Film Consciousness

The notion of film consciousness is one that has played around various film and philosophical discourses without ever really surfacing as a cogent theory. Representing the first major expression of film consciousness as a tangible concept, this critical study revisits notions of memory, retentional consciousness, narrative expectation, and spatio-temporal perception while also analyzing several major films.
The first half of the book focuses on understanding the elements of the film experience—and its associated consciousness—through the descriptive tools of phenomenology. The second part develops the idea of film consciousness as a unique vision of the world and as a large element in the human understanding of reality. Throughout the work, the author combines the ideas of philosophers and film theorists from phenomenology—such as Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Bazin, and Kracauer—with the postmodernist work of Deleuze and transitional theorists Bergson and Benjamin.

Spencer Shaw is a lecturer (of rhetoric and negotiations) at the International Copenhagen Business School and Open University. He lives in Copenhagen.

Spencer Shaw
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 227
Bibliographic Info: notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2008
pISBN: 978-0-7864-3334-6
eISBN: 978-1-4766-1097-9
Imprint: McFarland

Acknowledgments      vii

Preface      1

Introduction      3

1. PHENOMENOLOGY AND FILM

Origins      21

The Spectrum of Film Consciousness      24

Dialectic Misgivings      29

2. PHENOMENOLOGICAL GROUNDING

Realist Theory      34

Real to Reel      36

Lifeworld Encounters      37

Intentionality      45

Phenomenological Hermeneutics      49

Gadamer’s Play      53

3. BODY AND TRANSCENDENCE

Merleau-Ponty’s Embodiment      56

Expression to Meaning      61

Bazin’s Ontology      66

The Negating Self      71

Transcendental Survival      74

4. REEL TIME

Temporal Objectivities      81

Self-Constituting Flux      85

Internal Time-Consciousness      87

Future Expectation      90

Bergson: Movement and Intermediate Imagery      94

Reelising Memory      98

Bridging Gaps      103

5. WALTER BENJAMIN: THE NEW REALM OF FILM CONSCIOUSNESS

Materialism and Allegory      106

Dialectical Images      111

Mechanical Reproduction and Aura      119

Returning the Gaze: Aura Transformed      126

Benjamin and Surrealism      132

Distraction and Innervation      140

6. DELEUZE AND CINEMA

Montage and Movement-Image      146

Eisenstein Montage      149

Imaging Thought Process      152

Affectivity and the Interval      155

Vertov and the Machinic      158

Liquid Subjectivity      163

7. MARKING TIME

Thinking Otherwise      168

Forks of Time      173

Aberrance and Problem Ideas      178

The Split Self      180

Time-Out-of-Joint      182

Film Events      187

Outside of Film      191

Chapter Notes      195

Bibliography      209

Index      215