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Film-Philosophy
International Email Salon
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'When I first saw the cinematograph I realised it could offer something new
to philosophy. The cinema provides us with an understanding of our own
memory. Indeed we could almost say that cinema is a model of consciousness
itself. Going to the cinema turns out to be a philosophical experience.'
Henri Bergson
'If Descartes lived today, only through the medium of film would he be able
to convey to us his Discours de la Methode, because every film, being a
dynamic piece of work moving in time, is basically a theorem. It is the
locale of the unfolding of an inexorable logic which traverses its own
pivotal points, more precisely, the given poles of dialectics.' Alexandre
Astruc
'The kino is a vulgar modern entertainment and I doubt if it can tell us
anything serious about the modern condition.' Sigmund Freud
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The purpose of the salon is the informal discussion of film philosophies.
The aim of which is the creation of a discipline from a collision, from a
debilitating identity crisis.
Why do we need film philosophies? What can a philosophical viewpoint breath
into well-worn debates in film theory? What bred the recent surge of
interest in this area? What is film philosophy?
To join, send the message:
join film-philosophy firstname(s) lastname
to:
mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk
If this subject ain't for you, can you forward this to someone or some list
that may be interested?
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The salon anticipates the following areas to be within the range of its
playful chat (areas to be reborn through our philosophies of film
philosophy):
Film stories, actions and events that illustrate, rehearse or advance our
understanding of traditional philosophical problems. The meanings of
reflexive cinema. Philosophical inquiry into our emotional attraction to
certain types of film drama. Film as philosophy. The place of Plato's cave
in contemporary film philosophy. The ontology of the moving image: film
movement, illusion, representation; the 'existence' of fictional
characters; film as a continuous present; persistence of vision and the phi
phenomenon. The empiricist essentialism of filmology. Cognitivist and
phenomenological perspectives on the film experience. Time, memory, and
space in cinema. Imagination, dreams, mental imagery, other minds and film.
Characters as metaphors for truth or knowledge; screen detectives as
epistemologists; the philosophical universalising of motives and actions.
Film as a new metaphysics. Cultural philosophies of the moving sound image
as mass media. Filmic aesthetics. The reliability of documentary images -
narrative and profilmic manipulation. The status of the moving sound image
as thought and mind. Philosophers' cameos in films. The history of the
linking of film and philosophy.
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The salon will also welcome news of conferences, meetings, articles and
publications, as well as impromptu reviews of books old and new. Also,
essays and bibliographies would be very welcome for the salon's web site,
so please contact the owner at film-philosophy-request@mailbase.ac.uk with
your contributions and suggestions after you have joined. Already the web
site contains a general bibliography, as well as dedicated ones for
Deleuze's Cinema, phenomenology and cognitivism; details on how to access
these will be sent once you join.
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Once again, to join, send the message:
join film-philosophy firstname(s) lastname
to:
mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk
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Jay Ruby, Temple University, PO Box 128, Mifflintown PA 17059 USA
Office- 215-204-7513 Fax - 717-436-9559 Email -
ruby@pennet.net
"Television is a medium, so called because it is neither rare nor well
done." Ernie Kovacs
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