Late Submission Penalty

Unless a Special Consideration request has been submitted and approved, (a) a penalty for lateness will apply – two (2) marks out of 100 will be deducted per day for assignments submitted after the due date – and (b) no assignment will be accepted more than seven (7) days (incl. weekends) after the original submission deadline. No late submissions will be accepted for timed assessments – e.g. quizzes, online tests.  

Tutorial Participation

Due: Ongoing throughout semester Weighting: 15%

Class discussions, whether online or in tutorials, are students' opportunities to engage actively with what we are studying together. Students are expected to engage actively in weekly discussions of the unit material in a thoughtful manner that is informed by a careful engagement with the assigned films and readings. Both lecture and tutorials are important sites of individual and group learning. Internal students are expected to come to tutorial each week having listened to the lectures, read the assigned reading, and ready to raise questions and discuss the relevant ideas with their classmates. After working through the assigned material, external/online students should spend approximately one hour each week responding to the weekly tutorial questions and contributing to the online discussion forums.

Participation will be assessed based on both the quality and quantity of students' contributions online or in tutorials, including engagement with their peers' responses.

On successful completion you will be able to:

• To understand and examine developments in philosophy of film that deal with theoretical problems as well as broader philosophical, ethical and cultural issues.
• To analyse and explore the relationship between film and philosophy in contemporary culture.
• To apply philosophical theories to specific film/TV examples.
• To locate and evaluate contemporary media discussions of film and television from a philosophical point of view.
• To create or design a means of communicating your own reflections on philosophy of film.
• To participate actively in group discussion and learning activities during tutorials

Online Quizzes

Due: Weeks 3, 5, 7, 9, 11 

Weighting: 20%

In Weeks 3, 5, 7, 9 and 11 students will complete short online quizzes based on the unit readings (5 quizzes in total). Quizzes start in week 3 and continue until week 12. Each quiz opens after the relevant lectures. Quizzes involve true/false or multiple choice options. All quizzes remain open until Week 13. The quizzes cannot be accessed after that date. Please don't leave all the quizzes to the last minute - you should complete the quizzes throughout the semester after the relevant lecture.

Criteria: These assessments will be evaluated on the accuracy of quiz responses to questions based on topics and texts. These quizzes are designed to encourage ongoing study and revision of the unit materials and to foster preparation for other assessment tasks (e.g. the essay).

On successful completion you will be able to: • To analyse and explore the relationship between film and philosophy in contemporary culture.

 

Film and Philosophy Journal

Journal Due: Week 10

Weighting: 25%

Students are required to submit a Film-Philosophy Journal covering weeks 1-10 of the course, with a brief entry for at least six weeks of the course (the written content of the journal should amount to approximately 2000 words overall). The journal can be a workbook, scrapbook, diary, or other format of your own choosing (e.g. blog, webpage, photographs, artwork, video clip, etc). Students are asked to write their responses to the week's lecture material, readings, and tutorial discussion, and where appropriate to discuss examples of films/TV works/ documentaries that they have seen or discussed in class. In the journal you may write your thoughts and impressions of the material studied from week to week, provide summaries of readings, or reflections on the topics explored that week; you include images, photographs, film reviews, and other creative works of your own relevant to film and philosophy. Students are also encouraged to use the journal to work through ideas that will be relevant in preparing their essays. The journal is designed to promote ongoing reading and reflection on the weekly topics explored in the lectures, in set readings, and in tutorial discussion; it also aims to encourage students to apply ideas explored in the course to contemporary cinema as well as to broader aesthetic, ethical and cultural debates.

Over the course of the semester, the journal should show evidence of:

 a) reflection on weekly readings and topics raised in tutorial discussion (study notes, questions, written comments, etc.);

b) research into essay and tutorial topics (e.g. secondary readings, essay preparation, revision of lectures, reading, and tutorial material); and

c) application of the theories discussed in the course to contemporary films and wider social and cultural debates (personal reflection, critical analysis of particular films, theoretically informed use of images, and so on).

The journal is supposed to be a useful aid for ongoing study and research as well as providing an opportunity to exercise more independent, creative, and critical thinking. 

