Perhaps nowhere in the broad expanse of types of film is the old “quarrel between philosophy and poetry” more evident—and also more vitally relevant—than in the genre or mode of film known as documentary. Documentary film is just another form of poetic imitation, in its variety of instances and complexity of fabrication, it is just as much caught up with the limitations—and effects—of mimetic art, including fiction film. This book affords a prismatic perspective on documentary cinema, inviting (...) the dynamism and diversity of the arts, humanities, social sciences, and even natural sciences together into a shared conversation. (shrink)

This distinctively interdisciplinary approach to the subject encompasses filmmaking, psychoanalysis, philosophy and popular culture and offers a unique insight into documentary film practice from a psychoanalytic perspective. At the heart of the enquiry is belief that ‘transference-love’ is present in the documentary encounter. With a focus on testimony-driven film and a foreword by Michael Renov, who calls this book 'a radical and compelling account', _Psychoanalysis and Ethics in Documentary Film _covers a range of topics including: Four fundamental (...) concepts of psychoanalysis and documentary film A review of documentary film practice A personal account of the author’s relationship with a subject of her own work A thorough interrogation of the ethics of documentary Ideal for film studies scholars, psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and psychotherapeutically engaged professionals, as well as filmmakers, culture studies students and anyone interested in the process of documentary-making and contemporary culture, this work offers a unique approach. (shrink)

The documentary film is a popular curriculum tool, and the goal of this paper is to expand the educational significance of the documentary genre I argue that current understandings of this genre are limited and limiting, and offer an alternative perspective on the genre. This alternative will be built from Stanley Cavell’s philosophy of education, in particular, his understanding of the role that ‘representativeness’ plays in teaching and learning.

In this article I examine the role of attention as a defining aspect of photography and documentary film. When we pay attention to how the world looks it might sometimes surprise us. It might perhaps show us that we are too set in our ways of seeing and that the world can reveal things unknown, or as Stanley Cavell remarks: “how little we know about what our relation to reality is, our complicity in it”. This is, I claim, the (...) task in which the documentary image can guide us. In order to arrive at this conclusion I will start by examining how the documentary image adheres to knowledge, without falling back on a generic epistemological or representational framework. I start by discussing the final scene in Werner Herzog's film Echoes from a Somber Empire as an example of the aspect of documentary film, that aids us in refraining from projecting our preconceptions on the uncanny. I continue by discussing Nietzsche's understanding of knowledge as a process... (shrink)

Finding the theoretical space where cinema and philosophy meet, Malin Wahlberg’s sophisticated approach to the experience of documentary film aligns with attempts to reconsider the premises of existential phenomenology. The configuration of time is crucial in organizing the sensory affects of film in general but, as Wahlberg adroitly demonstrates, in nonfiction films the problem of managing time is writ large by the moving image’s interaction with social memory and historical figures. Wahlberg discusses a thought-provoking corpus of classical and (...) recent experiments in film and video in which creative approaches to the time of the image and the potential archive memory of filmic representation illuminates meanings of temporality and time experience. She also offers a methodological account of film and brings Deleuze and Ricoeur into dialogue with Bazin and Mitry on the subject of cinema and phenomenology. Drawing attention to the cultural significance of the images’ imprint as a trace of the past, Documentary Time brings to bear phenomenological inquiry on nonfiction film while at the same time reconsidering the existential dimensions of time that have always puzzled humans. Malin Wahlberg is a research fellow in cinema studies at Stockholm University. (shrink)

