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

The debate about whether films can do philosophy has focused predominantly on narrative fiction films. In this talk, I consider documentary as a film genre whose philosophical significance has been underappreciated. I argue that documentary films are capable of doing philosophy albeit in a distinctive manner.

In making my case, I invoke the thesis I put forward in Thinking On Screen (2007) that films can do philosophy by addressing a philosophical problem that is also discussed by philosophers. My example of a film that does this is The Third Man (Reed, 1947) which, I argue, illustrates and supplements claims made by Aristotle in regard to the issue of how to dissolve a friendship ethically. To adapt this account to documentary films, I consider The Act of Killing (Oppenheimer, 2012). I argue that the film addresses the issue of how people can perform evil actions, an issue theorized by Hannah Arendt in Eichmann in Jerusalem (1964) through the concept of the banality of evil.

The distinctive feature of a documentary film’s philosophical contribution is that, whereas a fiction film usually does philosophy by means of a thought experiment, a documentary can support a thesis by means of providing actual evidence to support it. In so doing, documentaries rely on film’s distinctive manner of presenting reality on screen, a feature of film emphasized by André Bazin and others.

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.