On successful completion you will be able to:

• To understand and examine developments in philosophy of film that deal with theoretical problems as well as broader philosophical, ethical and cultural issues.
• To analyse and explore the relationship between film and philosophy in contemporary culture.
• To find, analyse and evaluate primary and secondary sources and present a well-argued philosophical discussion in an essay format.
• To apply philosophical theories to specific film/TV examples.
• To locate and evaluate contemporary media discussions of film and television from a philosophical point of view.

Film and Philosophy Essay

Due: Week 13

Weighting: 40%

In the Film and Philosophy Essay, students will use the critical methods and aesthetic insights discussed over the course of the term to respond to set questions based on the topics covered during the semester and/or may analyse a film/TV work of their own choosing (in consultation with the Lecturer). Here you show us the critical questioning and philosophical knowledge you have learned over the unit. This essay will be workshopped by exchanging essay plans or sketches in a peer review exercise in Week 13. The final version of the Essay is due at the end of Week 13. Word Length: 2500 words.

Criteria: An excellent essay will demonstrate knowledge of the relevant content; a clear structure and argument; creativity, proper expression, spelling, punctuation and grammar; an easy to read presentation; proper integration and referencing of research and other sources. This assessment will be evaluated based on the criteria explained on the rubric that will posted on iLearn.

On successful completion you will be able to:

• To understand and examine developments in philosophy of film that deal with theoretical problems as well as broader philosophical, ethical and cultural issues.
• To analyse and explore the relationship between film and philosophy in contemporary culture.
• To find, analyse and evaluate primary and secondary sources and present a well-argued philosophical discussion in an essay format.
• To apply philosophical theories to specific film/TV examples.
• To locate and evaluate contemporary media discussions of film and television from a philosophical point of view.
• To create or design a means of communicating your own reflections on philosophy of film.

Required and Recommended Texts and/or Materials

PHL3065 Film and Philosophy will be using electronically available readings available via Leganto on the iLearn website. My book will also be a valuable resource and is a recommended background reading: Robert Sinnerbrink, New Philosophies of Film: Thinking Images (Continuum/Bloomsbury, 2011).

Textbooks for this unit can be purchased online from Booktopia https://www.booktopia.com.au/coop 

The list of Macquarie University S1 2020 units and texts can be found on the Booktopia website.

 

Technology Used and Required

This unit uses an iLearn website, Leganto online resouces, Kanopy (an video streaming service available through the library) and Echo360 lecture recordings. Both internal and external students will accordingly require regular access to a computer and a reliable internet connection.

Class Meetings

For lecture times please consult the MQ Timetable website: http://www.timetables.mq.edu.au. This website will display up-to-date information on your classes and classroom locations. Lectures are scheduled in a two-hour block on Mondays from 1:00pm to 3:00pm. Tutorials are scheduled for Tuesday afternoons, either from 2:00-3:00pm or 3:00-4:00pm. Lecture recordings will be available on iLearn for all external/online/OUA students.

Learning and Teaching Activities

Lectures 

A two-hour weekly Lecture block given by the Unit Convenor. These Lectures will be recorded on Echo360 and available as downloadable recordings on the ilearn website for this unit. Powerpoint slides/notes will also be available via the website.

Tutorials

One one hour tutorial per week. Students will enrol in a tutorial class and engage in weekly discussion and learning activities relating to the weekly course material. Tutorials begin in Week 2 and students must attend at least 9/12 classes.

Week 1: What is Philosophy of Film/Film-Philosophy?

Required Readings:

• Thomas E. Wartenberg, ‘Philosophy of Film’, Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/film/
• Thomas E. Wartenberg, ‘Can Philosophy be Screened?’ in T.E. Wartenberg, Thinking on Screen: Film as Philosophy (Routledge, 2007), 1-14.
• Robert Sinnerbrink, ‘Film-Philosophy’, in Edward Branigan and Warren Buckland (eds), The Routledge Encyclopedia of Film Theory (London/New York: Routledge, 2014), 207-213.