The eastern Islamic concept of the imaginal realm, which explains how supra-sensory realities present themselves to imaginative perception, can enrich the imagination of film-philosophy. The imaginal realm, in Arabic ‘alam al-mithal, world of images, or ‘alam al-khayal, imaginative world, is part of a triadic ontology of sensible, imaginal, and intelligible realms. Diverging from roots shared with Western thought in the concept of the imaginative faculty, the Islamic imaginal realm is supra-individual and more real than matter. The imaginal realm is a (...) radically pro-image concept, affirming the importance of poetry, art, and images in motion. As developed by the Persian philosopher Sadr al-Dîn Muhammad al-Shîrâzî, known as Mullâ Sadrâ, the imaginal realm flows and intensifies, in a process philosophy we may fruitfully compare with Spinoza, Leibniz, and Whitehead. I sketch the genealogy of the imaginal realm and compare it to contemporary Western film-philosophy. I suggest how this transcendental concept can be made immanent. Finally, I draw from contemporary Muslim thinkers, such as Mohammed Arkoun, who ground a visionary collective politics in the imaginal realm. My central example, the documentary The Lebanese Rocket Society by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joriege, exemplifies film's imaginal powers. (shrink)

Documentary as Exorcism is an interdisciplinary study that builds upon the insights of postcolonial studies, critical race theory, theological and religious studies and media and film studies to showcase the role of documentary film as a system of signifying capable of registering complex theological ideas while pursuing the authentic aims of documentary filmmaking. Robert Beckford marries the concepts of ‘theology as visual practice' and ‘theology as political engagement' to develop a new mode of documentary filmmaking that (...) embeds emancipation from oppression in its aesthetic. In various documentaries made for Channel 4 and the BBC, Beckford narrates the complicit relationship of Christianity with European expansion, slavery, and colonialism as a historic manifestation of evil. In light of the cannibalistic practices of colonialism that devoured black life, and the church's role in the subjugation and theological legitimation of black bodies, Beckford characterises this form of historic Christian faith as ‘colonial Christianity' and its malevolent or ‘occult' practices as a form of ‘bewitchment' that must be ‘exorcised'. He identifies and exorcises the evil practices of colonialism and their present impact upon African Caribbean Christian communities in Britain in films such as Britain's Slave Trade and Empire Pays Back through a deliberate process of encoding/decoding. The emancipatory impact of this form of documentary filmmaking is demonstrated by its ability to bring issues such as reparations to the public square for debate, and its capacity to change a corporation's trade policies for the good of Africans. (shrink)

In Documentary Across Platforms, noted scholar of film and experimental media Patricia R. Zimmermann offers a glimpse into the ever-evolving constellation of practices known as "documentary" and the way in which they investigate, engage with, and interrogate the world. Collected here for the first time are her celebrated essays and speculations about documentary, experimental, and new media published outside of traditional scholarly venues. These essays envision documentary as a complex ecology composed of different technologies, sets of (...) practices, and specific relationships to communities, engagement, politics, and social struggles. Through the lens of reverse engineering--the concept that ideas just like objects can be disassembled to learn how they work and then rebuilt into something new and better--Zimmermann explores how numerous small-scale documentary works present strategies of intervention into existing power structures. Adaptive to their context, modular, and unfixed, the documentary practices she explores exploit both sophisticated high-end professional and consumer-grade amateur technologies, moving through different political terrains, different platforms, and different exhibition contexts. Together these essays demonstrate documentary's role as a conceptual practice to think through how the world is organized and to imagine ways that it might be reorganized with actions, communities, and ideas. (shrink)

Can the documentary be useful? Can a film change how its viewers think about the world and their potential role in it? In Kill the Documentary, the award-winning director Jill Godmilow issues an urgent call for a new kind of nonfiction filmmaking. She critiques documentary films from Nanook of the North to the recent Ken Burns/Lynn Novick series The Vietnam War. Tethered to what Godmilow calls the "pedigree of the real" and the "pornography of the real," (...) they fail to activate their viewers' engagement with historical or present-day problems. Whether depicting the hardships of poverty or the horrors of war, conventional documentaries produce an "us-watching-them" mode that ultimately reinforces self-satisfaction and self-absorption. In place of the conventional documentary, Godmilow advocates for a "postrealist" cinema. Instead of offering the faux empathy and sentimental spectacle of mainstream documentaries, postrealist nonfiction films are acts of resistance. They are experimental, interventionist, performative, and transformative. Godmilow demonstrates how a film can produce meaningful, useful experience by forcefully challenging ways of knowing and how viewers come to understand the world. She considers her own career as a filmmaker as well as the formal and political strategies of artists such as Luis Buñuel, Georges Franju, Harun Farocki, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Rithy Panh, and other directors. Both manifesto and guidebook, Kill the Documentary proposes provocative new ways of making and watching films. (shrink)

