Swan Songs: Philosophical Reflections on Death, Time, and Memory in Testament Films

Dear Colleagues,

Dedicated to the last films of renowned filmmakers, often referred to as “testament films” or “swan songs,” this Special Issue will examine their thematic, narrative, and stylistic elements, viewing these final works as profound summations of their creators’ careers and philosophical syntheses of their conceptions of life, death, and historical legacy.

Despite occasional discussions of testament films in philosophy, film theory, and director-specific analyses, the philosophical and artistic significance of these works as a distinct category remains largely unexplored. This Special Issue will address this research gap by defining “testament films” as a cohesive field of study, exploring their patterns and divergences, and interrogating how filmmakers approach mortality, transience, and legacy in their final works.

As suggested in Deleuze and Guattari’s What Is Philosophy?, the nature of philosophy—and, by extension, art—comes into sharper focus in old age, when approaching the end of life can lead to a self-reflective interrogation of one’s own (philosophical and artistic) work. Testament films provide a unique opportunity to explore this dynamic, offering audiences rich meditations on mortality, time, and the human condition. Filmmakers such as Akerman, Bergman, Dreyer, Fassbinder, Fellini, Kubrick, Kurosawa, Oliveira, Ozu, Satyajit Ray, Tarkovsky, Varda, and Welles, among others, have crafted final works that serve as both artistic summations and philosophical reflections. Films such as Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifice (1986) or Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut (1999) exemplify how these creations can act as meditative explorations of time, memory, faith, and legacy, often blurring the line between cinematic expression and the philosophies of death and time.

Key Questions:

• How does an artist’s awareness of mortality shape their final works?
• Can testament films be connected to distinct views of temporality as an accumulation of moments or as the exhaustion of possibility?
• To what extent do these films intersect with, or contribute to, philosophical reflections on mortality and art from the 19th to the 21st centuries, as developed by thinkers such as Baudrillard, Bauman, Cavell, Freud, Heidegger, Jankélévitch, Kierkegaard, Landsberg, Simmel, Simon Critchley, Todd May, and Thomas Nagel?
• How do ideas such as Heidegger’s “being-towards-death,” Kierkegaard’s concept of despair, Schopenhauer’s notion of transcendence, or Danto’s “end of art” intersect with testament films’ explorations of mortality, meaning, and artistic expression?
• Could testament films serve as a modern continuation of philosophical meditations on death, such as those of Plato, the Sceptics, the Epicureans, the Stoics, and Montaigne? If so, what do they teach us, and how do these teachings intersect with, or diverge from, strictly philosophical discourse?
• How do audiences interpret the meaning of death in art through art itself?

We invite contributions that address the interdisciplinary dialogue between philosophy and cinema, focusing on (but not limited to) the following topics:

• Philosophical approaches to “Testament Films”;
• Central themes of existentialism and mortality, time and memory, faith and transcendence, and the aesthetics of closure;
• The concept of testament art, including philosophical frameworks, memento mori in cinema, and representations of mortality in film;
• Analyses of testament films by Akerman, Bergman, Dreyer, Fassbinder, Fellini, Kubrick, Kurosawa, Oliveira, Ozu, Satyajit Ray, Tarkovsky, Varda, Welles, and others.

The editors are currently involved in a project funded by the European Research Council named Film and Death (https://filmdeath.fcsh.unl.pt).

Dr. Susana Viegas
Dr. Vasco Baptista Marques
Guest Editors

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• film philosophy
• testament films
• philosophy of death
• mortality
• memory