Author Archive for: ‘Sarinah Masukor’

New Philosophies of Film: Thinking Images

Robert Sinnerbrink, New Philosophies of Film: Thinking Images Continuum, 2012 ISBN: 978-144115343-2 US$36.99 (pb) 264pp (Review copy supplied by Bloomsbury Publishing) Robert Sinnerbrink’s New Philosophies of Film is an introduction to the hybrid field of film-philosophy, directed at enthusiasts and scholars of both philosophy and cinema. This emergent discipline has become popular in recent years and, with a clear structure …

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World Film Locations: Paris

Marcelline Block (ed.), World Film Locations: Paris London: Intellect, 2012 ISBN: 9781841505619 US$19.00 (pb) 128pp (Review copy supplied by Intellect) As Keith Reader explains in the opening essay to Intellect’s World Film Locations: Paris, the cinematic Paris is not one of monuments, but of flânerie. Like Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin strolling the arcades, the shots float along cobbled streets, through …

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The Album of Everyday Life: The Photograph in the Films of Nuri Bilge Ceylan

In Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s films, photography is present in the everyday lives of the characters. Their homes are decorated with family portraits and holiday snaps. Some of them are photographers and taking photos are as much part of their lives as doing the washing up, watching television and drinking tea. There is a lot of tea drinking and sitting around …

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Sublime Materiality: Un lac

In the opening moments of Philippe Grandrieux’s Un lac (A Lake, 2008), we hear the sharp, rhythmic thwack of an axe. The arms swinging it fly across the screen. Behind the heaving red shape, stretching across the back left corner of the frame, are some hazy, grey-green trees, their trunks blurred at the edges, smoothed into the pale sky. A …

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An Imaginary Africa

Almost two minutes into Jean-Luc Godard’s Adieu au langage (Goodbye to Language , 2014), there is a low angle shot looking up at some bright sunflowers followed by a shot of a summer sky, the clouds dusted pink and gold. A woman’s voice asks, “Sir, is it possible to produce a concept about Africa?” [1] In the middle of the …

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