Designed for classroom use, this authoritative anthology presents key selections from the best contemporary work in philosophy of film. The featured essays have been specially chosen for their clarity, philosophical depth, and consonance with the current move towards cognitive film theory Eight sections with introductions cover topics such as the nature of film, film as art, documentary cinema, narration and emotion in film, film criticism, and film's relation to knowledge and morality Issues addressed include the objectivity of documentary (...) films, fear of movie monsters, and moral questions surrounding the viewing of pornography Replete with examples and discussion of moving pictures throughout. (shrink)

Designed for classroom use, this authoritative anthology presentskey selections from the best contemporary work in philosophy offilm. The featured essays have been specially chosen for theirclarity, philosophical depth, and consonance with the current movetowards cognitive film theory Eight sections with introductions cover topics such as thenature of film, film as art, documentary cinema, narration andemotion in film, film criticism, and film's relation to knowledgeand morality Issues addressed include the objectivity of documentary films,fear of movie monsters, and moral (...) questions surrounding the viewingof pornography Replete with examples and discussion of moving picturesthroughout. (shrink)

Film can be a significant way of doing public philosophy. This chapter sketches some essential public features of philosophy by using popular films. Learning to watch popular films as philosophical expressions, on par with books and articles, brings film and philosophy to inform one another and illuminate important areas of overlap. Memento is an especially uncanny film because it begins with the story's ending. Daniel J. Clark's 2018 documentary film Behind the Curve charts the resurgence of flat‐Earth (...) theory in the United States. Its core thesis is that false, avowed belief in flat‐Earth is sustained partly by an irrational weighing of evidence reinforced by various social, psychological, and economic benefits that come from holding the belief. We gain insight into a classic mechanism of motivated reasoning from Tony Kaye's film American History X, a fictional exploration of the rise of white supremacist ideology in US white working‐class neighborhoods. (shrink)

What mental and physical distress do actors, camerapersons, and reporters experience when working on reenactments of traumatic moments in history? In Political Camerawork, D. Andy Rice theorizes that the intense feelings produced while creating these performed scenarios, called "simulation documentaries," connect difficult pasts to the present. Building on his background as a nonfiction film director, producer, editor, and cinematographer, Rice analyzes performance techniques to gain insight into the emotional toll of simulation documentaries, including those reliving the Vietnam War, the US (...) military's embodied training in California during the Iraq War, and an annual quadruple lynching reenactment organized by Black civil rights activists in Georgia. Investigating the lasting impact of these productions, Political Camerawork reveals that, by performing a simulation of a traumatic event they didn't directly experience, those involved become carriers of the trauma. (shrink)

Pack includes 2 titles from the popular Blackwell Philosophy Anthologies Series: Philosophy of Literature: Contemporary and Classic Readings - An Anthology Edited by Eileen John and Dominic McIver Lopes ISBN: 9781405112086 Essential readings in the philosophy of literature are brought together for the first time in this anthology. Contains forty-five substantial and carefully chosen essays and extracts Provides a balanced and coherent overview of developments in the field during the past thirty years, including influential work on fiction, interpretation, metaphor, literary (...) value, and the definition and ontology of literature Includes an additional historical section featuring generous selections of the writings of early pioneers such as Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, and Hume Serves as an ideal introduction to the philosophy of literature or the philosophy of art, as well as a handy compilation of contributions to the field by its leading figures Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures: An Anthology Edited by Noël Carroll and Jinhee Choi ISBN: 9781405120272 Designed for classroom use, this authoritative anthology presents key selections from the best contemporary work in philosophy of film. The featured essays have been specially chosen for their clarity, philosophical depth, and consonance with the current move towards cognitive film theory Eight sections with introductions cover topics such as the nature of film, film as art, documentary cinema, narration and emotion in film, film criticism, and film's relation to knowledge and morality Issues addressed include the objectivity of documentary films, fear of movie monsters, and moral questions surrounding the viewing of pornography Replete with examples and discussion of moving pictures throughout. (shrink)

