Author Archive for: ‘Robert Sinnerbrink’
Historical Moods in Film
Abstract: This essay explores the concept of historical mood as it is captured in narrative film, and considers its value for film studies and philosophy of film. Drawing on phenomenological and cognitivist approaches, I explore the idea of historical mood in movies, examining how it becomes manifest in different kinds of films: those which articulate explicit historical forms of sensibility …
Read MoreEarly Film-Philosophy: A Dialectical Fable
The philosophy of film remains to be formulated. Jean Epstein, “The Senses 1 b)” (1921) With the demise of ‘grand theory’ in the 1990s, film studies in recent decades has taken a notably ‘historicist turn’. At the same time, there has been renewed interest in the relationship between film and philosophy, leading to the emergence of ‘film-philosophy’ as a distinctive …
Read MoreTerrence Malick and the Thought of Film
Steven Rybin, Terrence Malick and the Thought of Film Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2012. ISBN 978-0-7391-6675-8 US$65 (hb) 236pp (Review copy supplied by Lexington books) For a filmmaker renowned for his reticence and lack of haste, Terrence Malick has been undergoing a burst of creativity of late. With a number of films either completed or in production (To the Wonder, …
Read MoreFrom Mythic History to Cinematic Poetry: Terrence Malick’s The New World Viewed
Abstract Terrence Malick’s The New World (2005) is a poetic evocation of one of America’s founding myths, the story of Pocahontas. While the film allegorises – through the theme of marriage – the possibility of successful cultural exchange and of reconciliation with nature, it also fuses mythic history, subjective reflection, and the self-expression of nature. This unstable point of view has led …
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