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‘I am happy to see that a younger scholar has been impelled by the urge to spread the Good Word: film thinks. It is true that after Epstein, Eisenstein, Vertov, Schefer, Deleuze, Godard, Didi-Huberman, Brenez, and a few dozen others (not many native English speakers -- granted), one was in sore need of someone who would unveil the essential link between film and thinking.’

--- Jacques Aumont, Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle (Paris III); co-author of The Aesthetics of Film (1992), and author of The Image (1996).

'An ambitious attempt to outline a 'new' way of thinking about cinema, Filmosophy also gives a sympathetic and often perceptive account of Gilles Deleuze's position, justifying and extending his contention that film is a form of thought. Its publication will make a valuable contribution to debate about the conceptual understanding of cinema.'

--- Ian Christie, Birkbeck College, University of London; co-editor of Scorsese on Scorsese (2003) and The Cinema of Michael Powell (2005).

'Filmosophy, a sprightly treatment of the ways that cinema makes us think, tells us why cinephilia is deeply rooted in perception and reflection. When Frampton tells us 'the thinking of a film should be seen as free and fluid' he brings his readers to the threshold of creative criticism, and every one of those readers will appreciate the energy, force, and breadth of the author's appreciation of cinema.'

--- Tom Conley, Harvard University; author of Film Hieroglyphs (1991) and Cartographic Cinema (2006).

'The link between philosophy and cinema is one of the most fertile areas of contemporary film studies. Filmosophy establishes a vocabulary and an original perspective for understanding that link. New cinematic forms require new ways of thinking; indeed, this book suggests that these forms are new ways of thinking. Powerfully and provocatively, Filmosophy revises what we thought we knew about cinema, and asks us to look again at what cinema might know about us.'

--- Colin Davis, Royal Holloway, University of London; author of Levinas (2000) and After Poststructuralism (2004).

'A path-breaking work.'

-- Fiona Jenkins and Robrt Sinnerbrink, Film as Philosophy: Introduction, Scan: Journal of Media Arts Culture, vol. 4 no. 2, August 2007.

'After reading Filmosophy I was so inspired that I punched both of my eyes and smashed my teeth on the edge of the sink, then I took some glass and cut a scar into my forearm. Things are better now and I have recommended it to all my friends in prison.'

-- Harmony Korine, October 2007.

'About every fifteen years, it seems, contemporary film theory takes what is commonly called a 'turn'. The Psychoanalytic Turn of the Sixties and Seventies was followed by the Historiographic Turn that took us through much of the Eighties and Nineties. But now we are fully into a Philosophic Turn. Deleuze kicked off the trend in France in 1983 with his cinema books, followed by various certified philosophers exploring their passions for cinema – Bernard Stiegler, Slavoj Zizek, Alain Badiou, Giorgio Agamben, and Jacques Ranciere, among others. The U.S. already had Stanley Cavell working in this area. Now, with books such as Daniel Frampton's boldly argued Filmosophy appearing, hardline cinephilia and hardline philosophy have merged.'

-- Adrian Martin, Review of Death 24x a Second, Cineaste, Winter 2006.

‘Filmosophy is an original conception of film, and combines a poetics of cinema with a broadly phenomenological philosophy of mind in order to reconceptualise the relationship of the film to the viewing subject. It offers a sympathetic and persuasive argument in favour of a form of a new engagement with film which sweeps aside the shibboleths of current film studies and returns the spectator to a position of empathetic involvement with the filmgoing experience, mapping out a poetic-philosophical approach to film so different from the prosaic aridity of much film studies. There is no doubting the originality of Filmosophy, or the fact that it constitutes a major contribution to the philosophy of film.’

--- Prof. Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, Queen Mary, University of London; author of L’Avventura (1997) and Luchino Visconti (2003).

‘Filmosophy is a further effort to show that cinema does not simply repeat and imitate philosophy, but has much to say as an independent form of cognition, of knowing things’.

--- Dr Adrian Page, University of Luton, in Filmwaves, no. 17, Winter 2002.