This book provides an interdisciplinary analysis of film in the context of the Anthropocene: the new geological era in which human beings have collectively become a force of nature. Daniel White draws on perspectives in philosophy, ecology, and cybernetics to explore human self-understanding through film in the new era. The classical figure of Janus, looking both to the future and the past, serves as a guide throughout the study. Both feature and documentary films are considered.

_The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film_ is the first comprehensive volume to explore the main themes, topics, thinkers and issues in philosophy and film. The _Companion_ features sixty specially commissioned chapters from international scholars and is divided into four clear parts: • issues and concepts • authors and trends • genres • film as philosophy. Part one is a comprehensive section examining key concepts, including chapters on acting, censorship, character, depiction, ethics, genre, interpretation, narrative, reception and spectatorship and style. (...) Part two covers authors and scholars of film and significant theories Part three examines genres such as documentary, experimental cinema, horror, comedy and tragedy. Part four includes chapters on key directors such as Tarkovsky, Bergman and Terrence Malick and on particular films including _Memento_. Each chapter includes a section of annotated further reading and is cross-referenced to related entries. _The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film_ is essential reading for anyone interested in philosophy of film, aesthetics and film and cinema studies. (shrink)

The indexicality of film and sound recordings remains an unresolved problem in contemporary documentary theory. The prevailing conceptualisation of the documentary assigns it the status of a sober discourse, a framing in which history is modelled as absent cause and the unqualified distinction between fiction and non-fiction is considered sacrosanct. The denotative literalism characteristic of indexical media, however, confounds this conceptualisation, which in turn encourages the devaluing of documentary aesthetics; the documentary is not a medium of (...) art, it is said, but of argument. In this article, I examine how philosopher Jacques Rancière offers an alternative account of the documentary grounded on aesthetics rather than sobriety. I show how, in rethinking the absent cause model of history as well as the relationship between fiction and nonfiction, Rancière's aesthetic approach resolves the conceptual problem posed by indexicality and brings clarity to the value and function of indexical media with respect to the documentary. (shrink)

This article argues that we ought to reject Gregory Currie’s “Trace Account” of documentary film. According to the Trace Account, a film is a documentary so long the majority of its constitutive images are traces of the film’s subject matter. The argument proceeds by considering how proponents of the Trace Account could respond to Noel Carroll’s charge that their analysis is radically revisionary. I argue that the only responses available are either implausible or show that a fully worked (...) out version of the Trace Account collapses into Carroll’s own, rival definition of documentary. I then consider how advocates of the Trace Account might attempt to rescue the theory by reframing it as an account of a genre or as a theory of evaluation and argue that neither attempt would succeed. Given this, we ought to embrace Carroll’s own account of documentary, according to which a film is documentary if and only if it is a film of presumptive assertion. (shrink)

Samantha Lay _British Social Realism: From Documentary to Brit-Grit_ London: Wallflower Press, 2002 ISBN 1-903364-41-8 144 pp.

