Film-Philosophy
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Truth, Autobiography and Documentary: Perspectivism in Nietzsche and Herzog
No full textThe presence of interpretation according to different perspectives in art forms in which we expect the 'truth' about the subject matter, provides an opportunity to understand what truth means in the context of perspectivism, the view that there is no objective standard of truth free from any perspective against which we can measure the veracity of an account. In this article, I explore perspectival truth through Nietzsche's philosophical autobiography, Ecce Homo, and Herzog's films, particularly Little Dieter Needs to Fly. I argue that these artworks both contribute to and exemplify a perspectival truth practice
Charcoal Matter with Memory: Images of Movement, Time and Duration in the animated films of William Kentridge.
No full textIn his temporal philosophy based on the writing of Henri Bergson, Gilles Deleuze describes duration (durée) as a becoming that endures in time. Reifications of this complex philosophical concept become artistically expressed, I argue, in the form and content of South African artist William Kentridge's series of 'charcoal drawings for projection.' These exhibited art works provide intriguing and illuminating 'philosophical' examples of animated audio-visual media, which expressively plicate distinct images of movement and time.The composition of Kentridge's films at once illuminate a regime of animated 'movement-images' that can trace their aetiological roots to classical forms of film and animation, whilst concurrently folding in complex philosophical expressions of time as duration which invoke the crystalline 'time-image' concepts of philosophers such as Bergson and Deleuze, as well as literary authors like Marcel Proust. Over and above these co-existent regimes of movement and time, Kentridge's artistic technique and exhibition practices further expose a multifarious 'geology' of other embedded time lines that serve to enrich/complicate these temporal expressions. I argue here that diegetic time- and movement-images ostensibly co-exist alongside different 'archaeologies' of time relevant to the context and creation of the artworks. For this reason, the animated drawings formulate intriguing artistic/philosophical expressions that muse on the nature of matter, memory, time and space
'How Can It Not Know What It Is?': Self and Other in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner
No full textIn this essay I provide a reading of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner that focuses upon the question of the kind of creatures the Replicants are depicted as being, and the meaning that depiction should have for us. I draw upon Stanley Cavell's account of the problem of other minds to argue that the empathy test is in fact a mode of resisting the acknowledgment of others. And I draw upon Martin Heidegger's account of authenticity and mortality to argue that this acknowledgment is crucial if one would become human. The film does not so much suggest that Replicants are, as such, human, but rather that humanity is won through the encounter with the inauthentic
Otherness and the Renewal of Freedom in Jarmusch's Down by Law: A Levinasian and Arendtian Reading
No full textIn this essay I argue that Down by Law (Jarmusch, 1986) is about how the encounter with otherness renews freedom and American identity. I first develop the idea of renewal through otherness by way of a discussion of Levinas' philosophy of freedom and Arendt's notion natality, contrasting it with the idea of negative liberty, which I explicate through a discussion of Hobbes, Locke, Hegel, and Tocqueville. Next, I show how negative liberty is engrained in the idea of America through a discussion of the formative American motifs of the road and the prison, which play structuring roles in Down by Law. I then try to show how the immigrant character of Bob (Roberto Benigni) is an other who liberates the American characters of Jack (John Lurie) and Zack (Tom Waits), who are existentially 'imprisoned' by their negative liberty
A New/Old Ontology of Film
No full textThe 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
'Even the Ghost was more than one person': Hauntology and Authenticity in Todd Haynes' I'm Not There
No full textIf the opening sequence of a film is a microscopic 'event' that achieves far more than setting the tone and whetting the appetite for what we are about to see, then Todd Haynes' I'm Not There is exemplary. This paper works its way through the conceptually dense and intricately woven textual layers of the film's opening to stage a three-way dialogue between Haynes, Bob Dylan and Jacques Derrida: three mavericks who defy simple categorisation, by transgressing the boundaries of their respective fields (song writing, cinema and philosophy). By introducing Derrida's deconstructive logic of hauntology as a strategy for reading Haynes' biopic on Dylan, the figure of the ghost is called upon to situate the quest for an identity's authenticity as a perennial, irresolvable problem in song, cinema and philosophy. Belonging to a time that is neither past nor present, a place that is neither here nor there, the ghost offers the perfect medium to join Haynes, Dylan and Derrida in (re)thinking identity in terms that respond to a call (in the name of art, justice and truth, among other things) that is not based on an unyielding conception of authenticity
Film as Thought Experiment: A Happy-Go-Lucky Case?
No full textCan some films be genuine thought experiments that challenge our commonsense intuitions? Certain filmic narratives and their mise-en-scène details reveal rigorous reasoning and counterintuitive outcomes on philosophical issues, such as skepticism or personal identity. But this philosophical façade may hide a mundane concern for entertainment. Unfamiliar narratives drive spectator entertainment, and every novel cinematic situation could be easily explained as part of a process that lacks motives of philosophical elucidation.The paper inverses the above objection, and proposes that when the main cinematic character resists spectator engagement (a crucial source of cinematic entertainment), emotionally challenged spectators also question their commonsensical beliefs about his/her actions, and detect a conceptually novel situation as such.A case study is Mike Leigh's film Happy-Go-Lucky (2008), in which the main female character presents an unrelenting but eccentric version of 'feel good' happiness. Spectators gradually detect that the previously unexamined, commonsensical version of subjective happiness comes at the price of individual eccentricity, and that the choice of a subjective theory of happiness leads to consequences hitherto unacknowledged