'An extremely daring book. Daniel Frampton's Filmosophy does not present a philosophy of film, nor does it explore how film contributes material for philosophical interpretation. Rather, in a lucid and clear style, Frampton argues that film is philosophy; it is itself, aesthetically, philosophical expression – a medium for thinking – and an accompaniment to thought. In conceptualizing film as an 'organic intelligence', Frampton draws from the lessons of both Gilles Deleuze and Stanley Cavell to propose one of the most original film philosophies of the last thirty years.'

--- D. N. Rodowick, Harvard University; author of Gilles Deleuze's Time Machine (1997) and Reading the Figural (2001).

'Filmosophy is a provocative and significant intervention in the contemporary dialogue about the cinema as manifest philosophy, expressed in both thought and action. Frampton's expansive rhetoric is refreshing, his film references eclectic, and his prose a pleasure to read.'

--- Vivian Sobchack, University of California, Los Angeles; author of The Address of the Eye (1992) and Carnal Thoughts (2004).

"Filmosophy is a new and innovative account of the relationship between film and philosophy which is bound to stimulate heated discussion. Anyone interested in the relationship between film and philosophy needs to read this book."

--- Thomas Wartenberg, Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts, USA; co-editor of Philosophy and Film (1995) and Thinking Through Cinema (2007).

Filmosophy offers a highly original perspective on contemporary cinema and filmgoing more broadly, renewing the terms in which film's relation to reality, to thought, and to emotion can be conceived. Frampton draws on a fantastic range of films, with precision and inventiveness, and the volume is testimony to committed cinephilia. The division of the volume into two halves seems well-judged — there is a lovely sense of an argument gradually taking shape through critical discussion before its structure and details are finally revealed. The book offers evidence in particular of the resonances of Deleuze's thinking for contemporary film theory: I find Frampton's thinking enabled by Deleuze, but Filmosophy as a whole manages to emerge from Deleuze and precipitate a new set of questions for filmgoers and film theorists. These questions are shown to be connected to the areas at the forefront of contemporary debates (in particular questions about phenomenology and the senses, and questions about digital cinema and new media).

The perspective on film-thinking and the filmind strikes me as brilliant, as timely (in response to contemporary cinema), and as evocative and explanatory. The book's neologisms (filmosophy, filmind, etc.) add to the innovative effect of the volume as a whole, which moves very easily between the terminology broadly used by scholars and the terms Frampton himself invents and manipulates (so his system is never hermetic or exclusive). He leaves the reader free to adopt his terms or to think through the same issues in other terms, either way throughout the volume he is thoughtful and precise about the terminology used. Overall, Frampton is admirably clear when explaining complex issues, appealingly personal at times, and always usefully authoritative. Gritty, impassioned, and engaged, Filmosophy challenges its readers to think afresh their experience in the cinema.

--- Dr Emma Wilson, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge University; author of French Cinema since 1950: Personal Histories (1999); Memory and Survival: The French Cinema of Krzysztof Kieslowski (2000); and Cinema's Missing Children (2003).

Filmosophy proposes a basic analogy between the intentionality of human sensory experience and the meaningfulness of movies. Thought, intention, and emotion are not expressed only through the physical behavior of the individual. They are also expressed more immediately in the ways in which an individual apprehends, attends to, and processes the manifolds of sensory experience. In this sense, the articulation of sensory experience is itself ‘minded’. Daniel Frampton’s striking thesis is that the succession of those projected sensory manifolds that constitute a film should be understood as ‘minded’ in a similar sense. A film may also express thoughts, intentions, and emotions about the world it depicts by means of the concrete modes in which it registers and manipulates the audio/visual information it provides. Moreover, the thinking that the film performs is not to be identified with the thinking of the filmmakers who have made the film – the ‘mental life’ of a movie has a certain fundamental autonomy of its own. For Frampton, the viewer’s understanding and appreciation of film should consist in his or her attempt to grasp systematically the specific mindedness of individual cinematic works.

This position is elaborated in detail in Filmosophy, and it is presented with great originality and subtlety. As the author himself points out, his approach has a number antecedents in the history of film theory, but, in my opinion, such a position has never been defended with the theoretical power and the illustrative detail that is contained in this remarkable volume.

--- George M. Wilson, University of Southern California; author of Narration in Light (1986) and The Intentionality of Human Action (1989).