Cinematic Thoughts: Essays on Film and the Philosophy of Film is an anthology of essays Gary Jason published (mainly) between 2012 and 2018. The book has seven parts. Part One consists of essays on propaganda films. The topics include how the Nazi Regime used film as a tool of propaganda, and its use of radio for propaganda. Part Two contains articles on genocide and film. These include two broad surveys of Holocaust documentaries, ranging from those that were done at (...) the end of WWII to Claude Lanzmann’s work. Also included are pieces reviewing the five major propaganda films the Nazi Regime produced aimed at arousing anti-Semitism in the populace leading up to the Holocaust. Part Three of the anthology concerns ethical theory as explored in film. Included here are three essays surveying how egoism is portrayed in classic movies, as well as one showing how Rossian ethical theory can be used to analyze conflicts of loyalty in classic war movies, and pieces illustrating virtue ethics. Part Four includes various articles on the history of cinema. One of the topics raised was whether the American film industry produced better films under the old, allegedly "monopolistic" studio system. Part Five of the anthology contains articles on the aesthetics of film. The topics here include how creativity can be portrayed in film, and why some great actors never win Oscars. Part Six contains pieces on classical liberalism in film, and Part Seven has miscellaneous articles on topics ranging from artists to criminals. (shrink)

Introduction: how John the Baptist kept his head, or my life in film philosophy -- A philosophical perspective. Why not realize your world? -- Silence and stasis -- Film and modernity -- André Bazin as Cavellian realist -- On Stanley Cavell's band wagon -- What becomes of the camera in the world on film? -- Studies in criticism. "I never thought I would sink so low as to become an actor": John Barrymore in Twentieth century -- James Stewart in Vertigo (...) -- Hats off to George Cukor! -- Woody Allen's New York -- Blood is thicker than water: the family in Hitchcock -- Space and speech in the films of Yasujiro Ozu -- Romance, eroticism and the camera's gaze in Jean Genet's Un chant d'amour -- Face to face with Chantal Akerman -- Precious memories in philosophy and film -- Seeing the light in The tree of life -- A film that is also a handshake: philosophy in the films of the Dardenne Brothers -- Justifying justified -- Documentary film in Boston in the 1970s and 1980s -- Sometimes daddies don't talk about things like that -- Jean Rouch as film artist -- Dancing with Gardner: Robert Gardner's films on art -- Dead birds re-encountered: a journey of return -- Notes on the essays. (shrink)

Serge Daney is widely recognised in his homeland as the most important French film critic after André Bazin. In a career devoted to criticism for Cahiers du cinéma and later Libération, including a key period as editor during the transition from the journal’s PCF and then Maoist phase beginning in 1973, Daney also held a lecturing position for a spell at the University of Paris, Paris III, La Censure. He was a significant public intellectual and featured in several documentaries, including (...) Claire Denis’ film Jacques Rivette – Le veilleur. From 1985 to 1990 Daney presented a programme on cinema on the radio station France Culture. Following the publication of a book on Haitian politics in 1973 under the assumed name Raymond Sapène, Daney’s journalism was collected in several volumes. He left Libération in 1981 to establish Trafic, a journal which, since his death from Aids in 1992, has continued his legacy. The only book-length English translation of Daney’s writings to date – Postcards from the Cinema – is of the posthumously published Persévérances. (shrink)

In Selfless Cinema?, Sarah Cooper maps out the power relations of making, and viewing, documentaries in ethical terms. The ethics of filmmaking are often examined in largely legalistic terms, dominated by issues of consent, responsibility, and participantse(tm) or film-makerse(tm) rights, but Cooper approaches four representative French film-makers e" Jean Rouch, Chris Marker, Raymond Depardon, and Agns Varda e" in a far less juridical way, drawing on the ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. She argues that, in spite of Levinase(tm)s iconoclastic, anti-ocular (...) thinking, his concept of visage is richly applicable to film, and especially to documentary. (shrink)

