddresses and discusses cinema, the work of all three on the relationship of time andethics to a variety of issues – movement, space, otherness, identity, selfhood, andnarrative – also pertains to and informs the interaction between aesthetic and ethicalissues in film. Indeed, Deleuze and Ricoeur contrive compelling theories, concepts, andoperations concerning time, movement and narrative that facilitate film’s participation inethical discourse. From a Levinasian perspective, their work provides tools and meansfor relating film and Levinasian ethical language to each other. Individually andcollectively, Deleuze, Ricoeur, and Levinas seek a discordant and disruptive temporalorder for re-engaging ethical and moral exigencies and investing new ideas and freshimagination in a revivified ethical debate. In this debate, aesthetic issues and ethicalissues in film continue the process of mutual regeneration. (shrink)

What is film? Why are movies important? Why do we care about them in the way we do? How do we think of the connections between the projected image and what it is actually an image of? Most movie-goers assume that they are entitled to make jugments and come to conclusions about the movies they see--to evaluate how "good" they are, or what they "mean." But what do they base, or what should they base, their judgments on? In this (...) thought-provoking new book, Stanley Cavell, a professor of philosophy and aesthetics at Harvard who has long taken a lively interest in movies, looks closely at these and other questions concerning America's most popular art and the perceptions we make of, by, and through it. His answers are surprising and important--not only to our understanding of film and of ourselves, but to our expectations of life and art. Mr. Cavell's explorations of some of Hollywood's stars, directors, and most famous films--as well as his fresh look at Godard, Bergman, and other great European directors--will be of lasting interest to movie-viewers and intelligent people of all ages. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to examine the ontological effects of digital technology, and determine whether digital films, traditional films, and pre-traditional motion pictures belong to the same category. I begin by defining the parameters of my inquiry, and then consider the two most significant consequences of the new technology. §2 proposes a decisive refutation of the causal relationship between reality and photography. §3 identifies an end to the dominance of photorealistic film over animation, and argues for an (...) inversion of that relationship, whereby animation is paramount. Finally, I consider the implications of these consequences for film ontology, compare theories, and conclude in favour of Berys Gaut, for whom digital film is the latest incarnation of a history of moving pictures that stretches back for centuries. (shrink)

In this paper, we address the problematic of film narration and its narrator from a re-reading of Émile Benveniste’s theory of enunciation in open discussion with both the theories of film enunciation that have derived from it, and the cognitive theories that, by discarding it, have tried to take its place. This has led us to a differentiation between two dimensions of the problem of enunciation that are usually ignored: that which separates the act of enunciation and the (...) subject who performs it from that of the textual subjects who inscribe that act in the text. An erroneous understanding of the modes of enunciation of story and discourse has derived from their ignorance, which has led to reducing the former to a kind of form that derives from the latter, constituting no more than a form of discourse that would hide its basis. A precise enunciative definition of the lie is derived from their conscience. Certainly, there is always a subject of the act of enunciation whose traces can be recognized in the materiality of the statement. But there is a properly ontological distance that separates them – as material traces – from the enunciator, as a purely formal textual figure that, by being that, may or may not be present in the text. In this way, the Benveniste’s affirmation can be sustained according to which the story, the pure mode of the narrative, so to speak, is characterized by the absence – not the erasure, nor the invisibility – of any enunciator. (shrink)

This book is about film's encounter with love throughout the medium's history. It is also about the philosophy of love... [it] outlines a new metaphysics and ontology of love as a reciprocal erotic relationship. This study argues that film's special narrative language is particularly well suited to depicting love in this way. It begins with early silent directors, such as Joseph von Sternberg, and concludes with contemporary filmmakers, such as Sophia Coppola; it also compares classical French and (...) American love films of the 1940s with modernist films by Luis Buñuel, François Truffaut, and Wong Kar Wai, amongst many others"--Page [4] of cover. (shrink)

