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News

Next talk: 26/27 June 2008:  BFI Education Media Studies Conference, London

Filmosophy selected as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2007

Review forthcoming in Film-Philosophy.

 

Latest reviews:

'Immensely rewarding and stimulating. The spirit of the book is one which reminds me of the great soothsayers of modern painting – Apollinaire,  Kandinsky, Kokoschka,  Marinetti,  Malevich and others – and it is little wonder that Frampton relies on many writers of the 1920s who pulsated with the future promise of cinema: Dulac,  Epstein,  Eisenstein,  Balazs. There is indeed a future promise in Filmosophy: that the future of cinema is alive and well, and some of us are awaiting its thoughts with excited anticipation.'

--- Richard Rushton, Review of Filmosophy, Screen, vol. 49 no. 2, Summer 2008.

 

'Scanning FramptonÕs marvelously wrought genealogies is a fine refresher course in film-theoretical writing, and engaging with his ideas is a stimulating way to rethink oneÕs own notions of what cinema is, can be, and should be. . . . If there is truth in FramptonÕs claim that for filmosophy 'film is the beginning and the future of our thoughtÕ, then his commitment to innovative theory and forward-looking criticism is necessary, timely, and welcome.'

--- David Sterritt, Review of Filmosophy, Film International, vol. 6 no. 2, 2008.

 

'Daniel FramptonÕs remarkable Filmosophy is a book that squarely confronts the question: how should we speak about film? What kind of philosophical writing does justice to the experience of cinema? Frampton cuts through the Gordian knot of contemporary film debates concerning 'subjective' versus 'objective' forms of the image, authorial intention, auteurism, apparatus theory, narratology, cognitive problem-solving, and so on. One should salute FramptonÕs achievement: Filmosophy elaborates a strikingly original conceptualization of film experience which also synthesizes much of the history of philosophical reflection on the cinema.'

--- Robert Sinnerbrink (Macquarie University), Review of Filmosophy, Projections: The Journal for Movies and Mind, vol. 1 no. 2, 2008.

 

'Filmosophy functions as a wonderful introduction and overview . . . concerning the conceptualisation of filmic thought and how it relates to our own thinking. The idea that film produces thinking or is related to the human mind has always been around in the history of cinema, but it has never been so rigorously discussed or elaborated upon as in Frampton's book. Fimosophy truly lays down an outline as well as a clear start off point for a new way of thinking about cinematic images.'

--- Ils Huygens, Review of Filmosophy, Scope: An Online Journal of Film and TV Studies, no. 10, February 2008.

 

'The key motive of filmosophy is the author's emphasis on the aesthetic character of film works. Be it his accentuation of a radical difference between a filmgoer's mind and the filmind, be it his harsh criticism of cognitivists for their dominant interest in story, or his rave for a new kind of filmgoer experience – there is always a call for the forgotten aesthetic autonomy of a film detectable in the background. I am sure that thanks to this aesthetic undertone filmosophical readers will have more to think about.'

--- Tereza Hadravov‡, 'Filmosophy: Re-Imagining the Moving Image', Vertigo, vol. 3 no. 8, Spring 2008.

 

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Filmosophy is a provocative manifesto for a radically philosophical way of understanding cinema. The book coalesces twentieth-century ideas of film as thought (from MŸnsterberg to Deleuze) into a practical theory of 'film-thinking', arguing that film style conveys poetic ideas through a constant dramatic 'intent' about the characters, spaces, and events of film. With discussions of contemporary filmmakers such as BŽla Tarr, Michael Haneke, and the Dardennes, this bold intervention into the study of film and philosophy will stir argument and discussion among both filmgoers and filmmakers alike.

--- London: Wallflower Press, 2006 | ISBN  1-904764-84-3 (pbk) £15.00 | 1-904764-85-1 (hbk) £45.00 | 256 pp.

Info: Book Contents, Introduction, Wallflower Press, Columbia University Press, Review Copies, Buy

 

Reviews

Cherwell, Choice, Communication Booknotes Quarterly, Contemporary Magazine, Ekran, Empire, De Filmkrant, Forum for Modern Language Studies, Frieze, Illuminace, Projections, Scope, Senses of Cinema, Sight & Sound, Vertigo.

 

Comments

Ian Christie, Tom Conley, Colin Davis, Harmony Korine, Colin McGinn, Adrian Martin, Martha P. Nochimson, Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, D. N. Rodowick, Dan Shaw, Vivian Sobchack, Emma Wilson, George M. Wilson

 

Translations

Mohammad Shahb‰'s Persian translation of an early version of the Introduction (2001)

 

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Club Filmosophy

28 April 2008, Claire Denis's The Intruder, Roxy, London (in association with Tartan Video) – with guest speaker Laura McMahon (Cambridge University)

27 March 2008: Haneke's Hidden, BFI Southbank, London

26 Feb 2008: Medem's The Red Squirrel, Roxy, London – with guest speaker Jo Evans (University College London)

26 Nov 2007: Haneke's 71 Fragments of a Chrology of Chance, Roxy, London – with guest speaker David Sorfa (Liverpool John Moores University)

11 October 2007: Apichatpong's Syndromes and a Century, BFI Southbank, London

10 Sept 2007: von Trier's Europa, Roxy, London

21 June 2007: Lynch's Inland Empire, BFI Southbank, London

 

Talks

Forthcoming – 6 July 2008: Roundtable discussion, Film/Philosophy conference, Bristol

Forthcoming – 26 June 2008:  BFI Education Media Studies Conference, London

6 May 2008: Talk/Interview, St Anne's College, Oxford

2 Feb 2008: Talk & Seminar, Univeriteit van Amsterdam, Netherlands

10 Sept 2007: Introduction to Filmosophy, Roxy, London

15 Oct 2006: Conversation with Harmony Korine, Renoir, London (Press comment here)

28 Sept 2006: What is Filmosophy?, Panel discussion (Jonathan Romney, Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, Jonathan Ree) & Book launch, London Review Bookshop, London [Read a report on the evening here]

2001: Filmosophy: An Introduction, Wadham College, Oxford

 

Texts

Forthcoming – Notes on Filmosophy: A Reply to Reviews

Forthcoming – Filmosophy Book Launch Discussion at the London Review Bookshop

Forthcoming – Filmosophical Cinema: On Lynch's Inland Empire

I am a Camera: On Harmony Korine, Tank Magazine, 2007.

A Filmosophy of the Dardennes, Vertigo, vol. 3 no. 3, Autumn 2006

Moving Images, The Guardian, 23 October 2006

Introduction, Filmosophy (2006)

The Way that Movements Speak, Film-Philosophy, vol. 5 no. 10, 2001

Filmosophy: Colour, in MacCabe & Petrie, eds, Working Papers from the BFI (London: BFI, 1996)

Lars von Trier x 6 (1993)

On Deleuze's Cinema (1991)

 

News Archive

Filmosophy put forward by Columbia UP for the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Katherine Singer Kovacs Book Award 2008

 

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Links

 

Contact

 

Discuss Filmosophy at Film-Philosophy

 

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Filmosophy¨ is a registered U.S. trademark owned by Valentin Stoilov (www.filmosophy.com) for educational services in the field of motion picture history, theory, and production. Mr. Stoilov is not the source or origin of this book and has not sponsored or endorsed it or its author.