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Recent Text: Notes on Filmosophy: A Reply to Reviews, New Review of Film and Television Studies, vol. 6 no. 3, December 2008.

Next Text: Filmosophical Cinema: On Inland Empire, The Philosophers' Magazine, forthcoming 2009.

Filmosophy is cited as a point of reference for the Emergent Encounters with Film Theory conference at King's College London, March 2009. here

Martin Thiele's essay 'Filmosophy - About Framptons Radically New Way of Understanding Cinema', University of Potsdam, 2009. here

The Academy for Film and Psychiatry has a 'Filmosophy' discussion area. here

'Filmosophy, the Sci-Fi Film Theory', an interview in the Slovenian magazine Ekran, vol. 34 no. 46, February-March 2009. here

A special 'Film and Philosophy' issue of Slovienian journal Kino, no. 5/6, 2008, has a number of essays on Filmosophy. here

Filmosophy is cited as basis for Film and Philosophy conference, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 20-22 November 2008. here

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

Filmosophy selected as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2007.

Discuss Filmosophy at Film-Philosophy.

 

Latest reviews:

'[T]his is an ambitious book. It seeks to shake up how we think and write about cinema. Quite rightly, Frampton wants to push aside the stale technicist language of film theory and put us back in phenomenological touch with the experience of film. Not everyone will share his taste for Deleuzian philosophy, but he certainly lays down some new ways of thinking about film images and the cinematic experience. '

--- Andrew Crisell, Review of Filmosophy, European Journal of Communication, vol. 23 no. 4, December 2008, pp. 542-543.

 

'Daniel FramptonÕs work Filmosophy can be considered one of the most recent analyses of Gilles DeleuzeÕs theories on cinema, especially in its relationship to philosophy. But FramptonÕs book is more than that. It goes beyond the French philosopher in its argument that film, analogous to philosophy can be regarded not simply as an art form but as thinking itself, a system of thoughts, ideas and memories. . . . Frampton suggests that what we see is not only an image or character, but also the filmÕs own ÔbeliefÕ in and about this image or character. By disclosing this filmic belief, FramptonÕs concept of filmosophy tries to regenerate the connection between the audience and the film, subsequently reconnecting us with the real world. . . . FramptonÕs work offers an interesting new approach in discussing cinema in a wider context. It not only provides an excellent overview of philosophical film theories, but offers a perspective for looking at the relevance of cinema for our life and thinking beyond mere escapism.'

--- Sylvie MagerstŠdt, Review of Filmosophy, Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture, vol. 5 no. 3, September 2008.

 

'Filmosophy is bursting with energy and revolutionary zeal. But it is also more tempered than one might expect. If it has an edge of dogmatism, it is slightly ironic. Its refutations of other approaches are more scholarly than vitriolic. And while its assertions are often righteous, they are coupled with a palpable and inspiring belief in the possibilities of Þlm, thinking about Þlm, and thinking through Þlm, that promises to revitalise original and innovative Þlm investigation.'

--- Lisa Trahair, 'Film Theory', The Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory, 2008.

 

'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.

 

'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.

 

'A passionate and earnest Ôcall-to-armsÕ regarding the state of film studies, Daniel FramptonÕs Filmosophy (2006) is a highly ambitious book. . . . FramptonÕs work argues that film is a radically unique art form, which is able to ÔthinkÕ its own world. Part of FramptonÕs project is to propose a new vocabulary with which we can apprehend cinema: one which will allow us to talk about, write about, and experience the world of film in a way that cognitivist discourse has previously stifled. . . . FramptonÕs thought-provoking book is refreshing in its attempts to re-conceptualise the way in which we consider the visual image, and is passionate in its belief that cinema and visual culture has been poorly used. . . . Frampton argues that our understanding of our relationship to the image is woefully incomplete, and that we should see film as formulating its own philosophy: we should see film as a kind of future thinking.'

--- Alexia Bowler, Review of Filmosophy, New Cinemas, vol. 6 no. 1, 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

 

Reviews

Cherwell, Choice, Communication Booknotes Quarterly, Contemporary Magazine, Ekran, Empire, De Filmkrant, Forum for Modern Language Studies, Frieze, Illuminace, Projections, Scope, Screen, 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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Texts

Forthcoming – Filmosophy Book Launch Discussion at the London Review Bookshop

Forthcoming – Filmosophical Cinema: On Inland Empire, The Philosophers' Magazine, forthcoming 2009.

Notes on Filmosophy: A Reply to Reviews, New Review of Film and Television Studies, vol. 6 no. 3, December 2008.

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 – republished in Discover... Mass Media (Schoningh Press, forthcoming 2009).

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).

 

Talks

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

26 June 2008: Introduction to Filmosophy, 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

 

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

 

 

 

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Filmosophyš 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.