Abstract

Surely it is time that film theory and criticism came to think about film in terms other than "Realism" or "subjectivity", and also questioned the dominance of the scientific model for knowing film. These categories and their presuppositions are built on a set of metaphysical assumptions which block the centrality of the existence of mankind's being-in-the-world. These same theoretical beliefs block our understanding of the existential meaning of the film-event. ;This dissertation follows a path of thinking set out by Martin Heidegger, and works towards an overcoming of the rationalism central in film theory. Heidegger maintains truth does not have the structure of an agreement between a knowing subject and some subject. Truth for Heidegger is only possible because of a pre-conceptual foundation which is ontological, in the sense that it is rooted in mankind's being-in-the-world. ;This work following markers from Heidegger's early and later thought calls for a turning from the representationalism of anaesthetic truth based on mimesis, to an understanding of the film-event based on Heidegger's existential analytic of Dasein. ;To answer such a call, there must first be a change in our thinking. This change is possible due to his philosophical overcoming of Western metaphysics. This change is also possible through an application of Heidegger's unique phenomenological hermeneutic. ;Any possible turning in our thinking must lead us to a radical interpretation of the being of technology and art, and their relation to Heidegger's understanding of Truth. ;In this dissertation the possibilities which Heidegger opens through an understanding of Dasein are applied to the question concerning the essence of the film-event. This results in an announcing of the ontological truth of mankind's historicity in and through the possibility of an authentic film-event. It also reveals the presence of an "ought" which requires the film-work as a functional instrument to work towards the destruction of the Western World-picture