Cinema

A pretending-to-be paper, a logbook with some notes for a future, more elaborate, interpretation of one of the most complex and stratified cinemas out there. 8 1/2 by Fellini has been read, seen and enjoyed in many different ways, yet I believe there is something else that dwells within it and that awaits to be theoretically explored. Nevertheless, this is the path that, in the future, I would like to develop: 8 1/2 accounts for the incessant and contradictory flow of (...) existence, and the subject's desperate attempt to bring order to it; but perhaps the answer is to let the confused roller roll its way, accepting the incomprehensible vortex of existence. (shrink)

Tarkovsky a dezvoltat o teorie a cinematografiei pe care a numit-o "sculptarea în timp". Prin aceasta el a vrut să evidențieze caracteristica unică a cinematografiei ca mediu, aceea de aborda experiența noastră despre timp și de a o modifica. Filmul neregulat transcrie timpul în timp real. Folosind filmări lungi și câteva tăieturi în filmele sale, el a urmărit să ofere spectatorilor un sentiment de trecere a timpului, timpul pierdut și relația dintre un moment de timp și altul. El consideră cinematografia (...) ca o reprezentare a curenților distinctivi sau undelor de timp, transmise în film prin ritmul său intern. Ritmul este în centrul "filmului poetic." DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.35151.33447. (shrink)

La sinopsis del filme El cebo, dirigida en el año 1958 por el húngaro-español Ladislao Vajda (1906-1965), sintetiza la trama como sigue: “Un detective de policía decide investigar por su cuenta el caso del asesinato de una niña de ocho años, pues tiene dudas de que el principal sospechoso sea culpable.” Esta coproducción hispano-germano-suiza (Chamartín, Praesens-Film y CCC-Filmproduktion) es unánimemente calificada como “excepcional”, a caballo entre el género policíaco y el de terror. Como se defenderá, se está ante una fábula (...) fílmica cuyo propósito central, alrededor del cual se derivan múltiples cuestiones filosóficas de calado, consistía en ofrecer una narración con la intención didáctica de advertir a los espectadores –adultos y menores– de los crímenes sexuales contra los infantes. (shrink)

Cine y filosofía. Miradas oblicuas concreta la relación entre la filosofía y el cine como espacios de reflexión mediante el lenguaje nacido, en este caso, de secuencias de imágenes. Desde sus inicios con los hermanos Lumière, el cine ha evolucionado hasta convertirse en el llamado séptimo arte, objeto, pues, del estudio y análisis estético, pero, también, en una herramienta cultural y educativa fundamental para la reflexión. A través de los distintos ensayos que componen la obra, el lector descubrirá de qué (...) modo el cine genera diálogos filosóficos, y un modo de penetrar en los problemas profundos del individuo y la sociedad. (shrink)

In Difference and Repetition, Deleuze evokes dramatization when he suggests that intensities must dramatize the Ideas to condition their actualization. This allusion to an artistic category, in the midst of his metaphysical inquiry, has remained obscure, and despite its cruciality, it is not clear why he appeals to dramatization to explain any actualization and not solely the artistic actualization. This essay attempts to elucidate this ambiguity, by foregrounding a zone of torsional continuity, wherein intensity encounters the Idea and expresses it (...) through dramatization. This process is at play in the actualization of the organic field, social field, and aesthetic field, where an intensive larval subject—embryo, disentangled individual, artist—encounters the biological, social, or artistic Idea. While referring to the artistic encounter, it is shown how dramatization is indispensable to actualize every Idea. Finally, through Tarkovsky and Blanchot, the notion of poeticization is formulated that, while complementing dramatization, unveils certain tacit nuances of the Deleuzian actualization. (shrink)

Este artículo aborda los factores que permiten el desenvolvimiento natural de los detectives de la lengua británica: el padre Brown de Chesterton y James Bond, el agente 007, de Ian Fleming. Para hacer posible este estudio, recurro al análisis comparativo entre ambos personajes que componen el universo de las novelas policiales y de espionaje: caracterización del protagonista, personajes secundarios en su función complementaria o antagónica y el modo de solucionar un caso policial por parte del héroe.

En el 2021, se realizó una entrevista al actor, bailarín y coreógrafo Víctor Rojas, quien es recordado en Perú por haber participado en el filme norteamericano Max ha desaparecido (1995). Durante la conversación, se le plantearon algunas preguntas al invitado, con la finalidad de conocer un poco más sobre su desempeño artístico que mantiene hasta la actualidad.

En esta entrevista, Itxaso del Castillo Aira relata sus experiencias al especializarse en el tópico del terror cinematográfico y televisivo; en rigor, se refiere a la técnica audiovisual del found footage. Películas como El proyecto de la bruja de Blair, Actividad paranormal y REC han desarrollado este recurso para emerger una impresión de realismo en la trama de estos largometrajes al momento de ser proyectados. Así como esta técnica, la investigadora propondrá otras categorías vigentes, tales como las de las monstruas (...) o los filmes estribados en un horror noire. De esa manera, queda constancia de que esta conversación permitirá a los lectores tener un conocimiento más profundo sobre este tema del terror, que a muchos no deja de cautivar. (shrink)