The present essay analyzes the reflections on the ontology of cinema in the works of Stanley Cavell. In particular, it highlights the way in which Cavell foresees in the philosophy of ordinary language as in Hollywood comedy, as many forms of that effort of redemption from the human condition which he calls skepticism, understood not so much as a philosophical position but rather as an underlying condition, as a reaction to the knowledge conceived as human knowledge, that is, experienced (...) as potentially imperfect. Cinema, therefore, turns into an unveiling of the inadequacy of systematic philosophical frameworks and underlines the insufficiency of the interpretative patterns of research that either end up at an intellectualistic level or return, instead, to a mystic-intuitionist one. (shrink)

Realism has a significant place in the history of film theory. The claim that film is essentially a realistic art form has been employed to justify the art-status of films as well as the distinctness of film as a form. André Bazin and others once used realist ontologies of film to try to establish realist teleologies and universal critical standards. I briefly sketch this history before considering the prospects for various versions of realism: Bazin’s, as well (...) as Kendall Walton’s and Gregory Currie’s less ambitious but more plausible accounts. I argue that these theories, though they are the best cases we have for realism, are not adequate ontologies of film. However, while prior realist philosophers and critics were wrong to think that realism can provide a critical standard for all films, realism is nonetheless a praiseworthy filmic achievement - one that the opponent of ontological realism should not dismiss. (shrink)

Taking its cue from Ian C. Jarvie’s views on the philosophy of film and his approach to the ontology of films as Popperian “World Three” objects, this chapter elaborates on the latter by highlighting similar theses by Bernard Bolzano and Gottlob Frege in order to safeguard an alternative route toward the possibility of film being vehicles of philosophy.

What sort of thing is film? Before we can answer this question, we’ll have to first determine which things count as “films” in the relevant sense and work out what we ought to look for in an acceptable answer. There is little consensus among philosophers of film on any stage of this process. Here I make the case for a particular understanding of “film” to investigate as well as a particular set of criteria to use in that (...) investigation. I then apply those criteria to a number of available candidate theories. In the end, I do not offer an answer to our question so much as an approach to it, along with some strategies for future research. (shrink)

Introduction: acts, film, religion: context and perspectives -- Constituting a figure of an activist citizen -- I act therefore I am -- I create therefore I am: towards the cinema of act -- Constructing activism through film: creation of new scene -- Creation of space unbroken links between the citizens: Ana Arabia -- Acts of citizenship and the foreign "other": circles -- Enacting (European) citizenship through film: Inferno -- Creating a rupture: Wadjda -- Conclusion: creative acts, transformation (...) and activist citizens. (shrink)

This article considers film as a form of artificial intelligence (AI). This non-anthropocentric hypothesis was first formulated in 1946 by filmmaker and theorist Jean Epstein and regards film as the thinking performance of a technical apparatus, the cinematograph, which is a manifestation of machine thinking based on the holistic entanglement of thought and world, film and philosophy. The article pursues an enquiry into ‘thinking’: one of the most prominent and oldest topics considered in philosophy, and also essential (...) to art and film. Thinking is not only characterised as a sense (like sight or taste) but as a creative and, ultimately, intra-active act. The possibility of film as AI is approached not only from a Deleuzian angle, long appraised by film-philosophy, but also through questions recently raised by theories of artistic research and the speculative-materialist turn in contemporary philosophy. The latter have as a common denominator a strong critique of anthropocentrism in Western philosophy; the article enquires into this criticism from different angles and applies it to the main hypothesis of this analysis – to regard film as a form of AI. (shrink)

The interest in television programming, its content, even its semiotics and at times the various levels of rhetoric, economic context and controlling interests, have been thoroughly analyzed. This is even the case with the analyses of the phenomenon of reruns, although one could surmise that the analyses are somewhat artificial. What has been left out of these important contributions are some of the most fundamental compositions of media in general and television in particular. These compositions will be called ontological, i.e. (...) explicating the presumed nature of media, all the way to its very substance. The latter can only be intimated, since the more comprehensible aspects will be offered first. (shrink)

A review of U. Mäki (ed.). Fact and Fiction in Economics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. pp. xvi 384. ISBN 0521 00957. As people interested mainly in theory, methodologists and philos...

