Christine Reeh-Peters

Konrad Wolf Film University of Babelsberg | Praxis-CFUL

Film and the Critique on Philosophical Anthropocentrism

23 November 2021, 17h00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+0)

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)* | School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

Abstract

The lecture is based on the onto-epistemological hypothesis of regarding film as a form of artificial intelligence, core of my current research project. Such a hypothesis draws upon the philosophy of art of Gilles Deleuze, who famously evinces in his books on cinema that “the essence of cinema” would have “thought as its higher purpose”. However, understanding film as the thinking ability of a technical apparatus was first formulated by pioneer filmmaker and thinker Jean Epstein at a time when the cinematograph was both a recording and a projection machine and thus plausibly compared to a “robot brain”. By this token, I am focusing on questions that have been present since the very origins of film-philosophy, and shed new light on them through the speculative-materialist turn in contemporary philosophy and its critique on philosophical anthropocentrism. I will particularly enquire into the nature of the posthuman, the non-human, and the concomitant questioning of human supremacy referring to philosophers like Karen Barad or Rosi Braidotti. Surprisingly enough, the theories of Epstein not only confirm these recent nondualist principles of thought but also show how they can be extended through an idea of film thinking beyond the human frame.

* The event will also be available via Zoom for those unable to attend in person. Pre-registration required at: praxis.cful [at] gmail.com until a day before the event. Those registered will receive the Zoom link by e-mail the same day of the Seminar.