Presents a diverse range of phenomenological approaches that explore and expand the subject of film-phenomenology Presents a range of different phenomenological thinkers to extend and develop the boundaries and debates within the field of film-phenomenology Brings together leading scholars from the varied fields of Film Studies, Philosophy and Phenomenology, Feminist Philosophy, Media Studies, Critical Theory, Cultural Studies, and Political Science Develops a much-needed inquiry in film-phenomenology and diversity With an interdisciplinary agenda, Film Phenomenologies investigates the emerging field of film phenomenology, (...) linking the fundamental significance of early thinkers and related methods of phenomenological investigation to newer emphases and diverse voices, such as Gaston Bachelard, Karen Barad, Simone de Beauvoir, bell hooks, Iris Murdoch and Hermann Schmitz. (shrink)

This paper wants to commemorate Akira Toriyama after his death by analyzing his major work, Dragon Ball. In the work, I tried to point out some of the most important characteristics of the series so to understand its success and influence in the mass culture: I found irony to be constitutive as a refined device that broadens the intended audience and, on the other hand, I detected social interests, specifically Japanese complexities, to be structural for the morality of the series.

The release of Andrew Dominik’s Blonde in 2022 on Netflix caused a furor of out-rage, and the film was seen variously as misogynistic, exploitative, and badly made. Here I wish to explore the ways in which we can think about the hyper-mediated image of Marilyn Monroe through Jean-Paul Sartre’s phenomenological consid-eration of imagination and Simone de Beauvoir’s existentialist analysis of ethics and ambiguity. I will argue that Sartre’s idea of irreality (unreality) guarantees the freedom of each individual and that the (...) irreal Marilyn Monroe, as played by Ana de Armas and others, reflects a freedom that, while ambiguous, is nevertheless necessary. (shrink)

Heidegger's philosophical project is generally seen as atheoretical and anti-logical because he remarked on the subjective conditions of knowledge and the everydayness of human behaviors. To him, Dasein's everyday reasoning is coercively and inevitably framed by the present-at-hand modes of understanding. Heidegger alerts us about the possible origins of present-at-hand modes of everyday experience. One of them is Das Man that, is associated with a categorical otherness for Heidegger. It can be regarded as an origin of the primordial scheme of (...) experiences for Dasein that takes those experiences for granted as an axiological ground for their lives in the World. Heidegger sees that process as an inauthentic condition for Dasein's fundamental character. Everyday reasoning generates a variety of present-at-hand instruments to understand and interpret the World and Dasein itself; thus, Dasein moves between Das Man and authentic modes. With a Heideggerian approach, this article observes how the characters in the film Druk take themselves out of Das Man and go into the authentic mode and how they do this through alcohol. The primary data source is Druk and the four teacher characters in the film. In the movie, alcohol is not a ready- to-hand object but a tool motivating its users and pushing them to perform. It is an example equivalent to the Heideggerian analogy of the hammer. The movie is a well-fitting example of the Heideggerian position with the story of four teachers who experiment with having a certain amount of alcohol in their blood to achieve a better version of themselves. (shrink)

"If the previous chapters by Cabrera, Reid and Craig, and Cerbone all accentuate the paradox of existence, that our being-in-the-world is simultaneously beautiful and ugly, good and evil, joyous and painful, Jussi Backman's "Not One Power, But Two: Dark Grounds and Twilit Paradises in Malick" investigates this fundamental ambivalence in terms of Schelling's doctrine of evil, a view that assigns evil (and hence melancholy) a fundamental place as a basic principle of reality. Backman's suggestion at once deepens and complexifies the (...) way in which Malick's films can be seen as exercises in "aesthetic theodicy," as Sinnerbrink has said." (Steven DeLay, Introduction). (shrink)

En el Perú, se han consumido películas y obras literarias de terror, pero la recepción nunca ha sido tan buena. Una explicación a ese problema es que el tiempo de publicación o estreno compite con el de otros países, donde ya ha habido un mejor tratamiento. Este tema polémico implica un estudio muy minucioso desde sus bases concomitantes. Por eso, para este artículo se planteó como objetivo el análisis comparativo del paradigma del terror en el Perú en los dos últimos (...) siglos con el desarrollado en Europa y Norteamérica, desde los ámbitos de la Literatura y el Cine. Metodológicamente, hubo un trabajo de documentación de fuentes universales acerca del terror que permitió identificar cómo se construyó este concepto en territorio nacional. A la vez, se planteó de forma panorámica una estructura del terror sobre la base de críticas artísticas, obras literarias y películas afines. Fue a partir de allí que se detectaron una desventaja y una falta de recursos para el caso nacional. Como resultado, se encontró que el consumo de estas producciones nacionales de terror era neurálgico; aunque carecían de propuestas auténticas y modernas. Al parecer, eso no importaba al público. De esa manera, se concluyó que iba a ser indispensable la revisión historicista de las producciones literarias y cinematográficas del terror para iniciar un tratamiento inusitado. (shrink)