Examines the overlap between film and philosophy in three distinct ways: epistemological issues in film-making and viewing; aesthetic theory and film; and film as a medium of philosophical expression. This title available in eBook format. Click here for more information . Visit our eBookstore at: www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk.

In this essay I consider the device of depthlessness in film. I am interested in particular in the ways in which this device can determine, or at least raise questions about, the nature of the fictional world. Taking my cue from two films from the turn of the century – Gary Ross' 1998 film Pleasantville and Matthieu Kassovitz' 1995 La Haine – as well as, more broadly, arts historical and cultural theoretical debates, where rather more attention has been (...) devoted to the issue of depthlessness, I focus on moments in which depth, that is, in Andre Bazin's oft-cited words, the “continuity” of the fictional realm, is flattened so as to trace the correlation between depthlessness and the ontology of the fictional world. The two strategies I look at are shallow focus and the dolly zoom. What I intend, here, is to offer some first, superficial, reflections that may allow us to begin thinking about this cinematic notion of the depthless as a device and concept in its own right, with its own ration... (shrink)

In Film and Phenomenology, Allan Casebier develops a theory of representation first indicated in the writings of the father of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl, and then applies it to the case of cinematic representation. This work provides one of the clearest expositions of Husserl's highly influential but often obscure thought. It also demonstrates the power of phenomenology to illuminate the experience of the art form unique to the twentieth-century cinema. Film and Phenomenology is intended as an antidote to all (...) hitherto existing theories about the nature of cinematic representation, whether issuing from classic sources such as the film theory of Andre Bazin or the post-structuralist synthesis of Lacanian psychoanalysis, Barthesian textual analysis and Metzean cine-semiotics. Casebier shows how a phenomenological account of representation will further the aims of any film theory. Developing a viable feminist film theory, legitimizing the documentary, answering the challenge of Derridean deconstruction, properly theorizing narrativity, Film and Phenomenology argues that theory of film must be Realist both with respect to epistemology and ontological issues. In this way, this work runs contrary to the whole course of contemporary film theory which has been deeply anti-Realist. (shrink)

When in 1958 André Bazin published the first volume of What is Cinema?, he was already recognized as French film's pre-eminent thinker. His position at Cahiers du cinéma and his influence on the young directors who were to launch the New Wave guaranteed his centrality and his influence. What is nevertheless surprising about this unparalleled success is how fundamentally conservative his writing was. His belief that ‘true realism’ constituted the ontology and the essence of cinema was remarkably out (...) of step with the major philosophical movements of his time. Paradoxically, it was not Bazin but Jean Epstein who best explained and defined the modernity of cinema. A reading of Epstein's Le Cinéma du diable will allow us to appreciate just how paradoxical it was that it was Bazin and not Epstein who was ‘selected’ to present cinema to a France immersed in existential and post-existential thought. (shrink)

Although fictional characters have long dominated the reception of literature, films, television programs, comics, and other media products, only recently have they begun to attract their due attention in literary and media theory. The book systematically surveys todays diverse and at times conflicting theoretical perspectives on fictional character, spanning research on topics such as the differences between fictional characters and real persons, the ontological status of characters, the strategies of their representation and characterization, the psychology of their reception, as well (...) as their specific forms and constellations in - and across - different media, from the book to the internet.". (shrink)

Gilles Deleuze and belief in the world -- A struggle against oneself: cinema as technology of the self -- The evidence of film and the presence of the world: Jean-Luc Nancy's cineastic ontology -- Cinema as human art: rescuing aura in gesture -- Exhibiting or presenting?: politics, aesthetics and mysticism in Benjamin's and Deleuze's concepts of cinema -- Made and yet true: on the aesthetics of presence of the heroic -- An art of gesture: returning narrative and movement (...) to images -- It is if we could trust: fiction and aesthetics of the political -- All you need is love: Cavell and the comedy of remarriage of film and philosophy. (shrink)

