Cinema

Description

For Alain Badiou, films think, and it is the task of the philosopher to transcribe that thinking. What is the subject to which the film gives expressive form? This is the question that lies at the heart of Badiou’s account of cinema. He contends that cinema is an art form that bears witness to the Other and renders human presence visible, thus testifying to the universal value of human existence and human freedom. Through the experience of viewing, the movement of thought that constitutes the film is passed on to the viewer, who thereby encounters an aspect of the world and its exaltation and vitality as well as its difficulty and complexity. Cinema is an impure art cannibalizing its times, the other arts, and people – a major art precisely because it is the locus of the indiscernibility between art and non-art. It is this, argues Badiou, that makes cinema the social and political art par excellence, the best indicator of our civilization, in the way that Greek tragedy, the coming-of-age novel and the operetta were in their respective eras. COVER TITLE PAGE CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS FOREWORD 1: “CINEMA HAS GIVEN ME SO MUCH” 2: CINEMATIC CULTURE 3: REVISIONIST CINEMA 4: ART AND ITS CRITICISM 5: THE SUICIDE OF GRACE 6: A MAN WHO NEVER GIVES IN 7: IS THE ORIENT AN OBJECT FOR THE WESTERN CONSCIENCE? 8: REFERENCE POINTS FOR CINEMA’S SECOND MODERNITY 9: THE DEMY AFFAIR 10: SWITZERLAND: CINEMA AS INTERPRETATION 11: INTERRUPTED NOTES ON THE FRENCH COMEDY FILM 12: Y A TELLEMENT DE PAYS POUR ALLER 13: RESTORING MEANING TO DEATH AND CHANCE 14: A PRIVATE INDUSTRY, CINEMA IS ALSO A PRIVATE SPECTACLE 15: THE FALSE MOVEMENTS OF CINEMA 16: CAN A FILM BE SPOKEN ABOUT? 17: NOTES ON THE LAST LAUGH (DER LETZE MANN) 18: “THINKING THE EMERGENCE OF THE EVENT” 19: THE DIVINE COMEDY AND THE CONVENT 20: SURPLUS SEEING 21: CONSIDERATIONS ON THE CURRENT STATE OF CINEMA AND ON THE WAYS OF THINKING THIS STATE WITHOUT HAVING TO CONCLUDE THAT CINEMA IS DEAD OR DYING 22: THE CINEMATIC CAPTURE OF THE SEXES 23: AN UNQUALIFIED AFFIRMATION OF CINEMA’S ENDURING POWER 24: PASSION, JEAN-LUC GODARD 25: “SAY YES TO LOVE, OR ELSE BE LONELY” 26: DIALECTICS OF THE FABLE 27: CINEMA AS PHILOSOPHICAL EXPERIMENTATION 28: ON CINEMA AS A DEMOCRATIC EMBLEM 29: THE END OF A BEGINNING 30: THE DIMENSIONS OF ART 31: THE PERFECTION OF THE WORLD, IMPROBABLE YET POSSIBLE NOTES