Theodor W. Adornos Denken war Zeit seines Lebens von einem ebenso fruchtbaren wie zwiespältigen Verhältnis zu den Medien durchdrungen. Dabei verstand er es, seine gesellschaftskritischen Überlegungen an ihnen ebenso zu schärfen wie sie für die Vermittlung seiner Analysen an ein breites Publikum zu nutzen. Auch wenn er diese ambivalente Haltung an damaligen Medien entwickelte, erweist sich der Ansatz als vielversprechend, sie an der heutigen Medienlandschaft in ihrem Einfluss auf Gesellschaft, Politik und Kultur zu erproben. Die Fragen nach der Relevanz von (...) Adornos kritischer Theorie in der zeitgenössischen Reflexion der digitalen Kultur sowie nach der Bedeutung seiner Medienkritik für Philosophie, Kunstwissenschaft und Kulturtheorie der letzten Jahrzehnte stehen im Mittelpunkt dieses Bandes. Unterschiedliche Positionen und methodologische Ansätze zu Adornos intellektuellem Nachlass öffnen neue interdisziplinäre Perspektiven auf aktuelle Medienphänomene und kulturelle Prozesse und setzen die Tradition einer philosophisch informierten und soziologisch fundierten Medienkritik fort. -/- Mit Beiträgen von Sarah Bianchi, Christian Fuchs, Samir Gandesha, Henrik Holm, Sulgi Lie, Stefano Marino, Tyrus Miller, Judith-Frederike Popp, Ulrike Ramming, Martin Ritter, Rolando Vitali, Lioudmila Voropai und Florian Wobser. (shrink)

The Fifth Element (1997) is a French science-fiction film in English, directed and co-written by Luc Besson. The title and the plot of the film refer to a central notion of Greek philosophy, that is, pemptousia, or quintessence. Pre-Socratic philosophers such as Thales, Anaxagoras, Anaximenes and others, were convinced that all natural beings – in fact, nature itself – consist in four primary imperishable elements or essences (ousiai), i.e., fire, earth, water, and air. To these four, Aristotle added aether, a (...) fifth essence (pemptousia). The introduction of aether gave birth to a great tradition in late Antique and Medieval philosophy, and eventually it came to signify not an additional primary element, but the core-essence of all beings, their fundamental ontological structure. Besson’s film draws its inspiration on this philosophical tradition but its cinematographic rendering of the concept of Quintessence is typical of the contemporaneous views on the core characteristics of matters. The modernity that stimulates the film is equally anti-transcendentalist and anti-essentialist. Thus, the fifth element of the film is existentially personified and genderized making the traditional philosophical significance of the term to be adjusted by modernity in an immanent and temporal context where in addition aesthetics plays a crucial role. (shrink)

Este artículo cuestiona la composición endógena de los personajes protagónicos de los largometrajes Días de Santiago (2004) y Hombre Araña (2002). Ellos presentarán dos estereotipos distintos de vivencias y coincidirán con el cuestionamiento consuetudinario de sus propias identidades. Esa percepción permitirá precisar en el objetivo de este trabajo, que consiste en fundamentar las transgresiones psicológicas de los involucrados, pese a su configuración definida y reconocible para el espectador. Para lograrlo, se recurrirá al análisis sociológico que propone Iuri Lotman desde la (...) semiótica cultural, que será complementado con la confrontación con los filmes Un perro andaluz (1929), Tiempos modernos (1936), Ahí está el detalle (1940), Gregorio (1984) y La espalda del mundo (2000). Luego, se empleará la semiótica tensiva de Jacques Fontanille para elaborar esquemas afines al desenvolvimiento del superhéroe, así como también se diferenciarán los regímenes de sentido que se asemejan a la lógica de la trama. (shrink)

Conan, el niño del futuro (1978) es un dibujo animado oriental que plasma a una sociedad futurista que ha sobrevivido a la Tercera Guerra Mundial. El personaje principal, un niño de 10 años, aparece en la historia para impedir que el grupo hegemónico continúe con su pretensión de dominar el mundo, sin importar la tiranía que ejercen contra los ciudadanos. Para lograr ese vil propósito, las autoridades de Isla Industria han incurrido en escenarios en los que se observa la esclavitud, (...) la dificultad para expresarse con libertad y el sometimiento obligatorio a las decisiones del sistema. Esas actitudes no solo revelan un contexto recreado en un mundo ficcional, sino que es latente al apreciar las revueltas sociales de la actualidad. A ese tipo de manifestación por los derechos, se le agrega otra modalidad correlativa: la censura. Esta se concreta de forma implícita y sutil, con el objetivo de que las víctimas desacrediten sus derechos y no reclamen ante los abusos frecuentes de un gobierno que los sanciona, los encarcela o los exilia con injusticia. Su condición de peligro para la hegemonía es esencial, porque puede acarrear una toma de conciencia para los demás pobladores y una posible rebelión. Para finalizar, esta investigación se valdrá de las teorías poscoloniales e interculturales para evidenciar cómo un proyecto político se instaura en un anime japonés y, en especial, en el protagonista que desea reorientar a toda una sociedad, junto con ese sistema represivo inherente. (shrink)

La producción alemana Heimat (1984) del director Edgar Reitz consta de 11 largometrajes que abordan, principalmente, la Primera Guerra Mundial y la Segunda Guerra Mundial; además de las repercusiones psicológicas, sociales y económicas que generan en los pobladores estos eventos históricos. Este conjunto de filmes se enfoca en un espacio rural denominado Schabbach. En ese lugar, se aprecia el desarrollo y la evolución de una genealogía que se supedita a la relación de María y Paul Simon, pero desde una perspectiva (...) disociada. Prevalecerán situaciones individualistas como alejarse del núcleo familiar para ser partidario de la guerra, migrar a otras localidades, buscar superarse, evitar a los congéneres o vivir en el recuerdo. En ese sentido, esta investigación se basará en esas motivaciones de los personajes y se recurrirá al análisis interdisciplinario, epistemología propia de los Estudios Culturales, para confrontar y explicar esa realidad social frente a la guerra. (shrink)

