Existential Issues in Classic and Contemporary Cinema

Dear Colleagues, 

Over the past three decades, the philosophy of film has blossomed as a popular field of scholarship in the humanities.  Construed more narrowly, the field centers on ways of philosophizing about the medium itself and its myriad variations including the evolution from celluloid to digital, from silent to sound era film, and from vehicle of mass entertainment to full-fledged cinematic art. Conceived as such, “film-osophy” grew out of the early years of film theorizing, with such thinkers as Eisenstein, Pudovkin, and Kracauer, and it has developed into a recognized philosophical discipline with the help of such thinkers as Arnheim, Bazin, Deleuze, Cavell, Bordwell, and Carroll, to name just a few. Reflections on the medium per se have involved issues of epistemology, ontology, and aesthetics. 

Along the way, the field eventually centered on forms of philosophizing about individual movies and movie genres that have little or nothing to do with a consideration of the medium per se. This brand of “philosophy in film” focused on films and genres as a way of showing how philosophical questions and reflections (ethical, aesthetic, spiritual, etc.) can be evoked and illustrated by specific films or groups of films, particularly in terms of narrative. Perhaps most interestingly, the concerns with the medium itself and with the content of individual works have converged when considering how the philosophical qualities of certain movies can be attributed to cinematic aspects and techniques that go beyond the narrative. Certain filmmakers have stood out as being particularly worthy of philosophical analysis in terms of their choices of subject matter, as well as their cinematic artistry. These include Dreyer, Murnau, Deren, Welles, Bergman, Kurosawa, Fellini, Renoir, Ozu, Varda, Kubrick, Bresson, Antonioni, Resnais, Truffaut, Tarkovsky, Herzog, Wenders, Kiarostami, Godard and Haneke. 

This Special Issue of Humanities is devoted to an exploration of existentialism in classic and contemporary cinema. We are interested in essays that explore the intersections between this philosophical movement and cinematic art, construing both as broadly as possible, in keeping with the various contours of the philosophy of film. Essays may explore the ways in which key themes of existentialism are illustrated by specific films: authenticity, self-deception, doubt, faith, freedom, alienation, rebellion, anxiety, contingency, nihilism, the uncanny, “the courage to be” and the absurd are but several examples. Essays may also consider certain movies that help to illuminate the particular works of such diverse writers and thinkers (including forerunners of the existentialist movement) as Dostoevsky, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Hesse, Kafka, Mann, Sartre, Camus, De Beauvoir, Mishima, and Murdoch. We are especially interested in essays that pay some attention to the ways in which certain cinematic elements (visual composition and tempo, montage, marriage of image and sound, animation, etc.) assist in summoning reflection on existentialist ideas and themes. We invite potential contributors to offer new perspectives on films that have been long considered as existentialist: Bergman’s The Seventh Seal or Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo or Tarkovksy’s The Sacrifice, for example. However, we also invite contributors who address films that should be added to the ranks of “existentialist cinema.”

Dr. Kevin Stoehr
Guest Editor

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• existential issues
• classic cinema
• contemporary cinema