IFL | Research Projects

Brief Description: Considering the exciting new developments in the field of the philosophy of film and motion pictures – especially those provided by cognitive science and analytic philosophy – the state of film theory and research in Portugal is almost rudimentary, centered as it is, almost exclusively, in the work and thought of Gilles Deleuze (Cinema 1 & 2). Certainly, the deleuzian conceptualization is a major effort in the process of thinking about film and especially of thinking with film. But the “totalitarian” position it took among Portuguese film scholars and researchers is a perverse effect and certainly an effect not desired by Deleuze himself.

We think it’s more than time to change that state of things and to retrive the long and diverse relationship between philosophy and film and to restore the philosophical knowledge that has crossed all the history of film theory, from Hugo Munsterberg to David Bordwell or Daniel Frampton, passing by such diverse perspectives as those nourished by the work and vision of Siegfried Kracauer, Stanley Cavell, André Bazin, William Rothman, Ian Jarvie, Nöel Carroll, the filmology and phenomenology schools, just to name a few.

The main objective of this project is then to provide the scientific community with a logical system of resources that can help the establishment of the desired connection between that important legacy and the theoretical and methodological framework of film studies in Portugal. We strongly believe that without this systematic work we cannot move from the static position we have now to a more diverse and rich research environment with all its questions and the hypothesis we cannot even imagine, handicapped as we are by a theoretical and epistemological paralysis. The reality is that in terms of philosophy and film (a domain so important because it is also a relevant basis for audiovisual and media studies) we have almost stopped twenty years ago.

The project will be centered around the constitution of a “philosophical compendium”, an online database of proper translated and commented referential texts which will be accompanied by an encyclopedia of philosophical questions about film and film experience as well as about film theorists and philosophers.

In relation with that central research piece we will articulate two other more circumscribed projects:

The first one will be concerned with the philosophical roots of portuguese cinema – which is known by its characteristic and consistent “style”, from Manoel de Oliveira’s seminal work to the films of younger generations (Pedro Costa, Teresa Villaverde, among many others). Our aim with this project is:

to translate and classify all the major international essays and interviews on Portuguese film and filmmakers with relevant philosophical content;
to produce a consistent number of papers and essays about the theme;
to create a multimedia product (DVD) that can support – with the direct manipulation of images and sounds – the major trends of the project.

The second project will be centered on the relationship between film and the teaching of philosophy, offering an analytical online resource that can help teachers to support their teaching of philosophy (like the major philosophical topics presented on national high school curriculums) with examples from the history of cinema organized as a “philosophical exploration”, a work that will be based on the famous Stanley Cavell’s statement of film as a “world viewed”.

Team

João Mário Grilo, João Fonseca, PhD. (IFL/FCSH-UN), Dina Mendonça PhD. (IFL/FCSH-UN), Jorge Gonçalves PhD. (IFL/FCSH-UN), Patrícia Silveirinha Castello Branco. PhD (IFL/FCSH-UN), João Constâncio PhD. (IFL/FCSH-UN), Susana Nascimento (PhD Fellowship, Young Researcher), Joana Pimenta (PhD Fellowship, Young Researcher) Susana Viegas (PhD Fellowship, Young Researcher), Irene Aparício (PhD Fellowship, Young Researcher), Sérgio Dias Branco (PhD Fellowship, Young Researcher).

results

Online Database: Cinema – A Philosophical Compendium
Papers and a Multimedia Product on: Philosophical Roots of Portuguese Cinema
DVD Educative Series: The Role of Film in Philosophical Pedagogy

Reference Bibliography

ALLEN, Richard (2001). “Cognitive Film Theory” in Richard Allen and Malcolm Turkey (eds.). Wittgenstein, Theory and the Arts. London and New York: Routledge.
ALLEN, Richard; SMITH, Murray (eds) (1997). Film Theory and Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
BORDWELL, David; CARROLL, Nöel (eds.) (1996). Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
BRANIGAN, Edward (2006). Projecting a Camera, Language-Games in Film Theory. London and New York: Routledge.
BUCKLAND, Warren (1995). The Film Spectator: From Sign to Mind. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
CARROLL, Nöel (1988). Philosophical Problems of Classical Film Theory. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
CARROLL, Nöel; CHOI, Jinhee (eds.) (2006). Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures. London: Blackwell.
CAVELL, Stanley (1979). The World Viewed. Reflections on the Ontology of Film (enlarged edition). Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
CHATEAU, Dominique (2003). Cinéma et Philosophie. Paris: Nathan.
CURRIE, Gregory (1995). Image and Mind: Film, Philosophy and Cognitive Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
CURRIE, Gregory (2004). Arts and Minds. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
FRAMPTON, Daniel (2006). Filmosophy. London: Wallflower Press.
FREELAND, Cynthia A.; WARTENBERG, Thomas (eds) (1995). Philosophy and Film. New York: Routledge.
JARVIE, Ian (1999). “Is Analytic Philosophy a Cure for Film Theory ?”, Philosophy of the Social Sciences 29/3. 416-440.
JARVIE, Ian (1987). Philosophy of Film: Epistemology, Ontology Aesthetics. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
PLANTINGA, Carl; SMITH, Greg M. (eds.) (1999). Passionate Views. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.
RODOWICK, David N., Reading the Figural, or Philosophy after the New Media, Durham, Duke University Press, 2001
SMITH, Gregory M. (2003). Film Structure and the Emotion System. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
SOBCHACK, Vivian (1992). The Adress of the Eye: A Phenomenology of Film Experience. Princeton: Princeton University Press.