Online research in philosophy

Philosophy and film. Why film and philosophy? -- Philosophy and film spectatorship -- Epistemology and metaphysics. Knowing what's what in Total recall -- Ontology and The matrix -- It's all in the mind: AI artificial intelligence and robot love -- La jetee and the promise of time travel -- The human condition. Fate and choice: the philosophy of Minority report -- Personal identity: the case of Memento -- The spectacle of horror: Funny games -- Looking for meaning in all the wrong places (Ikiru, "to live") -- Ethics and values. Crimes and misdemeanors and the fragility of moral motivation -- Lives of others: moral luck and regret -- The dark knight: Batman on deontology and consequentialism -- Dangerous childhood: La promesse and the possibility of virtue.

"Introducing Philosophy Through Film" combines this novel pedagogical approach with all the virtues of a serious introductory anthology of classical and ...

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.

This is a book about the nature of film: about the nature of moving images, about the viewer's relation to film, and about the kinds of narrative that film is capable of presenting. It represents a very decisive break with the semiotic and psychoanalytic theories of film which have dominated discussion over the last twenty years. The central thesis is that film is essentially a pictorial medium and that the movement of film images is real rather than illusory. A general theory of pictorial representation is presented, which insists on the realism of pictures and the impossibility of assimilating them to language. It criticises attempts to explain the psychology of film viewing in terms of the viewer's imaginary occupation of a position within the world of film. On the contrary, film viewing is nearly always impersonal.

This essay argues that film as a medium breaks through the clearly delineated boundaries between realism and anti-realism that have been established by film theory. Film itself is basically indifferent to each. As an alternative to both, I put forward a thesis of indeterminism, which argues that films engender a unique event of sight and sound that does not have to be perceived to be a real event or an illusion of such an event.

When most people sit down to watch a film, their focus usually stays on the very dynamic images that move onscreen. The dialogue, as a form of diegetic sound, is probably the next piece of the film they concentrate on, but this only imitates actual experience, since most people understand communication by both watching and listening. Christian Metz, in his influential text Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema, describes film as “Born of the fusion of several pre-existing forms of expression, which retain some of their own laws (image, speech, music, and noise),” to which he later adds “written materials” as a fifth component.1 Of these five channels of information included in film, music is the most artificial ..

Introduction -- An improbable alliance : Peter Wollen's "The auteur theory" -- Visual stylometry : Barry Salt's "Statistical style analysis of motion pictures" -- Between Shakespeare and Sirk : Thomas Elsaesser's "Tales of sound and fury: observations on the family melodrama" -- From iconicity to semiotic articulation : Christian Metz's "cinema: language or language system?" and language and cinema -- Film as a specific signifying practice : Stephen Heath's "On screen, in frame: film and ideology" -- Against theories of reflection : Laura Mulvey's "Visual pleasure and narrative cinema" -- Early cinema spectatorship : Tom Gunning's "The cinema of attraction(s): early film, its spectator, and the avant-garde" -- Another Lacan : "the universal: suture revisited" -- The death of the camera : Edward Branigan's "What is a camera?" -- Conclusion: teaching theory.

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.

Machine generated contents note: -- PART I: CRITICAL PRACTICE -- The Critical Practice of Film -- PART II: FILM FORM -- Narrative Film -- Documentary Film -- PART III: TECHNIQUES OF FILM -- Cinematography -- Mise-en-Scène -- Sound -- Editing -- Music -- PART IV: ANALYSIS AND CRITICAL PRACTICE -- Interpretation and Analysis of Film -- Critical Practice in Action.

In Projecting a Camera, film theorist Edward Branigan offers a groundbreaking approach to understanding film theory. Why, for example, does a camera move? What does a camera "know"? (And when does it know it?) What is the camera's relation to the subject during long static shots? What happens when the screen is blank? Through a wide-ranging engagement with Wittgenstein and theorists of film, he offers one of the most fully developed understandings of the ways in which the camera operates in film. With its thorough grounding in the philosophy of spectatorship and narrative, Projecting a Camera takes the study of film to a new level. With the care and precision that he brought to Narrative Comprehension and Film , Edward Branigan maps the ways in which we must understand the role of the camera, the meaning of the frame, the role of the spectator, and other key components of film-viewing. By analyzing how we think, discuss, and marvel about the films we see, Projecting a Camera, offers insights rich in implications for our understanding of film and film studies.