It is widely held in theories of narrative that all works of literary narrative fiction include a narrator who fictionally tells the story. However, it is also granted that the personal qualities of a narrator may be more or less radically effaced. Recently, philosophers and film theorists have debated whether movies similarly involve implicit audio-visual narrators. Those who answer affirmatively allow that these cinematic narrators will be radically effaced. Their opponents deny that audio-visual narrators figure in the ontology (...) of movies at all, and many have argued that the ‘effaced’ literary narrator is an illusion as well. In this paper, I attempt to sort out the central issues that arise in these debates, defending the existence of effaced narrators in both literature and film. (shrink)

This chapter surveys foundational concepts in the history of phenomenology for the purpose of highlighting their relevance for key contemporary issues in the philosophy of film. A central argument concerns phenomenology’s capacity for unraveling the ontology of film, given phenomenology’s emphasis on accounting for the ontology of phenomena through description based in first-person experience. On this ground, the chapter defends the claim that film’s ontology stems from the projective intentionality of the film viewer, (...) where the communicative nature of embodied vision also figures into play. The principal phenomenological frameworks taken up are those of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, as well as the work of contemporary film scholar Vivian Sobchack. (shrink)

This dissertation is an effort to describe the effects of Postmodern thought in a variety of narrative forms, including novels, film, and computer games. Using Brian McHale's description of the focal point of Modernist narratives as being epistemological and Postmodernist narratives as being concerned primarily with ontological issues, I trace the possible meaning of the changing understanding of these concepts in the twentieth century. In addition, I interrogate the ramifications of the Postmodern resolution to the crisis of epistemology presented (...) through the work of Modernist writers to test whether or not the Postmodern idea of "claiming worlds" is, indeed, a reasonable or viable resolution to this crisis. ;It is my contention that a changing sense of the relationship between the definitions of epistemology and ontology in traditional literary narrative has been affected by and has affected the narratives of less traditionally "literary" media. In order to show that this change has occurred, I use a number of texts to serve as examples, first, of the conception of epistemology as presented in Modernist works like James Joyce's "The Dead" and Edith Wharton's A Son At the Front and then of the conception of ontology as presented in Postmodernist work like Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children. I then examine more popular narrative forms to examine how Postmodernism's focus on what I term an "epistemologically derived ontology" has crept into the general culture. My specific examples in these cases are Norman Spinrad's cyberpunk novel Little Heroes , the film The Matrix, and a number of video games, particularly online games. ;My final conclusions are exemplified by the film Memento, which contains many of the Postmodern tenets I propose are typical of mainstream Postmodern works and which also serves as a basis for revealing some of my ethical concerns about the ramifications of this shift in understanding of the aforementioned philosophical categories. (shrink)

The prevalence of dementia is increasing worldwide but there is still no hope of a cure. Huge resources go into biomedical research, whose reductive ‘enactment’ has severe consequences for women, who are predominantly affected by dementia. To challenge such tragic enactment, this article considers ‘multiple ontologies’ of the most common type of dementia – Alzheimer’s disease – in the popular fictional film adaptations Still Alice and A Song for Martin. Using a post-humanist account of feminist visual studies of technoscience, (...) this comparative film analysis reveals how gender supersedes AD oversteering the hierarchical dualisms between health and pathology, human and nonhuman, and biomedical and artistic modes of knowing about Alzheimer’s. The author argues that these films stress the potential of the arts, as a multisensorial post-humanist embodied state of becoming with AD, to challenge hierarchical dualisms and innovatively contribute to dementia care. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis review essay of Shawn Loht’s new book, Phenomenology of Film: A Heideggerian Account of the Film Experience, not only offers an ontological reading of the filmic experience inspired by Heidegger’s philosophy but also contributes substantially to the ongoing debate of whether or not film is a medium that is legitimately philosophical. In addition to confronting unique ideas about film that emerge from Loht’s analysis of Heidegger’s phenomenological ontology of Dasein, including a reading of later (...) Heidegger of the “Turn,” this essay also seeks to think with and then beyond Loht in a way that might inspire readers to further pursue these issues in relation to a potentially reconceived understanding of the practice of film-as-philosophy. (shrink)

The paper begins with a more carefully stated version of ontologically neutral (ON) logic, originally introduced in (Hailperin, 1997). A non-infinitistic semantics which includes a definition of potential infinite validity follows. It is shown, without appeal to the actual infinite, that this notion provides a necessary and sufficient condition for provability in ON logic.