This article argues that the work of the late Johan van der Keuken offers a contribution to ecological semiotics, and that it also defines the relationship between the semiotic animal and nature in ways that avoid glottocentricism. Taking from the recent work of Kalevi Kull, Jesper Hoffmeyer, and John Deely amongst others, I will argue that van der Keuken’s documentaries offer a view of ecology that is broader than a study of bio-physical processes that might reduce ecology to a narrow (...) political issue.In order to support this argument, I will be looking at two contrasting films from van der Keuken – Flat Jungle (1978) and Face Value (1991). The first film examines natural habitats within a confined coastal area in Western Europe, while the second film looks at human beings in the different urban environments of late-20th-century Europe. I will then argue that van der Keuken does not collapse the vital distinctions between umwelt and Lebenswelt, yet his films also succeed at reminding us of their constant interdependence. (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)

Based on a nuanced understanding of immersion and sense of presence as two key aesthetic effects that the application of virtual reality to cinema is believed to innovate, this paper develops the concept of synthetic vision as fundamental to understanding the visual experience of VR media, particularly VR documentaries. The concept contends that viewers’ experience in VR is based on two visions that seemingly contradict each other: first, a disembodied vision that transports them to a simulated world, and second, an (...) embodied vision guaranteed by the freedom to control kinesthetic movement and direction of gaze. This serves to advance the idea that immersion and SoP are not unified but rather multifaceted concepts premised on a nuanced understanding of the varying relationships between the technological system of VR, its media content, and its user. For the concept of synthetic vision points to the paradoxical coexistence of viewers’ presence in the virtual world and their structural absence from the world that lays the groundwork for their immersive experience. By classifying three generic categories of contemporary VR documentaries, and by examining the aesthetic and ethical underpinnings VR brings to each of them, I argue that it hinges upon what kind of cinematic conventions and genres are remediated to determine the effective synthesis of the two visions. The varying effects of synthetic vision in the three subgenres of VR documentary stress that immersion and SoP have different political and ethical consequences of media witnessing. In the conclusion, I recapitulate multiple implications that the concept of synthetic vision has in regards to both the studies on VR and the recently flourishing investigation into cinematic VR artifacts. (shrink)

This book rethinks the discussion of sport as a cinematic subject. Arguing for the vitality of the sports film as distinctively 'modern' genre, the book looks at its innovative potential to capture twentieth- and twenty-first-century sport in all its complexity. Written in an accessible style and illustrated throughout, the book integrates work and ideas from film studies with thinking from sports psychology, philosophy, data theory and ecocriticism. In its detailed analyses of a wide-ranging group of films, the book shows (...) how film, from fictional works to biopics to experimental documentaries, can illuminate individual sporting experience, as well as sport's wider place in modern life. (shrink)

Film Manifestos and Global Cinema Cultures is the first book to collect manifestoes from the global history of cinema, providing the first historical and theoretical account of the role played by film manifestos in filmmaking and film culture. Focussing equally on political and aesthetic manifestoes, Scott MacKenzie uncovers a neglected, yet nevertheless central history of the cinema, exploring a series of documents that postulate ways in which to re-imagine the cinema and, in the process, re-imagine the world. This volume collects (...) the major European ÒwavesÓ and figures ; Latin American Third Cinemas ; radical art and the avant-garde ; and world cinemas. It also contains previously untranslated manifestos co-written by figures including Bolla’n, Debord, Hermosillo, Isou, Kieslowski, PainlevŽ, Straub, and many others. Thematic sections address documentary cinema, aesthetics, feminist and queer film cultures, pornography, film archives, Hollywood, and film and digital media. Also included are texts traditionally left out of the film manifestos canon, such as the Motion Picture Production Code and Pius XI's Vigilanti Cura, which nevertheless played a central role in film culture. (shrink)