Background reading: Robert Sinnerbrink, ‘Introduction: Why Did Philosophy Go To the Movies?’ New Philosophies of Film: Thinking Images (London/New York: Continuum, 2011), pp. 1-10.

 

Week 2: Ontologies of the Moving Image

Required Readings:

• Andre Bazin, ‘The Ontology of the Photographic Image’, What is Cinema? Volume 1, trans. Hugh Gray (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967/2005), pp. 9-16.
• Noël Carroll, “Defining the Moving Image” in Theorizing the Moving Image (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 49-74:
• http://voyager.mq.edu.au/vwebv/holdingsInfo?&bibId=1467524&searchId=488&recPointer=0&recCount=50
• Rafe McGregor, ‘A New/Old Ontology of Film’, Film-Philosophy, vol. 17, no. 1 (2013), 265-280.
• Trevor Ponech, ‘The Substance of Cinema’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 64, no. 1 (2006), 187-198.

Background reading: R. Sinnerbrink, ‘The Rules of the Game: New Ontologies of Film’ New Philosophies of Film: Thinking Images (London/New York: Continuum, 2011), pp. 28-44.

 

Week 3: Understanding Film Narrative

Required Readings:

• Noël Carroll, ‘The Power of Movies’, Daedalus, Vol. 114, No. 4, The Moving Image (Fall, 1985), pp. 79-103.
• Katherine Thompson-Jones, ‘The Thinking Viewer’, in K. Thompson-Jones, Aesthetics and Film (London/New York: Continuum, 2008), pp. 87 ff.
• Angela Curran, ‘Fictional Indeterminacy, Imagined Seeing, and Cinematic Narration’, in Katherine Thompson-Jones (ed.), Current Controversies in Philosophy of Film (Routledge, 2016), Chapter 5.
• Warren Buckland, ‘Narratology in Motion: Causality, Puzzles and Narrative Twists’, in Hunter Vaughan and Tom Conley (eds), The Anthem Handbook of Screen Theory (London/New York: Anthem Press, 2018), 262-276.

Recommended; R. Sinnerbrink, New Philosophies of Film: Thinking Images, Chapter 3, ‘Adaptation: Philosophical Approaches to Narrative’, pp. 45-64.

 

Week 4: Cognitivism Goes to the Movies

Required Readings:

• Carl Plantinga, ‘Cognitive Film Theory: An Insider’s Appraisal’, Cinémas: revue d'études cinématographiques / Cinémas: Journal of Film Studies, vol. 12, no. 2 (2002): 15-37. David Bordwell, ‘The Part-Time Cognitivist: A View from Film Studies’, Projections: The Journal for Movies and Mind, 4(2) (2010): 1-18.
• Ted Nannicelli and Paul Taberham, ‘Introduction: Contemporary Cognitive Media Theory’, in T. Nannicelli and P. Taberham (eds), Cognitive Media Theory (Routledge, 2014).
• Torben Grodal: ‘Frozen Style and Strong Emotions of Panic and Separation: Trier’s Prologues to Antichrist and Melancholia’, Journal of Scandinavian Cinema, vol. 2, no. 1 (2012): 47-53: [http://mq.library.ingentaconnect.com.simsrad.net.ocs.mq.edu.au/content/intellect/jsca/2012/00000002/00000001/art00006]

Background Reading: R. Sinnerbrink, New Philosophies of Film: Thinking Images, Chapter 4, ‘Cognitivism Goes to the Movies’, pp. 67-89.

 

Week 5: Affect and Emotion in Cinema

Required Readings:

• Jane Stadler, ‘Empathy in Film’, Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Empathy (Routledge, 2016).
• Noël Carroll, ‘The Ties that Bind: Characters, the Emotions, and Popular Fictions’, in Minerva’s Night Out (Wiley Blackwell, 2013), 40-63.
• Amy Coplan, ‘Catching Characters’ Emotions: Emotional Contagion Responses to Narrative Fiction Film’, Film Studies, Issue 8, 2006, pp. 26-38.
• Carl Plantinga, ‘Facing Others: Close-ups of faces in narrative film and in The Silence of the Lambs’, in Lisa Zunshine (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Literary Studies (Oxford, 2015), Chapter 14.