Este artículo extrapola conceptos cinematográficos que desarrollan Gilles Deleuze y Alain Badiou, tales como movimiento, cuadro, plano y montaje. El propósito de corroborar estas categorías es para articularlas en el largometraje del director Melinton Eusebio, Jarjacha. El demonio del incesto (2000), y detectar la cosmovisión concomitante que prevalece en una localidad distanciada de la capital, caracterizada por la presencia andina de una tradición y una organización política basada en el sometimiento de una localidad hacia un alcalde, quien dictamina y castiga (...) a través de una personificación endemoniada. Este análisis será factible, una vez que se diferencien los instantes privilegiados y ordinarios, que abarcan las escenas de la película de acuerdo con su intencionalidad. De ese modo, se comprenderá el funcionamiento del filme desde una perspectiva más contundente y eximia para el espectador, además de que logrará reconocer los momentos fundados desde la realidad y lo real. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that the distinction between film gris and film noir, introduced by Jon Tuska in his 1984 book Dark Cinema, enhances our appreciation of the philosophical attributes of such films. For Tuska, there are important differences between a film gris and a film noir. While a film gris may have a number of noir attributes (a shadowy noir visual style, a gritty urban setting, cynical characters, etc.) a genuine film noir is not merely a police procedural (...) and must not have a happy ending, I will also argue that a film’s narrative perspective plays a vital role in determining whether its status is that of a film noir. I will make these arguments by examining a wide variety of films including The Maltese Falcon (1941), Out of the Past (1947), He Walks by Night (1948), The Narrow Margin (1952), Double Indemnity (1944), Repeat Performance (1947), and The Wrong Man (1956). (shrink)

The Heythrop Journal, Volume 63, Issue 3, Page 425-437, May 2022.

The following Introduction briefly traces, albeit in jarring cuts, the evolution of caste question and its relationship with Indian cinema. It also tries to point out some aspects of Indian film theory, its lacunae and hopes that some of the questions raised here may give rise to future works by other (better) theorists. Pre-Independence cinema in India rarely addressed caste question, and if it did, then it was through an abstract global humanist lens. This tendency to address caste through a (...) hollow and empty shell of a theoretical model unfortunately has stuck around even in these times, and only found newer ways to reinvent itself in Neoliberal times. To understand the reason of Indian cinema’s lack of addressing caste more directly and pointedly, it has to be seen as part of a historical process. Only then can we see the history of ideology that is “outside of itself”, that is, in the material conditions that made possible Indian caste-society as well as its cine-culture. It also tries to raise questions about the film form, and its many possibilities of experimentation with the caste question (i.e. both in ideological and experiential possibilities). Lastly, it introduces some of the key works in this issue. Of course, with the hope that the readers will forgive and give respite to the many lacuna of the issue, as well as the Editor himself. (shrink)

In this paper I will try to show how magic and technology might be associated taking both into account as a cultural expression of contemporary society. I will argue that technology penetrates magic, creating a specific dynamic which raises ethical dilemmas. The underlying idea, following a long tradition of thought, is that technology represents a kind of "second human nature." As Arnold Gehlen claims, the technical attitude (Technik) compensates for the structural deficiency of humans, allowing them a gradual opening to (...) the world. But magic is also an expression of this attitude, insofar as it tends to mimic natural mechanisms. Magic expresses itself with instructions, rules, and purposes, as much as technology does. Precisely for this reason magic also involves the same rationality typical of the developmental mode of technology, sharing the same objective. I will argue that Christopher Nolan's movie The Prestige (2006) shows an example of technological integration inside magic itself, highlighting two orders of problems: one ethical and the other intrinsic to the magical act and its nature. (shrink)

ISBN 978-1-4384-9027-4 Argues that Nietzsche’s idea of the Übermensch was a central concern of filmmakers in the 1920s and 1930s. -/- Nietzsche in Hollywood offers a compelling and startling history of Hollywood film in which the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and his idea of the Übermensch looms large. Though Nietzsche’s philosophy was attacked as egoistic and a sociopathic version of Darwinism in films from the 1910s, it undergoes a series of cinematic and philosophical transformations in the 1920s and 1930s under (...) the eye and pen of some of the most significant names in early Hollywood, including Erich von Stroheim, Josef von Sternberg, Ben Hecht, Howard Hawks, and Ernst Lubitsch. In addition to establishing historical connections between Nietzsche’s philosophy and these filmmakers, the book provides philosophical readings of many Hollywood films through the lens of the Nietzschean ideas of “perspectivism” and the critique of morality. Offering a new history of classic Hollywood films as well as a new approach to film philosophy, Nietzsche in Hollywood reveals a reading of the philosopher in American culture that has largely been ignored. (shrink)

The Audience Effect. On the Collective Cinema Experience HANICHJULIAN edinburgh university press. 2017. pp. 256. £19.99.

