On Thursday 13th September I will deliver a lecture on Philosophical Issues in Early Film Theory as a keynote speaker of the Film-Philosophy Conference at King’s College London. 

In early film theories, there is no lack of references to philosophy and philosophers. We may find on the one side the claim for a “philosophical” account of cinema as a modern form of experience (Papini), on the other the claim for a “philosophy of the art of film” modelled on the German “Kunstwissenschaften” (Bálazs). These two approaches – whose goal is to find a legitimisation for the movies – cross each other when at stake come topics like the very nature of the objects on the screen, or the role of the camera as an eye. In critics and scholars like Canudo, Epstein, Cendrars, cinema challenges the traditional categories of thought – and it establishes itself a true philosophical discourse.