Film-Philosophy Conference 2019 (part 2)

We’re back with the second of our double bill of episodes from the Film-Philosophy Conference held at the University of Brighton in July. Hosted by our very own Dario Llinares the event boasted an internationally renowned line-up of keynotes and delegates. 

Both episodes are made up of interviews we managed to grab as the conference progressed and, we hope gives you a sense of the eclectic mix of themes, methodologies and films that were discussed. As with part one, Neil and Dario are joined on interviewing duties by Kat Zabecka, from the University of Edinburgh.

Show Notes

0.0 Introduction – Dario, Neil and Kat welcome Kat to the Cinematologists fold.

10:06 Evy Varsamopoulou (with Neil) - Neil talks to Evy about how Ridley Scott's Prometheus (2012) and Alien: Covenant (2017) introduced a philosophical problematic into a cluster of interrelated and (still) topical issues and debates concerning the origin of humanity, procreation and posthuman futures.

22:30 Mark Cauchi (with Dario) - Mark tells Dario how Jarmusch’s Paterson is an effort to counteract Trumpism and the chauvinistic secularism it embodies, not merely by negatively criticizing it, as Richard Rorty lamented the Left usually does but by drawing upon and revamping a tradition of American thought and culture in order to re-envision positively what a distinctly American secularity could and should be.

42:26 Dionysios Kapsaskis (with Neil) - Neil and Dionysios get into about language and translation in the films of Jim Jarmusch, drawn from Dionysio’s paper exploring representations of translation in Jim Jarmusch’s films. Drawing on recent scholarship on the relationship between film and translation, and on critical writings on translation by Derrida and Benjamin among others, the paper focused on several scenes from Jarmusch’s films in which translation is represented or referred to.

56:26 Jenelle Troxell (with Neil) - Jenelle tells Neil how, with its emphasis on political activism, aesthetic experimentation, and psychoanalysis, the film journal Close Up anticipates the feminist film criticism of the 1970s and how the writers develop what Troxell terms a “contemplative aesthetic” - focusing on film’s capacity to generate states of deep contemplative absorption in the viewer.

01:08:22 Shai Biderman (with Neil) – Over lunch, Neil and Shai discuss Fables and parables—two storytelling devices designed to elicit folk wisdom and moral understanding of human situations and predicaments— how they have gained a stronghold in contemporary film-philosophy and how their use in the Coen Brothers’ oeuvre is worthy of special attention, if only because of their sheer abundance.

01:22:34 Sylvie Magerstaedt (with Kat) – For the last of the conversations featured, Kat sits down with Sylvie to talk about Tim Burton’s Big Fish and Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amélie and how although they seem to extol the beauty and power of storytelling and myth creation, and by extension the power of cinema itself, they also raise certain ethical issues when it comes to honesty and truthfulness.

Clips featured on this episode include: Trailer for Prometheus (dir. Scott, 2012), a scene from Paterson (dir. Jarmusch, 2016) and the title song from The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (dir. Coen, 2018), performed by Willie Watson and Tim Blake Nelson.

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