In this article, I claim that film matters to political theory not because of the stories films recount, but because the medium of film offers political theorists an image of political thinking that emphasizes the stochastic serialization of actions. I thus argue that the stochastic serialization of moving images that films project makes available for democratic theory an experience of resistance and change as a felt discontinuity of succession, rather than as an inversion of hierarchical power. In my (...) treatment of these issues, I rely on Hume's ontology of ‘broken appearances’ and ‘interrupted perceptions’, as well as Stanley Cavell's ontology of film as treated in The World Viewed. I elaborate the following four aspects of the relation between film and political theory: the action-image; discontinuity and the fact of series; actors, artificial persons and human somethings; and political resistance and an aesthetics of politics. The manner in which I proceed is to show the aspectual overlay between film and political thinking. Such a method of exposition suggests a further, methodological site where film matters to political theory: the stochastic serialization of moving images in film provides political theory with a genre for elaborating ideas that is not reducible to the analytics of causal argument. (shrink)

Judith Butler argues that every category of personal identity, such as gender, the body, nationality, sexuality, or ethnicity, is predicated in part on a crisis between what that identity affirms and what it excludes. How this crisis manifests itself in everyday life is key to understanding how identities are reinforced, negotiated, subverted, or rejected on both social and individual levels. In this paper I consider three films directed by Kurosawa Kiyoshi between 2001 and 2006, arguing that they are especially competent (...) in not only representing ontological tensions of this kind within their narratives, but also in manifesting these tensions so that they are made viscerally available to the viewer as affect. To understand how this is achieved, I draw on the work of Susan Sontag, Judith Butler, and Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, among others, to articulate how a stylistic system, or aesthetic, is developed across these films, and what techniques contribute to its production. I find that key components... (shrink)

This paper explores some issues concerning the ontology of photography. It would appear that photography’s ontology bears some significant specificities comparing with other art forms. First, the study of negative film and printed photograph relations shows us that photography has a multi-layered ontology, since although the latter is ontologically dependent upon the former, it stands autonomously as work of art. Second, I will consider the problem of forgery in photography. It seems that photographs are autographic and (...) allographic, fakeable and unfakeable. Third, ontological status of negative film will be explored. Apparently, current ontological categories aren’t pertinent as far as negative-photograph’s ontology is concerned. That’s why, relying on Gérard Genette ontological notions, I propose to consider the negative film as «immanence» and the printed photograph as work’s «transcendence». In this regard, printed photograph functions as a manifestation of the negative film. (shrink)

This article reads a selection of films by Todd Haynes - Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1987), Velvet Goldmine (1998) and I'm Not There (2007) - through the post-structuralist lens of Deleuzian theorising about the self as a networked singularity rather than an essential subject. The overall aim of the piece is to consider Haynes' films as artefacts that require the participatory audience to be involved in their making. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's concept of the schizo is addressed to (...) investigate how a schizo consciousness can be opened by the Event of viewing art that uses incommensurable extremes of meta-textual referentiality. Further to this productive opening, I examine how such post-structuralist ontology can necessitate ethical concern. I conclude that Todd Haynes' film-making is specifically schizoanalytical in that it opens instances wherein the non-essential non-subject can encounter the vertigo of falling away from representation. I contend that this experience and the post-structuralist world view conveyed through it, is radically ethical because it resists the annihilation of possibility that is inherent to essentialism. (shrink)

