Taking Fiction Film Seriously: A Philosophical Approach to Cinema Studies

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Fiction film has been and remains the privileged site of film studies, with film history regularly being viewed as the rise of the narrative fiction film. Taking Fiction Film Seriously argues that despite this privileged position, the notion of fiction as it relates to cinema, has yet to be properly interrogated.

Mario Slugan explores the significant misunderstandings concerning the categorisation of film, audience experience, and the real-life effects of fiction. He contends with the contradictory assumption that fiction films have tangible effects on audiences' beliefs and behaviours, while also intuitively being 'not true' or not to be believed in.

Slugan analyses the notion of 'fiction' from a theoretical and historical perspective, considering how it manifests in a broad range of films from the past 110 years, including The Arrival of a Train (Lumire brothers, 1895-1897), The Blair Witch Project (Myrick and Snchez, 1999), and Waltz with Bashir (Folman, 2008). He supports his close readings with findings from philosophy, psychology, and literary studies, and in doing so seeks to challenge the current state of film studies.

Author Bio

Mario Slugan is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at Queen Mary, University of London, UK. He is author of Montage across the Arts (2017), Nol Caroll and Film (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), and Fiction and Imagination in Early Cinema (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019). He is co-editor (with Danil Biltereyst) of New Perspectives on Early Cinema History (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022).