Focus: The Art and Soul of Cinema

Contemporary Aesthetics, 2016

The history of film has always been accompanied by a theoretical debate over its artistic potential. In the works of many theoreticians, more or less explicit anthropological speculations have played a significant role, focusing on the relation between cinema and formerly dominant modes of perception and living. Against this background, this paper addresses the position of film within the arts, and thus also the position of this art form vis-à-vis the role of art in relation to the human condition. One essential characteristic of films is that they are capable of bringing their audience into a specific state of being moved by what makes them move. Films have the potential to articulate an attitude of active passivity, which neither the other arts nor philosophy can mobilize in the same way.

Journal of Religion and Film, 1999

Using philosophical propositions from Stanley Cavell's work The World Viewed, I argue in this paper that there is a religious dimension available in film which has to do with a creative and disruptive approach to the normal and naturalized habits of the typical viewer. By examining both Von Trier's Breaking the Waves and Tarkovsky's The Sacrifice, I attempt to show that these film makers challenge their viewers via the nature of the medium itself and in ways that have religious/ethical implications.

2011

2016

Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image N.1, 2010

Construction of identity and meaning is becoming increasingly important in both media studies and religion scholarship. (Lövheim, 2004) Meaning construction outside traditional religion has become more interesting for religious studies and what individuals in the audience do with all messages circulated through media in everyday life has attended increasing interest within media studies (Stout and Buddenbaum, 2001). Motion pictures, soap operas and advertising are all examples of media contents which generate ideas among its audience which to a various degree are used as resources within the construction of identity (Jansson, 2001). The investigation of what modern humankind’s world views look like and what components they are composed of, in this context seems to be an important topic of investigation (Holm and Björkqvist, 1996). The ways in which the development of media has effected the daily lives of individuals is interest as is the nature of the self and the ways in which the ...

The immolated victim 77 Traditionalist Roman Catholicism and Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ Bernard Doherty Book reviews 102 The Real and the Virtual 102 Language that poses a question 107 Scholar, monk and bishop 109 Editorial 'Film, faith and culture'

Amsterdam University Press eBooks, 2011

Anticipation and concentration, sensual excitement, craving for a habit, sudden astonishment: they are all part of watching film. Therefore, I shall attempt to consider the cinema as a locus of experiencean experience of a particular kind: the film experience. This is perhaps not a new endeavor, 2 but it now seems a necessary one for at least three reasons. The first reason regards film studies, and I will therefore treat it only briefly. Over the course of the last two decades a great interest in reception has developed. This interest has been manifested in various fields: in semio-pragmatics, with the description of various ambits in which film may be experienced, from spectacle to didactic; 3 in feminist film studies, with an emphasis on the implication of gendered elements in film viewing; 4 in historical studies, with attempts to reconstruct the ways in which film has been proposed to the public, 5 interpreted over the course of time, 6 and rendered a collective patrimony; 7 and in ethnographic studies with their objective of analyzing in parallel visual and social practices. 8 There have also been a large number of contributions dedicated to linking the type of spectatorial gaze to the types and genres of films made, 9 as well as studies of the cinematographic apparatus, which focus on the machine of vision and its impact both on the perceiver and on that which is being perceived (i.e. both on the spectator as a subject, and on the image as a signifier). 10 Reception, together with representation and production, have been the three pillars of film studies. However, the orientation of this research risks missing its target, at least in part. A spectator does not find herself "receiving" a film: she finds herself "living" it. This requires us to ask not only how she is a spectator and what she is a spectator of, but also on what basis she becomes a spectator, and what effect this has on her existence. In short, when can one say that one is seeing a film and what meanings do we attribute to the fact of seeing it? Returning to the question of experienceas opposed to, or beyond, the question of receptioncan help us to respond to these questions. In fact, this return allows us to place ourselves at the level of lived life, so to speak, as we recuperate the dynamics of vision in all their complexity and concreteness. Furthermore, it allows us to focus in on the process