Introduction: why did philosophy go to the movies? -- The analytic-cognitivist turn. The empire strikes back: critiques of "grand theory" -- The rules of the game: new ontologies of film -- Adaptation: philosophical approaches to narrative -- From cognitivism to film-philosophy. A.I.: cognitivism goes to the movies -- Bande à part: Deleuze and Cavell as film-philosophers -- Scenes from a marriage: film as philosophy -- Cinematic thinking. Hollywood in trouble: David Lynch's Inland empire -- "Chaos reigns": (...) anti-cognitivism in Lars von trier's Antichrist -- Song of the earth: cinematic romanticism in Malick's The new world -- Coda: "the six most beautiful minutes in the history of cinema". (shrink)

Traditional health sciences (including nursing) paradigms, conceptual models, and theories have relied heavily upon notions of the ‘person’ or ‘patient’ that are deeply rooted in humanistic principles. Our intention here, as a collective academic assemblage, is to question taken‐for‐granted definitions and assumptions of the ‘person’ from a critical posthumanist perspective. To do so, the cinematic works of filmmaker David Cronenberg offer a radical perspective to revisit our understanding of the ‘person’ in nursing and beyond. Cronenberg's work explores bodily transformation and (...) mutation, with the body as a fragile and malleable vessel. Cronenberg's work allows us to interrogate the body in all its complexity, contingency, and hybridity and provides avenues of rupture within current understandings of ‘the person’. Reinventing the definition of what it means to be human, critical posthumanism offers opportunities to both critique humanist theories and build affirmative futurities. Also drawing on the work of Deleuze and Guattari, specifically, their concept of becoming, we propose a critical posthumanist alternative to the conceptualization of the person in the health sciences, that of the becoming‐mutant, so frequently explored in Cronenberg's films. Such a conceptualization permits the inclusion of various technological interventions of the contemporary subject: The postperson. This position offers the health science disciplines a radical reconceptualization of the conceptual and theoretical approaches, extending beyond those trapped within the quagmire of humanistic principles. (shrink)

This article analyses Eric Rohmer’s film theory in the light of the Platonic triad of truth, beauty and goodness, as embodied by the aesthetic philosophy of Kant, Hegel and Schiller. Although his film theory shows affinity with Kant’s ideal of art as a form of natural beauty, I will argue that a broader look at Rohmer’s philosophical foundations is necessary. The point where Rohmer’s film theory deviates from Kant’s triadic philosophy is exactly the point where he approaches (...) the aesthetics of Hegel and Schiller. Turning towards their idealistic philosophy creates a new understanding of Rohmer’s film theory. His ideas on cinema’s ontology and value mirror both Hegel’s emphasis on beauty as the artistic and immediate manifestation of trans-historical truth and Schiller’s belief in beauty as the condition for morality and freedom. Plato’s conceptual and intertwined triad of truth, beauty and goodness lies at the basis of his affinity to 18th century aesthetic philosophy. This close affinity raises the question of the relation between film theory and philosophy, and Rohmer’s position in this debate. He enriches his own thoughts with those of philosophers that inspired him, and enriches their legacy with his cinema-related conclusions. (shrink)