Background Reading: R. Sinnerbrink, New Philosophies of Film: Thinking Images, Chapter 4, ‘Cognitivism Goes to the Movies’, pp. 67-89.

 

Week 6: Cinematic Ethics

Required Readings:

• R. Sinnerbrink, ‘Cinematic Ethics: Film as a Medium of Ethical Experience’, in R. Sinnerbrink Cinematic Ethics: Exploring Ethical Experience through Film (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), 3-24.
• Noël Carroll, ‘Movies, the Moral Emotions, and Sympathy’, Midwest Studies in Philosophy XXXIV (2010): 1-34.
• Carl Plantinga, ‘Moralities and Characters as Moral Agents’, in C. Plantinga, Screen Stories: Emotion and the Ethics of Engagement (Oxford, 2018), Chapter 7, 135-156.
• Jane Stadler, ‘Cinema’s Compassionate Gaze: Empathy, Affect, and Aesthetics in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly‘, in Jinhee Choi and Mattias Frey (eds), Cine-Ethics: Ethical Dimensions of Film Theory, Practice and Spectatorship (London and New York: Routledge, 2014), 27-42.

Recommended: Jinhee Choi and Mattias Frey, ‘Introduction’, in Jinhee Choi and Mattias Frey (eds), Cine-Ethics: Ethical Dimensions of Film Theory, Practice and Spectatorship (London and New York: Routledge, 2014), 1-14.

 

Week 7: Gilles Deleuze’s Cine-philosophy

Required Readings:

• Richard Rushton, ‘What Questions does Deleuze’s Philosophy of Cinema Answer? In R. Rushton, Cinema After Deleuze (London: Continuum, 2012), pp. 1-11.
• Jakob Nilsson, ‘Deleuze, Concepts, and Ideas about Film as Philosophy’, Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy - Revue de la philosophie française et de langue française, Vol XXVI, No 2 (2018) pp. 127-149. http://www.jffp.org/ojs/index.php/jffp/article/view/834/798
• Gilles Deleuze, ‘These on Movement: First Commentary on Bergson’, in Deleuze, Cinema 1: The Movement-image (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), pp. 1-11.
• Gilles Deleuze, ‘Beyond the Movement-Image’, in Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-image (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), pp. 1-24.
• Paola Marrati, "Images in movement and movement-images", Gilles Deleuze: Cinema and Philosophy (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), pp. 6-26, pp. 113-114.

Background Reading: R. Sinnerbrink, New Philosophies of Film, Chapter Five ‘Bande a part: Deleuze and Cavell as Film-Philosophers’, pp. 90-116.

 

Week 8: Stanley Cavell’s Film Philosophy

Required Readings:

• Daniel Shaw, ‘Stanley Cavell on the Magic of the Movies’, Film-Philosophy 21.1 (2017): 114–132.
• Stanley Cavell, "The world viewed (extract)", in S. Cavell, The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film (Harvard UP, 1978), 16-41.
• Stanley Cavell, ‘What Becomes of Things on Film?’ William Rothman (ed) Cavell on Film (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005), pp. 1-9.
• Temenuga Trifonova, ‘Film and Skepticism: Stanley Cavell on the Ontology of Film’, Rivista di estetica, 46 (2011): 197-219.

Background Reading: R. Sinnerbrink, New Philosophies of Film: Thinking Images, Chapter Five ‘Bande a part: Deleuze and Cavell as Film-Philosophers’, pp. 90-116.

 

Week 9: Film as Philosophy: Pro and Contra

Required Readings:

• Paisley Livingston, ‘Recent Work on Cinema as Philosophy’, Philosophy Compass 3/4 (2008): 590–603, Available online: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1747-9991.2008.00158.x/pdf
• Paisley Livingston, ‘Theses on Cinema as Philosophy’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 64, Issue 1 (Winter 2006): 11-18:
• http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.0021-8529.2006.00225.x/pdf
• Aaron Smuts, ‘In Defence of a Bold Thesis’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 67, no. 4 (Fall 2009): 409-420.
• Stephen Mulhall, ‘Film as Philosophy: The Very Idea’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (hardback), vol. 107, issue 1pt3 (October 2007): 279-294: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9264.2007.00222.x/abstract
• Noël Carroll, “Movie-Made Philosophy,” in Film as Philosophy, ed. Bernd Herzogenrath (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017), 265-285.

