The Real of Reality | International Conference on Philosophy and Film

Wed, 02.11.2016 – Sun, 06.11.2016

ZKM_Media Theater, ZKM_Lecture Hall, ZKM_Media Lounge, ZKM_Cube

Following a long series of documentary movies, “Stella Polaris” was Knut Erik Jensen’s first feature film, yet it transcends pre-existing genres. It can probably be best described as a poetic constellation of memory fragments pertaining to life in a northern Norwegian fishing village over a period of 50 years. It provides a new perspective on Norway’s northernmost county, Finnmark, its inhabitants, and recent history, setting it as a liminal location, referring to Homi Bhabha’s notion of third space. Such a concept of liminality includes a focus on the “other” and thereby allows us to catch sight of various forms of “othering” that prove constitutive of not only official Norwegian cold war discourse and identities, but indeed of any war discourse. The camera follows a young woman, the narrative’s main protagonist, who walks barefoot through the relicts of a northern Norwegian coastal fishing village. She appears like a ghostly apparition, rather than a realistic character in a historical reenactment. This way, “Stella Polaris” questions, challenges, and potentially subverts borders and barriers in political, historical, and aesthetic registers. Jensen develops a peculiar aesthetic that puts high value on transi­tions between shots and that actively juxtaposes the visual with the audible. His spectator does not enter the cinema to relax or forget, but to engage what he refers to as “audio-visual riddles.” This peculiar aesthetic values an in-between and can therefore be termed as a “liminal aesthetic.”

(This text is based on Holger Plötzsch’s review of the film entitled “Aspects of Liminality in Knut Erik Jensen’s ‘Stella Polaris’”, 2012)

International Conference on Philosophy and Film

Photography and film in particular paved the way for complex philosophical questions regarding the nature of reality and its mechanical reproduction. What does film reproduce and how can we grasp this element, which has the transactive ability to form reality although originating in reality? This shaping takes palce through a complex interaction of image, action and narration and tends to permeate reality completely. It is an inconspicuous process that already affects our everyday life profoundly and is based on a revolution of the real. What does film show? Do we have access to reality that is not based on images or narrations? And what can film and its analysis contribute to philosophical debates on the real?

These are questions we are asking to engage in a dialogue between philosophy and film. For five days, one hundred and fifty philosophers, media scholars and filmmakers will connect philosophical theory with cinematic practice and open up new ideas and concepts. To accompany the program, there will be film screenings of documentaries of the invited filmmakers.

The participation at the conference is also possible without the presentation of a paper.

The conference will be held in English.