“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.”
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.
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The Film-Phil Lisbon Seminars: Marina Christodoulou
June’s next Film-Phil Lisbon Seminar will be led by our visiting researcher Marina Christodoulou (Constructor (Jacobs) University) who will talk about “Cinema Keeps What It Cannot Save: Death, Duration, and the Ontology of the Moving Image”. Abstract This talk and accompanying essay-film will examine cinema as a medium in which death is not merely represented but […]
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Workshop: Introduction to Videographic Criticism, Cinema & Video Art
On June 16 and July 8, 15:00-18:00 WEST, David H. Fleming and Pedro Inock, members of the FILM AND DEATH team, will lead the workshop “Introduction to Videographic Criticism, Cinema & Video Art”. Throughout the two-session workshop, participants will explore videographic criticism, video essays, and video art as forms of research, thinking, and artistic practice. […]
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Welcoming Marina Christodoulou
We are very happy to welcome our new resident, Marina Christodoulou, to the FILM AND DEATH team! Marina Christodoulou is a Lecturer in Philosophy at Constructor (Jacobs) University, Bremen and a visiting Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy and in the Gender Centre at the University of Klagenfurt; she has taught in various universities in […]
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New article by Diana Neiva 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: “Rebooting Death: Wes Craven’s Scream 4 as Testament Film” by Diana Neiva. This paper examines Wes Craven’s Scream 4 (2011) […]
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Diana Neiva at MAK2026: Mind, Art, Knowledge
Between June 15 and 17, Diana Neiva will be present at MAK2026 – Mind, Art, Knowledge: Dialogues Between Cognitive Science, Artistic Practice and Philosophy, at the KVAB – Rubensauditorium, in Brussels. This three-day symposium brings together artists, artistic researchers, philosophers, and cognitive scientists. It will investigate how artistic knowing emerges from the interplay of perception, […]
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The FILM AND DEATH team at Trinity College Dublin
FILM AND DEATH’s team members Susana Viegas, the project’s PI, and Marco Grosoli, Vasco Baptista Marques, and Lucas Ferraço Nassif, postdoctoral researchers, are presenting at the “International Conference: French Theory and Contemporary Screen Studies,” Trinity College Dublin, 11-12 June 2026. Session D1 “Death-Images: Time, Spectrality, and the Limits of French Film Theory Today”, scheduled for […]
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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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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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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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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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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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