II - POLITICS OF THE CINEMATIC CENTURY
Summary
Are you a theorist or a philosopher? Is it film-philosophy or film theory? Both areas have developed into heterogeneous disciplines. There are multiple ways in which these disciplines are conceived of and practised. Can you actually define and categorize the practice of engaging with screen forms and cinematic conditions? In Part II, a selection of philosophers and theorists who have been integral to providing accounts of twentieth-century cultures engage with the metaphysical account of what numerous theorists have referred to as the cinematic century (Daney 1991a; Godard & Ishaghpour 2005). As Garin Dowd reminds us in his chapter on legendary film critic Serge Daney, it was Daney who surmised that the history of the twentieth century “was the cinema” (Ch. 11). Dowd also marvellously points out some of the connections that can be drawn among the thinkers of the cinematic century: those who lived through the wars and understood the connections the cinema was making between the abstracted and new places where people found themselves to be located. New perspectives – from the air, from under the ground, from inside a concrete bunker, from the maritime space of the twentieth century, from the microcosmic, the invisible sites of new chemistry, new technologies – all of these places afforded a new metaphysics of the image. The post-war period also provided reflection on the nature of death, destruction and humankind's death drive. Further avenues for study in this regard would include Hannah Arendt's work.
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- Information
- Film, Theory and PhilosophyThe Key Thinkers, pp. 119 - 121Publisher: Acumen PublishingPrint publication year: 2009