The Deleuzian studies on cinema highlight the importance of two semiotic regimes (movement-image and time-image) for the understanding of our aesthetical and epistemological relationship with moving images. On the contrary, this article highlights the moments of crisis between the two regimes, pointing out the generic character of uncertainty and ambiguity in the nature of mental images: once the sensorimotor scheme that dominates the cinematographic montage has been weakened, the characters, unable to act, can imagine, desire, dream, hallucinate, and remember. New (...) types of images appear: recollectionimages, dream-images, and world-images. How do these new types of images make us rethink our usual relationship with the world and with reality? With this article on cinema’s virtual and oneiric dimension, I expect to disseminate one of Gilles Deleuze’s greatest contributions to film philosophy: the distinction between the imaginary and reality. (shrink)

The importation of Lacanian psychoanalysis into film theory in the 1970s and 1980s ushered in a new era of cinema scholarship and criticism. Figures including Raymond Bellour, Laura Mulvey, and Christian Metz are often considered the pioneers of applying Lacanian psychoanalysis in the context of film theory, most notably through their writings in Screen Journal. However, where French and British scholarship on Lacan and film reached its limits, American Lacanianism flourished. When Joan Copjec’s now classic essay “The Orthopsychic Subject: Film (...) Theory and the Reception of Lacan” was published in 1989, the trajectory of Lacanian film theory would become radically altered; as Todd McGowan recently put it, the “butchered operation” on Lacan committed by Mulvey and (quoting Copjec) the “Foucaultianization” of Lacan under the auspices of Screen Journal were finally indicted in one gesture through Copjec’s critique. Copjec and McGowan’s unique American view of Lacan marks a pivotal point in the convergence of psychoanalytic theory and cinema studies; by seeking to wrest Lacan from historist/deconstructionist theories of the subject, and by revisiting Lacan beyond the mirror stage, Copjec and McGowan can be said to have instantiated a resuscitation or even a renaissance of Lacanian theory in film studies in particular and in American scholarship more generally. In this essay, this renaissance of Lacanian theory is examined, focusing on the innovations these two American thinkers brought to psychoanalytic film theory and the multiple paths carved out into other disciplines that followed. First, a detailed summation of the contentions between screen theory and Copjec’s position is introduced, as well as McGowan’s assessment thereof. Then, the trajectory of psychoanalytic film theory after Copjec’s arrival is the focus, including the major innovations in her thought from cinematic subjectivity to sexual difference (most notably from Read My Desire) and the way her position spread to philosophy and ontology. Finally, the article identifies the limitations of Copjec’s and McGowan’s thought and seeks new possibilities through which we may continue to apply psychoanalysis to the cinema in the wake of these two important thinkers. L’importation de la psychanalyse lacanienne dans la théorie du film au cours des années 1970 et 1980 a apporté une nouvelle ère de recherche et de critique cinématographiques. Des figures comme Raymond Bellour, Laura Mulvey et Christian Metz sont souvent considérées comme étant les pionniers dans l’application de la psychanalyse lacanienne au contexte de la théorie du film, surtout dans leurs écrits pour le Screen Journal. Par contre, là où les recherches françaises et britanniques sur Lacan et la cinématographie ont atteint leurs limites, le lacanisme américain a prospéré. La publication en 1989 de « The Orthopsychic Subject: Film Theory and the Reception of Lacan », l’essai classique de Joan Copjec, a complètement changé la trajectoire de la théorie lacanienne du film; comme Todd McGowan l’a récemment exprimé, « l’opération massacrée » commise sur Lacan par Mulvey et (citant Copjec) la « Foucaultisation » de Lacan sous les auspices de Screen Journal avaient finalement été accusées d’un seul coup par la critique de Copjec. Le point de vue uniquement américain de Copjec et de McGowan sur Lacan marque un tournant dans la convergence de la théorie psychanalytique et des études cinématographiques. En cherchant à arracher Lacan des théories historicistes/déconstructivistes du sujet, et en revisitant Lacan au-delà du stade du miroir, Copjec et McGowan ont instancié une ressuscitation, voire une renaissance, de la théorie lacanienne dans les études cinématographiques en particulier et dans les études américaines en général. Dans cet article, cette renaissance de la théorie lacanienne est examinée, mettant l’accent sur les innovations que ces deux penseurs américains ont apportées à la théorie psychanalytique du film et les multiples chemins tracés dans d’autres disciplines subséquentes. Premièrement, un résumé détaillé des différends entre la théorie du film et la position de Copjec est présenté, ainsi que l’évaluation de McGowan à ce sujet. Puis, la trajectoire de la théorie psychanalytique du film après l’arrivée de Copjec est mise de l’avant, notamment les innovations importantes de sa pensée de la subjectivité à la différence sexuelle (particulièrement dans Read My Desire) et la manière dont sa position s’est propagée dans la philosophie et l’ontologie. Finalement, l’article identifie les limites de la pensée de Copjec et de McGowan et cherche de nouvelles possibilités à travers lesquelles nous pourrions continuer d’appliquer la psychanalyse au cinéma après ces deux grands penseurs. (shrink)

An analysis of some work by the Oaxaca-based Mexican experimental filmmaker and video artist Bruno Varela via the latter’s reading of the late U.S. philosopher Stanley Cavell, especially Cavell’s 1982 essay “The Fact of Television.” This essay focuses on the aesthetic possibilities of the very constitution of the electronic image, based in Cavell’s understanding of television’s dependence on notions of “switching,” as opposed to “succession,” as well as how those notions play a role in Varela’s understanding of what it is (...) to critique communications media while retaining their communal potential. Audiovisual work by Varela discussed in this essay include Línea 3 (2010-11) and Materia oscura (Dark Matter, 2016). (shrink)

