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This groundbreaking volume for the Thinking Cinema series focuses on the extent to which contemporary cinema contributes to political and philosophical thinking about the future of Europe's core Enlightenment values. In light of the challenges of globalization, multi-cultural communities and post-nation state democracy, the book interrogates the borders of ethics and politics and roots itself in debates about post-secular, post-Enlightenment philosophy. By defining a cinema that knows that it is no longer a competitor to Hollywood (i.e. the classic self-other construction), Elsaesser also thinks past the kind of self-exoticism or auto-ethnography that is the perpetual temptation of such a co-produced, multi-platform 'national cinema as world cinema'. Discussing key filmmakers and philosophers, like: Claire Denis and Jean-Luc Nancy; Aki Kaurismaki, abjection and Julia Kristeva; Michael Haneke, the paradoxes of Christianity and Slavoj Zizek; Fatih Akin, Alain Badiou and Jacques Ranciere, Elsaesser is able to approach European cinema and assesses its key questions within a global context. His combination of political and philosophical thinking will surely ground the debate in film philosophy for years to come.
List of contents
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: European Cinema into the 21st Century: Enlarging the Context?
Chapter 2: Film as Thought: The 'Film and Philosophy' Debate
Chapter 3: Film as Thought Experiment
Chapter 4: "Europe" - A Thought Experiment
Chapter 5: A Cinema of Abjection?
Chapter 6: Post-heroic Narratives and the Community-to-Come
Chapter 7: Claire Denis, Jean-Luc Nancy and Beau Travail
Chapter 8: Hitting Bottom: Aki Kaurismäki and the Abject Subject: The Man Without A Past
Chapter 9: "Experimenting with Death in Life" Fatih Akin and the Ethical Turn
Chapter 10: Black Suns and a Bright Planet: Lars von Trier's Melancholia as Thought Experiment
Chapter 11: Anatomy Lesson of A Vanished Country: Christian Petzold's Barbara
Chapter 12: Control, Creative Constraints and Self Contradiction: The Global Auteur
Bibliography
Filmography
Index
Report
Accessible and rigorous, brimming with indispensable insights for students, scholars, and readers of film studies, continental philosophy, visual culture, and media theory ... It is a rare pleasure to read a work of film-philosophy that so carefully balances textual hermeneutics and political deconstructions. Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media