Academics have increasingly used video and other electronic methods to collect data and capture reflections from participants. But, until recently, it’s been less common to use film as way of disseminating the results of research. That’s beginning to change. Film can be a powerful way to share research findings with a broad audience. This is particularly true when academics are combining) the traditions of ethnography, documentary filmmaking, and storytelling. -/- Film and cinema are increasingly being used in environmental humanities (...) to complement – or challenge – text-based research. The filmmakers in the arts, sciences and humanities see potential in using the moving images within political philosophy, environmental politics, postcolonial studies, human geography, urban ecology, postcolonial studies, design and literature. An example of this is the film One Table Two Elephants. It is a cinematic ethnography created by two Swedish researchers and filmmakers Jacob von Heland and Henrik Ernstson. Based on years of research in Cape Town, it was filmed in 2015 as part of a longer-term research and film-project . The documentary deals with race, nature and knowledge politics in Cape Town as part of the ways of knowing urban ecologies research project. -/- . (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 40.1 (2006) 104-110 [Access article in PDF] Film Studies, the Moving Image, and Noël Carroll Edward Sankowski Department of Philosophy University of Oklahoma Engaging the Moving Image, by Noël Carroll. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003, 420 pp., $45.00 hardcover. Noël Carroll is the leading writer today about philosophy and film studies among those with an Anglo-American analytic philosophy emphasis. He needs to (...) be read in a larger intellectual context also, as a leading interdisciplinary writer about film. On the positive side, he has expanded the resources of Anglo-American analytic philosophy (and has at the same time contributed work of distinction to scholarship in related areas). He profits from the virtues of analytic philosophy as well as putting to good use his broad acquaintance with other scholarship. He is refreshingly innovative, sometimes operating with valuable results beyond the current conventional borders of the discipline of philosophy in his choice of topics about film (or better, in his view, about the moving image). A collection of his essays written in the second half of the 1990s, Engaging the Moving Image, is thus very welcome. It is fascinating and often persuasive reading.The essays take up a wide range of topics, including (but not limited to) critiques of, and constructive proposals about, film studies. Carroll especially criticizes film studies writing that focuses on "the film medium." "Forget the Medium!" he urges, in the first essay. This is associated for him with attacks on "mediumistic essentialism" (xiii). Indeed, for him the criticism of essentialism is a favorite theme. Many other overlapping topics of great interest are also explored in Carroll's approach. These include the "naturalistic" study of film communication, horror films, film evaluation, the criticism of (Continental) "Big Theory" in film studies, the nature of documentaries, "moving-picture dance," the relationship between TV and film, Siegfried Kracauer on film, Eisenstein on nation building, the political subtext of American Westerns with plots involving Mexican revolutions, and "prospects for film theory," which are discussed in a lengthy concluding piece.While Carroll is characteristically often on the attack, and seems to relish polemics, he is far from predominantly a negative, critical critic. He often formulates fruitful questions for constructive inquiry in a characteristically [End Page 104] clear and reasonable way. He is, however, perhaps not at his strongest in these essays in furthering discussions of what is arguably most moving about "moving images." By this is meant the aesthetic and emotional heights and depths of what films can offer, as art or in other ways. But what he says about movies is sensible, carefully done, and repays repeated study. (One example is Carroll's instructive "cognitively oriented" discussion of emotions in "Film, Emotion, and Genre.")Greatness in film, as in other arts, sometimes makes it more difficult to be reasonable. Carroll's account of evaluation, "Introducing Film Evaluation," notably has a self-avowedly limited scope. That account, as Carroll says, focuses on "evaluating films in terms of whether they are good, bad, better or worse specimens of a kind or category." He writes that "We may also wish to evaluate genres" (162). But beyond genres, the greatness of some films seems well beyond the comparative evaluation of genres. While Carroll writes that his account of evaluation is only introductory and abbreviated, it nonetheless also seems too driven by the desire to emphasize the possibility of agreement about evaluation and to counter radical skeptical worries rather than to understand why evaluation of the very good or great film might matter to us beyond fixing the captured butterfly in its place by assigning a film to a genre.Carroll has seen a lot of movies and read a lot of film theory and other writing about film or the moving image. Some of the theory is awful, in his view, but some of it he considers valuable, and what he claims is plausible on both scores. Carroll thinks and writes incisively about many topics. He is eclectic on principle, but eschews obscurity and pretension. What emerges... (shrink)