Background Reading: Christopher Falzon, ‘Philosophy through Film’, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:  https://www.iep.utm.edu/phi-film/

R. Sinnerbrink, New Philosophies of Film, Chapter 6, ‘Scenes from a Marriage: On the Idea of Film as Philosophy’, pp. 117-135.

 

Week 10: Film as Philosophy Case Study 1: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Kaufman/Gondry, 2004)

Required Readings:

• Christopher Grau, ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the Morality of Memory’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Special Issue, ‘Thinking Through Film: Film as Philosophy’, Vol. 64, Issue 1 (Winter 2006): 19-32.
• Troy Jollimore, 'Miserably Ever After: Forgetting, Repeating and Affirming Love', in Christopher Grau (ed), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: Philosophers on Film (London: Routledge, 2009), pp. 31-61.
• Julia Driver, ‘Memory, Desire, and Value in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, in Christopher Grau (ed), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: Philosophers on Film (London: Routledge, 2009),

Recommended: George Toles, ‘Trying to Remember Clementine’, Christopher Grau (ed),Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: Philosophers on Film (London: Routledge, 2009), pp. 111-157.

 

Week 11: Film as Philosophy Case Study 2: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

Required Readings:

• Steven Shaviro, ‘MELANCHOLIA or, the Romantic Anti-Sublime’, Sequence 1.1 (2012): http://reframe.sussex.ac.uk/sequence1/1-1-melancholia-or-the-romantic-anti-sublime/
• Rupert Read, ‘Allegory of a “Therapeutic” Reading of a Film: Of MELANCHOLIA’, Sequence 2.1 (2014): http://reframe.sussex.ac.uk/sequence1/1-2-an-allegory-of-a-therapeutic-reading/

Recommended: R. Sinnerbrink, ‘Planet Melancholia: Romanticism, Mood, and Cinematic Ethics’, Filozofski Vestnik, Vol, XXXVII, No. 2 (2016): 95-113.

 

 

Week 12: Film as Philosophy Case Study 3: The Act of Killing /The Look of Silence (Joshua Oppenheimer and Anonymous, 2012/2014)

Required Readings:

• Thomas Wartenberg, ‘Providing Evidence for a Philosophical Claim: The Act of Killing and the Banality of Evil’, Necsus: European Journal of Media Studies(Autumn 2017): https://necsus-ejms.org/providing-evidence-philosophical-claim-act-killing-banality-evil/
• R. Sinnerbrink, ‘Gangster Film: Cinematic Ethics in The Act of Killing’, in R. Sinnerbrink, Cinematic Ethics: Exploring Ethical Experience through Film (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), 165-184.
• Leshu Torchin, ‘Chronicle of a Quest: Silence after Killing’, Film-Quarterly 69.2 (2015): 25-35.
• R. Sinnerbrink 2017. ‘The Act of Witnessing: Cinematic Ethics in The Look of Silence’. Post-Script: Essays in Film and the Humanities. Special Issue on Documentary Ethics. ed. Dan Geva and Yvonne Kozlovsky-Golan, Volume 36, Nos. 2&3 (Winter/Spring & Summer 2017): 30-44.

Recommended: Interview extracts from Southeast Asia Globe, Malay Mail, and Inside Indonesia: ‘The Act of Killing and the Ethics of Filming’, International Boulevard (August 2013): https://www.internationalboulevard.com/the-act-of-killing-and-the-ethics-of-filming

Mehlis Behlil, The Look of Silence: An Interview with Joshua Oppenheimer and Adi Rukun’, Cineaste (Summer 2015): 26-31.

 

Week 13 Essay Draft Workshop