Este artículo reconstruye el contexto histórico y cinematográfico que permitió que la película de Luis Buñuel y Salvador Dalí tuviera una intencionalidad distinguible. Para demostrar ese acápite, retomo los estudios críticos que se han hecho en torno a este cortometraje, así como las categorías pertinentes de las vanguardias del dadaísmo y el surrealismo, junto con el psicoanálisis de Sigmund Freud y Jacques Lacan. Con todo ello, propongo que el objetivo de este trabajo es fundamentar las razones que generaron que esta (...) producción fílmica estuviera orientada a transgredir lo tradicional y lo ético de la sociedad europea. Esa volición solo se lograría desde la epifanía de su arte onírico e inconexo. (shrink)

El VI Congreso Internacional de Narrativa Fantástica 2019 se realizó en la capital del Perú del 23 al 25 de octubre de 2019. Fue organizado por el Centro de Estudios Literarios Antonio Cornejo Polar y auspiciado por el Instituto Raúl Porras Barrenechea. Elton Honores asumió la función principal para la administración del evento. La convocatoria consideró las propuestas del subgénero fantástico, desde las creaciones artísticas de Borges, Poe y Oesterheld. También, se interrelacionó lo fantástico con conceptos conexos como los de (...) ciencia ficción y terror. Su intención fue que se forjara un vínculo interdisciplinario, debido a que se integraron análisis sobre las producciones cinematográficas y literarias a nivel mundial, así como se procuró implementar con paradigmas circundantes como los de real maravilloso, realismo mágico, tradiciones míticas, minificción, historieta y cómic. La organización idónea del congreso se concretó con éxito, de tal manera que las bases se corroboraron en las pesquisas. Las ponencias fueron aceptadas por corresponder con los temas sugeridos y se hizo una distribución de catorce mesas para las más de cuarenta contribuciones. En estas, se involucraron investigadores latinoamericanos y norteamericanos de forma presencial. Asimismo, se desarrollaron las conferencias magistrales de Amatto y Honores. Sin embargo, retomaré cinco trabajos que sintetizan el objetivo y los tópicos desarrollados en este congreso. Estos abordan la noción del terror desde lo cinematográfico, la ciencia ficción desde lo literario, la epistemología efectuada en torno a autores latinoamericanos y la extrapolación del terror a partir de Poe y Lovecraft. (shrink)

This article introduces the unique Asian film technique of the “empty shot” from the perspective of Chinese philosophical thought and aesthetics. In Chinese cinema, the “empty shot” is understood as a shot comprised of nonhuman subjects, distinct from both the establishing shot and the cutaway. Perhaps due to the lack of understanding of its philosophical grounding, the “empty shot” has not received much attention in Anglophone film studies, and has been criticized as an overgeneralised concept. This article first relates the (...) “empty shot” to the more widely accepted “pillow shot” in Anglophone studies of Japanese cinema. This article aims to make visible a non-anthropocentric worldview conveyed through the “empty shot”, and to make space for the potentialities of this film device, which may also be found in non-Chinese cinemas. It explains the “empty shot”’s central features: firstly, its visible scenes are imbued with invisible emotion, leaving space for the audience to feel what the characters are feeling. Second, it facilitates the generation of qi or “air” in a film, indicating the circulation of qi in a process of dynamic transformation between “actual” and “virtual”. Thirdly, the “empty shot” communicates with the audience, allowing them to more fully experience natural scenery and to encounter other beings while suspending everyday experiences, existing biases, and the separation between self and other. (shrink)

This chapter explores the anti-colonial narrative potential of certain works of cinema taking Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Caché as a case in point. To do so, this chapter first and mainly draws upon the theoretical and normative lens put forward by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak on the representation of the colonized other and her resulting political and intellectual call for self-reflection on one's privileged Western intellectual positioning. This lens has many normative implications for the ways in which the colonized (...) subject and colonial history are discussed and represented. The partial lack of representation of the colonized other in Aguirre, the Wrath of God leaves the subjectivity of the colonizer in crisis and madness. Second, the narrative of Caché is explored and it is suggested that it resembles the rhetoric of Foucauldian disciplinary power of surveillance turned upside-down thus enforcing the complicit of colonialism to question her privilege. (shrink)

El cine de Jim Jarmusch es reconocible por captar momentos de quietud en los que la acción y el drama son secundarios. Es por ello que su film Only Lovers Left Alive ha sido tan destacado por críticos y académicos. Esta película ha llevado a la pantalla la estética ruinosa de Detroit. Este artículo amplía esas recientes investigaciones, para postular que la Detroit de Jarmusch es una ciudad estéticamente inorgánica. Siguiendo a grandes rasgos los lineamientos de Wilhelm Worringer, se analiza (...) el estilo postindustrial de la arquitectura de Detroit y la figura del vampiro. Esto permite concluir que lo inorgánico —Detroit— tiene capacidades estéticas propias, las cuales son exaltadas por el particular estilo de Jarmusch. (shrink)

This essay provides an interpretation of the potential and limits of Michael Fried's difficult claims in his essay "Art and Objecthood" (1967) that cinema by its nature escapes the problems of modernism and also escapes the problems of theater. By focusing on Stanley Cavell's account of how cinema as an automatic medium escapes problems associated with variability across performances, I try to render a version of Fried's claim about cinema and theater that can ground a figurative version of his claim (...) about cinema and modernism, where film at least provides us a symbol of relief from concerns about medium specificity. In the second part of the essay I argue that something close to Cavell's and Fried's thoughts (about using the figure of theater to remind us of cinema's specificity, but also of cinema in its character as a symbol of relief from medium-specific concerns) takes on a certain urgency in questions about what cinema is in the digital age, manifested in representations of theater in the digitally photographed "Shakespeariadas" series by the contemporary Argentine filmmaker Matías Piñeiro. (shrink)

