Call for Contributions:
PLOTINUS AND THE MOVING IMAGE: NEOPLATONISM AND FILM THEORY
Edited by Thorsten Botz-Bornstein and Giannis Stamatellos To be published in
the BRILL Philosophy of Film Series.
Deadline for abstracts: Sept. 30 2015. Deadline for final papers: June 30
2016.
Can Neoplatonic philosophy be used for film studies? Given the often-stated
parallels between Plotinus and Bergsons philosophies, it is surprising that
Neoplatonism has provided relatively little input on philosophy of film.
Curtis Hancock writes that the effects of Bergsonism are evident in
pragmatism, psychology, and theology and that the decedents of Bergson have
created a vestige of Neoplatonism that perdures into the late twentieth
century. This vestige must also exist in film studies. Today, with the newly
emerging Cinema of Contemplation, this Neoplatonic vestige is worth
exploring. The following points (as well as others) can be developed:
1. Contemplation. Plotinus search for the intelligible that can be grasped
neither by mere sense perception nor by abstraction or analysis, leads to
simple contemplation: Such vision is for those only who see with the souls
sightand at the vision, they will rejoice, and awe will fall upon them and a
trouble deeper than all the rest could ever stir, for now they are moving in
the realm of Truth (On Beauty, Enn. I, 6, 4). Can a theory of
contemplative cinema be built upon those ideas? Who contemplates? The
viewer? The film? Read more here:
http://www.botzbornstein.org/#!plotinus-and-film/c17gb
Abstracts (ca. 800 words) to be sent to: [email protected] and
[email protected].
