Phenomenology of Film: A Heideggerian Account of the Film Experience

(Hardback)

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Phenomenology of Film: A Heideggerian Account of the Film Experience uses the philosophy of Martin Heidegger as a framework for addressing key issues in the philosophy of film. This study grapples with the question of how we can reconcile film as a popular entertainment medium with Heideggers own various critiques of popular media and culture throughout his career. Shawn Loht also explores topics such as the ontology of film and moving images; the phenomenological character of the viewer experience; film conceived as an art medium; and the function of films as vehicles for philosophical thought. He further discusses important concepts from Heideggers philosophy--Dasein, existentiality, world, art and poetry, and the nature of philosophy. The first four chapters take up these issues from a theoretical perspective. The remaining chapters provide robust application of the theoretical material to the films of three contemporary filmmakers: Terrence Malick, Michael Haneke, and David Gordon Green. As the first single-author monograph that takes up Heideggers relevance to film, Phenomenology of Film will be of particular interest to philosophers of film and specialists of film and media studies working in the intersection of phenomenology and film or phenomenological approaches to issues in popular culture.

Reviews

Articles with Heideggerian interpretations of films have appeared over the years, but this is the first book length study, and its about time.... The text is refeshingly personal for a philosophy book. * Ereignis *
PAF is written in a clear and direct style and is accessible to readers who might be unfamiliar with highly technical philosophy like Heideggers. It will greatly appeal to film theorist and film-philosophers, students and scholars of philosophy, and educators interested teaching philosophy-through-film to their university students. Lohts scholarship admirably contributes new thoughts to, and indeed invigorates, the field of film-as-philosophy. Loht effectively confronts Heideggers phenomenological ontology in order to convincingly and successfully think with and then beyond Heidegger, offering us an original and illuminating study into the phenomenological-ontological aspects of film-as-philosophy. * Film-Philosophy *
Shawn Loht has broken new ground in bringing a Heideggerian way of thinking to philosophical film theory. He not only develops a rich phenomenological approach to cinematic engagement via Heidegger's account of being-in-the-world but also offers an original perspective on the debate over the idea film as philosophy. With illuminating chapters exploring the films of Terrence Malick, Michael Haneke, and David Gordon Green, Loht's book promises to rejuvenate phenomenological film theory by staging an admirably lucid philosophical encounter between Heidegger and cinema. -- Robert Sinnerbrink, Macquarie University

Author Bio

Shawn Loht is institutional researcher at Baton Rouge Community College.