Introduction. Observing the production and consumer area of modern cinematography makes it possible to draw conclusions about the value dominants of modern society, to conduct its sociocultural analysis. Cinema, both auteur and mass, is a way of reflecting and modeling the society spiritual state and its analysis makes it possible to draw quite serious and justified philosophical and social conclusions. The film in a philosophical sense is ontologized by the dominant intention of the era. Such a dominant intention of (...) modernity is hedonism. Pleasure, enjoyment, happiness, according to the humanities, is the basic values of the 21st century society. Cinema is the most comprehensive reaction to the needs of hedonism, since hedonistic prerequisites are to some degree laid down in its technical (movement, photographic phenomenology) and social nature (art and entertainment). In this regard, it seems relevant to conduct a philosophical analysis of the ontological level of modern cinema. The aim of the study is to conduct a philosophical analysis of the ontological level of modern cinema; identify ontological models, variations and combinations of which provide its artistic diversity. Methods: the authors use the general scientific methods of analysis and synthesis, the phenomenological method, since they identify the sensory intentions that underlie modern cinema. The authors also use the hermeneutic method, since they reveal the hidden meanings of the film, determined by the time and conditions of its creation, as well as the semiotic approach, which makes it possible to analyze the structural-semiotic whole of the film. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact that the authors analyze films from philosophical aspects, and not just cultural studies, as is customary. In modern cinema, the authors look for a reflection of the “social soul”, identify those intentions that underlie modern cinema, both auteur and mass. This makes it possible to deduce a typology of film models that have not previously been applied to the analysis of the film process. Results. During the analysis, the authors developed a hedonistic-ontological typology of cinematic models, identified five generative models of cinema, four of which have a hedonistic orientation: an alimentary model that pleases the recipient by intensively stimulating his perceptual sphere; a parkour model that gives pleasure to light and unhindered movement, minimizing the severity and resistance of the environment; an arcade model that provides the viewer the pleasure of victory through virtual immersion in the ups and downs of the “action film”; a detective model that gives the viewer pleasure through the removal of cognitive uncertainty. The fifth model, tentatively called existential, should lead the viewer into a complex philosophical state of being-with-self-self, an experience of one’s own fulfillment, associated with the experience of suffering. However, due to the hedonistic orientations of modern culture, this model is not relevant in the first decades of the 21st century. Conclusions. Philosophical analysis of modern cinema has revealed that at the ontological level it is based on the philosophy of hedonism. Modern cinema delivers the following types of pleasures to the recipient: enjoyment of the flesh of the world, enjoyment of bodily freedom in motion, enjoyment of peace, cognitive enjoyment. (shrink)

Cinema and the automatic sweetheart. The work of art as an automatic sweetheart. Automatic sweethearts without names: the place of films in the world of art -- Cinema and new realism. Realism and trasparency in film. What is new in realism? Cinema, philosophy and the rediscovery of reality -- Cinema and documediality. The movie theatre of Babel. Toward a new ontology of film. The digital secret of the moving image -- Cinema and the ontology of the (...) cell phone. Double signature. An ontology for mobile movies. Film me, stupid. On Eco on mobile phones and stupidity -- Cinema and animality. Humans, animals, machines. Anthropocentrism and science fiction cinema. (shrink)

Genres inform our appreciative practices. What it takes for a work to be a good work of comedy is different than what it takes for a work to be a good work of horror, and a failure to recognize this will lead to a failure to appreciate comedies or works of horror particularly well. Likewise, it is not uncommon to hear people say that a film or novel is a good work, but not a good work of x (where (...) x is the genre of that work). A work can be good all things considered, but genre membership provides us with an additional set of evaluative criteria over and above those of the medium, which colors how we interpret and appreciate the work. Given this importance, it is not surprising that philosophers of art have been interested in providing an account of what, exactly, a genre is. Despite this interest, there is not widespread agreement about what it takes for something to be a genre, nor what kinds of considerations are relevant in determining whether a work is a member of that genre. Beyond this, we might also want to know to what degree we ought to consider genre in evaluating a work of art and why it should matter at all. Here, I explore the variety of recent theories that philosophers have taken up on the topic of genre and why we should ultimately think of genres as artistic practices rather than the alternatives. (shrink)

Those of us who are captivated by new television, often find ourselves rewatching episodes or whole series. Why? What is the philosophical significance of the phenomenon of rewatching? In what follows, I engage with the ontology of television series in order to think about these questions around rewatching. I conclude by reflecting on what the entire discussion might suggest about the medium of new television, about ourselves, and also about our world and the possibilities of art in it.

In addressing the fundamental issues of Merleau-Ponty’s last ontology, for which Being is an expressive movement, this paper focuses on Merleau-Ponty’s reflections on painting, sculpture and, mainly, cinema. Two reasons justify such a choice. The first one is that Merleau-Ponty’s reflections on films as artistic objects are starting to become better known, while an exclusive privilege has been too long given to his texts on painting, sculpture and literature. An enrichment of our reading of his aesthetics and ontology (...) is thus made possible. The second reason is that, although it is true that Merleau-Ponty’s general aesthetic doctrine introduces us to the question of movement, of its meaning and its ontological status as “expression,” it is even more true that, in the framework of this general aesthetic doctrine, his analyses of the mode of expression of cinematographic images become especially significant. (shrink)