Since the advent of media archeology, a deep-seated bifurcation has found one end of the field arguing for the interventionist and appropriative weaponization of media whereas the other side has championed a “total war” with technology itself, insisting that new media’s military-industrial roots inherently color its drivability. Here, I implore a moment within the cultural history of net.art and post-internet art to examine how contemporaneous queries about control after militarism and decentralization, as prognosticated by Paul Virilio and Gilles Deleuze, are (...) part of a more deeply entrenched discourse on neural nets, predictive processing algorithms and machine learning, which the current media theory and post-cinema literature has yet to rigorously respond to. Simultaneously parsing philosophical and media sociology corollaries to ground this overview, I push for more attention towards psychopower, autosurveillance and algorithmic governmentality while distancing critique from the standard Foucauldian discourse of biopower. (shrink)

Over the last thirty years, once staunchly film history scholars such as Thomas Elsaesser, Jane Gaines, Siegfried Zielinski, André Gaudreault and Benoît Turquety (to name just a few) have abandoned history for historiography and film studies for media archaeology. Considering the heightened attention given to kulturtechnik (Siegert), the database as a dominant symbolic metaphor,1 and the decentered networked tenants of the postmodern global present, cinema is taking on the characteristics of new media, existing in increasingly intertextual space. Thus, the term (...) “post-cinema” has been co-opted as a viable intermediary that accounts for new media conditions, as cinema is no longer emblematic of our cultural climate. It was once presaged in 1992 that “[t]he end of the cinema truly sounds the death knell of the ultimate metaphysical adventure of Dasein. In the twilight of post-cinema, of which we are seeing the beginning, human quasi-existence, now stripped of any metaphysical hypostasis and deprived of any theological model, will have to seek its proper generic consistency elsewhere.” Accordingly, we are no longer “moviegoing animals” who seek images of ourselves among a collective in the dark but, rather, users interfacing within a network of moving images. By locating post-cinema within the semblance of social media, we are allocated a newfound series of theoretical interventions, the most marked of which is that of media archeology vis-à-vis dialectical materialism. This is a lens through which Brian Winston has recently deftly decried Virtual Reality’s “empathy machine” utopic illusionism, bolstered by Chris Milk and a slew of neurohumanities researchers, steadily maintaining that the fundamental myth of “technologies of seeing” is in disguising “their artifice, their cultural formation and their ideological import.” However, this approach, which illuminates the bifurcation between Max Horkheimer/Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin, neglects what Benjamin identified as occurring to the work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility—a shift from a technology’s “cult value,” associated with the unique work, to its “exhibition value,” associated with the social act of viewing as part of a mass. Speaking to this divarication, Benjamin Barber, in Strong Democracy, foresaw new media’s two-fold potential—as they are organized and networked, new media and communications technologies possess the possibility to both energize citizen information and political participation but, simultaneously, to supplement the deterioration of public debate. As evinced by Mark Adrejevic’s concept of Infoglut, this two-pronged possibility has only been exacerbated by the interlocking relationship between the advent of a “glut” of information, post-truth politics, the demise of symbolic efficiency, and a renewed focus on the role of affect and emotion as “alternative modalities for thinking about the role of communication in a post-referential era.” Manuel Castells qualifies Barber’s pessimism, noting that the Internet can “be an appropriate platform for informed, interactive politics, stimulating political participation.. […] beyond the closed doors of political institutions,” but that the Internet, like any technology, “is shaped by its uses and users.” Thus, if there exists a positive correlation between exposure to post-cinema media artifacts and political participation, then I seek to explore the revelatory political possibilities of “exhibition value” by way of a particular “post-cinema” case study: the Marxist-Leninist Turkish hacktivist group Redhack’s YouTube-circulated documentary RED! (2013), a project that demanded—by way of the moving-image—to galvanize cyberprotest and democratize a “hacktivist commons. (shrink)

From Buñuel and Dali’s Un Chien Andalou to recent works by Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn, the cinematic destruction of the eye has become iconic due to its striking effect upon film spectators’ visceral experiences as well as its ability to influence their symbolic or fetishistic desires. By exploiting the natural discomfort and disgust produced by these types of images and then situating them within an aesthetic and psychoanalytic framework, Refn and other filmmakers provide a visual showcase for a unique (...) type of cinematic violence, one which demands that viewers reappraise the value of their own eyes as well as the values which reflect social attitudes towards law enforcement, crime, and justice. (shrink)

From 2009 to 2015, U.S. director, Quentin Tarantino, released three films that were notable for their focus on particular historical events, periods and individuals (Inglorious Basterds 2009; Django Unchained 2012; The Hateful Eight 2015). Together, these films offered a specifically “Tarantinian” rendering of history: rewriting, manipulating and, for some, unethically deploying history for aesthetic effect. With regard to Django Unchained, this article examines how Tarantino’s historical revisionism provides a valuable point of inquiry into the ways in which “history” is depicted (...) on-screen and, more importantly, how depictions of “the past” can prove useful for highlighting underlying contradictions, ambivalences and ambiguities in the “present”. Drawing upon Slavoj Žižek’s Lacanian approach to film analysis, it is argued that through a combination of fantasy, subversion and counterfactual possibility – most notable in the film’s final stand-off between its leading black characters – Tarantino is able to render the Real of U.S. slavery as an ahistorical antagonism. This antagonism highlights the ongoing trauma of these events in the present as well as the use of fantasy to explore their traumatic subject matter. Such historical fictions are not fixed to the past but, via an encounter with the Real, can be used to appraise the present. (shrink)

