Film and Death
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“I am afraid that other people do not realize that the one aim of those who practice philosophy in the proper manner is to practice for dying and death.”

Socrates, 'Phaedo' 64a

Welcome to FILM AND DEATH

FILM AND DEATH defends the hypothesis that to film-philosophize is to learn to die. This will be achieved by rethinking the innovations that film brings to recent philosophies of death and the metaphysics of time. A new criterion for understanding the relationship between film and philosophy is proposed that claims 1) that film-philosophy’s methodology is a meditation on death, and 2) that films think and have their own ways of creating novel thoughts that are not our own. One of these thoughts concerns death, a phenomenon of which we have no image but that film renders visible as a death-image (a direct image of passing time, facing the impossibility of any representation). We will assert that the cinematic experience is in itself equal to awareness of one’s own mortality, as a memento mori, without which we would not philosophize at all.

Events Events Events Events Events Events Events Events Events Events 
24/04/2026

New article by Nélio Conceição published in our Arts Special Issue on Swan Songs

The guest editors of the Arts’ Special Issue on Swan Songs: Philosophical Reflections on Death, Time, and Memory in Testament Films, Vasco Baptista Marques and Susana Viegas, are pleased to announce the publication of a new open-access article: “On Wrinkles, Laughter, and the Self-Reflexivity of Joris Ivens’s A Tale of the Wind“, by Nélio Conceição. In his swan song A […]
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27/03/2026

Lucas Ferraço Nassif’s Interview for TV Scholar

A new intervew with Lucas Ferraço Nassif for TV Scholar is out now! In this interview, Lucas Ferraço Nassif reflects on his work at the intersection of cinema, television, and philosophy, outlining a research practice shaped by psychoanalysis and experimental media. Drawing on his book Unconscious/Television, he explores how TV and anime operate as sites […]
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06/03/2026

Presenting Film and Death: A Conceptual Knowledge Map

We are pleased to announce the launch of Film and Death: A Conceptual Knowledge Map, a dataset developed within the FILM AND DEATH project. Guided by the focus question “How does film make us think about death?,” the map visualizes the network of relations between films, filmmakers, formal strategies, concepts, and thematic subjects, highlighting their philosophical […]
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23/03/2026

Manoel de Oliveira and Portuguese Cinema: 3. Turns of Life – Yesterday as Today (1990–2015)

Susana Viegas, Marco Grosoli, and Vasco Baptista Marques have been invited to contribute to the third volume of ‘Manoel de Oliveira and Portuguese Cinema: 3. Turns of Life – Yesterday as Today (1990-2015)’, published by the CCMO-Serralves Foundation, and throughout 2026, they will also join screening sessions at the Auditório (15 Mar-21 Oct 2026) as […]
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26/01/2026

New publication by our team: “Death-Images: Revisiting Deleuze’s ‘Time-Image’ in Cinema after 1985”

As invited guest editors, Susana Viegas, Lucas Ferraço Nassif, Marco Grosoli and Vasco Baptista Marques are pleased to share “Death-Images: Revisiting Deleuze’s ‘Time-Image’ in Cinema after 1985” (Revista de Comunicação e Linguagens | Journal of Communication and Languages no. 63), published by the NOVA Institute of Communication – ICNOVA of NOVA University Lisbon. Marking forty years since […]
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ERC-2022-COG

FILM AND DEATH is a 5-year project funded by the European Research Council under the Horizon Europe research and innovation programme (ERC Consolidator Grant n. 101088956), led by Susana Viegas and currently hosted by the Universidade NOVA de Lisboa.

Start Date: 01 Jun 2023 • Duration: 60 months









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Funded by the European Union (ERC, FILM AND DEATH, 101088956). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

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