In addressing the fundamental issues of Merleau-Ponty’s last ontology, for which Being is an expressive movement, this paper focuses on Merleau-Ponty’s reflections on painting, sculpture and, mainly, cinema. Two reasons justify such a choice. The first one is that Merleau-Ponty’s reflections on films as artistic objects are starting to become better known, while an exclusive privilege has been too long given to his texts on painting, sculpture and literature. An enrichment of our reading of his aesthetics and ontology (...) is thus made possible. The second reason is that, although it is true that Merleau-Ponty’s general aesthetic doctrine introduces us to the question of movement, of its meaning and its ontological status as “expression,” it is even more true that, in the framework of this general aesthetic doctrine, his analyses of the mode of expression of cinematographic images become especially significant. (shrink)

Change according to Heraclitus is the only abiding substance observable in the universe. The implication of this view is that apart from change which remains the only constant thing, there is nothing that is held to be permanent. That is why life though relatively blissful, sooner or later is overtaken by death. Of course, death is always a dread to human conciousness. It is a phenomenon which man has always whished that it not be a reality. It is this facticity (...) and the finitude of life that the writer intends to critically examine in this paper. With the methodological approach of critical reflection, he aimed at achieving the goal of the study which concludes that death is an inescapable phenomenon awaiting every single existent being, though not the end of existence. (shrink)

Contemporary Complex Cinema. Complex conditions: the resurgence of narrative complexity ; Complex cinema as brain-candy for the empowered viewer ; Narrative taxonomies: simple, complex, puzzle plots -- Cognitive Approach to Contemporary Complex Cinema. Why an (embodied-)cognitive approach? ; Various forms of complexity and their effects on sense making ; Problematizing narrative linearity ; Complicating narrative structures and ontologies ; Under-stimulation and cognitive overload ; Contradictions and unreliabilities ; A cognitive approach to classifying complexity ; Deceptive unreliability and the twist (...) class='Hi'>film ; Disorienting but solvable puzzle films ; Impossible puzzle films -- Narrative Complexity and Dissonant Cognitions. The concept of cognitive dissonance ; Cognitions in dissonance: from social psychology to narrative engagement ; Types of dissonance in narrative comprehension ; Narrative incongruities ; Narrative impossibilities ; Cognitive access to impossible storyworlds: immersed and reflected operations ; 'Impossibilities' and embodied cognition ; Disrupting viewers' reliance on image schemas by perceptual impossibility ; Disrupting viewers' reliance on image schemas by formal impossibility -- Taming Dissonance: Cognitive Operations and Interpretive Strategies. Cognitive dissonance versus narrative coherence ; Reducing dissonance: interpretation and naturalization ; Foregrounding ; Narrating agency and authorship ; Artefact emotions and metareflexive appreciation ; Interpretation as dissonance reduction ; Coping with dissonance: frame-switches and poetic and aesthetic readings ; Frame-switching as hermeneutic play in impossible puzzle films ; Switching between narrative and symbolical readings: Enemy and Mulholland Drive ; Cognitive hesitation and the fantastic -- Impossible Puzzle Films: Between Art-Cinema and (Post-) Classical Narration. From art-cinema to puzzle films ; Art-cinema as a narrative mode ; Dissonance in modernist art-cinema ; Art-cinema as a cognitive reception frame ; Narrative complexity and meaning-making in art-cinema ; Impossible puzzle films and (post-)classical narration ; High degree of tellability ; Identification with goal-oriented characters ; Strong reliance on classical genre elements ; Adherence to classical narrative cohesion devices ; Inclusion of quasi-rational frames of naturalization -- Wallowing in Dissonance: The Attractiveness of Impossible Puzzles. Hermeneutic play and interpretive multiplicity ; Orientation, navigation, mapping ; Game logic and the fascination in failure ; Effort justification ; Diegetization of decoupling ; Fascination in infinity ; Destabilized ontological certainty ; Eudaimonic motivations and intrinsic needs. (shrink)