Postmodernity’s cultural database logic and the consequent filmic characteristics of the digital age were fostered by Lev Manovich’s 1999 essay “The Database as Symbolic Form,” whereby Manovich furthered Roland Barthes’ adoption of Saussurrean sign-systems to describe cultural phenomena. In particular, Manovich applied Saussure’s description to postmodernity, delineating a juncture from modernism’s narrative-thralldom in the computer age, as “[i]nteractive interfaces foreground the paradigmatic dimension and often make explicit paradigmatic sets. Yet, they are still organized along the syntagmatic dimension” (232). The interface (...) design process in new media primarily revolves around choices as in the file/folder metaphor; however, these actions ultimately collapse from the infinite choices into the finite syntagma of narrative structure. Such is the database narrative. (shrink)

Walter Benjamin’s oft-quoted 1936 essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility” advances the claim that, for the first time in history, the “function” of the work of art is political, as evidenced by cinema. For Benjamin, film is the “first art form whose artistic character is entirely determined by its reproducibility” and Giorgio Agamben, a contemporary Benjaminian philosopher, further elucidates this “function,” positing that cinema essentially ranks with ethics and politics, not solely with aesthetics, and, (...) consequently, is proximate to philosophy itself. Whereas Deleuze’s Cinema books posed cinema as enacting time in a pure state, Agamben, in his “Notes on Gesture,” breaches from Deleuze’s spatial and cartographic theory of cinema, drawing on Guy Debord’s “détournement via montage,” Simone Weil’s “decreation” and, perhaps most implicitly, from Benjamin. Agamben’s political theory of cinema, motivated by cinema’s “stoppage and repetition of time,” is directly informed by Benjamin’s: “optical unconscious,” appropriation of Brecht’s “social Gestus,” and the relationship between technological reproducibility and aura. Agamben’s “gesture” fastens cinema’s aesthetics not only to ethics and politics, but to the “ontological consistency of human experience,” or to a way of being. (shrink)

A significant portion of philosophical questions concerning the Holocaust revolve around the problem of representation, that is, how the event can be represented in a concept or in an image, if at all. This article argues that Nuit et brouillard (Night and Fog, 1956) by Alain Resnais and Inglourious Basterds by Quentin Tarantino (2009) respond to the problem of representation in an original way by challenging the conventions of their respective genre. The juxtaposition of past and present images in Nuit (...) et brouillard proposes a new form of remembering that liberates memory from the confines of the past in order not to lose sight of what is happening now. Inglourious Basterds, similarly, circumvents the problem of realistic representation by means of a counter-historical story in which Hitler is brutally killed in Paris. Pushing to the extreme the Americanisation that is typical of the Hollywood treatments of World War II, Tarantino offers a multi-layered spectacle of violence that culminates in the burning down of a film theatre as a symbol of Tarantino’s having done with representation. (shrink)

У статті ставиться питання про побудову інструментальної моделі культурологічної аналітики кінематографа. Запропоновано виокремити такі її методологічні виміри: морфологічний, історико-культурологічний, культурно-типологічний, культурно-цивілізаційний, семіотичний, культурно-антропологічний та деякі інші. На відміну від універсальної, обґрунтовано специфічну культурологічну модель танатологічного аналізу кінематографа з такими рівнями: танатохронотопічним, еротанатологічним та ін.

This article undertakes a reading of Andrei Tarkovsky's 1979 film Stalker that runs, for the most part, against the grain of the director's own pronouncements on the film. My focus is on a character study of the Stalker himself, and the consequences of his most unattractive characteristics: his manipulativeness, his petulance, and his self-pity. Rather than seeing the Stalker as an emblem of pure faith I explore the possibility that he is a quasi-tragic figure trapped by his own myopic idolatry. (...) I also contrast the Stalker's lack of self-awareness with Stalker's reflexivity; I argue that interpreting the film in this way casts a fresh light on its crucial themes of faith and belief. I attempt ultimately, to show that focussing on these negative characteristics reveals a perhaps surprising affinity between Stalker and the philosophical investigations into agency and self-knowledge that Robert Pippin has conducted by means of a study of film noir. (shrink)

Widely acclaimed upon its release as a future classic, Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 is visually stunning, philosophically profound, and a provocative extension of the story in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. Containing specially commissioned chapters by a roster of international contributors, this fascinating collection explores philosophical questions that abound in Blade Runner 2049, including: -/- What distinguishes the authentically "human" person? How might natality condition one’s experience of being-in-the-world? How might shared memories feature in the constitution of personal identities? What (...) happens when created beings transcend the limits intended in their design? What (if anything) is it like to be a hologram? Can artificial beings participate in genuinely romantic relationships? How might developing artificial economics impact our behaviour as prosumers? What are the implications of techno-human enhancement in an era of surveillance capitalism? -/- Including a foreword by Denis Villeneuve, Blade Runner 2049: A Philosophical Exploration is essential reading for anyone interested in philosophy, film studies, philosophy of mind, psychology, gender studies, and conceptual issues in cognitive science and artificial intelligence. (shrink)