Film and Death
  • About
    • Background and key aims
    • Overview
    • Team
    • Advisory Board
    • Related projects
    • References
  • Film-Phil Seminars
  • Outreach
    • Conferences
    • Reading Groups
    • Media
    • Videos
  • Publications
    • Articles
    • Books
  • Blog
  • Job openings
  • Contact
“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 
25/06/2025

Vasco Baptista Marques at Post/Zeitgeist (Gerador/Goethe-Institut)

On July 10 7PM, Vasco Baptista Marques will be joined by neuroscientist Luísa Lopes in an informal conversation at the library of the Goethe-Institut in Lisbon. The theme for this session of Despertador, a series of informal encounters between two specialists on a specific thematic, will be “Novas Concepções sobre Vida e Morte” (“New Conceptions […]
View more
20/06/2025

The Film-Phil Lisbon Seminars: Bárbara Bergamaschi

The next session of our Film-Phil Lisbon Seminars will be led by Bárbara Bergamaschi (NOVA University Lisbon), who will talk about “Eroticism, Formlessness, and Death in Tscherkassky’s Cinematic Hauntology”. Abstract This paper examines the work of Austrian avant-garde filmmaker Peter Tscherkasskythrough the lens of Georges Bataille’s concepts of l’informe (the formless), eroticism, and expenditure. Positioned […]
View more
06/01/2025

CfP Special Issue on Swan Songs: Philosophical Reflections on Death, Time, and Memory in Testament Films

Swan Songs: Philosophical Reflections on Death, Time, and Memory in Testament Films Dedicated to the last films of renowned filmmakers, often referred to as “testament films” or “swan songs,” this Special Issue will examine their thematic, narrative, and stylistic elements, viewing these final works as profound summations of their creators’ careers and philosophical syntheses of […]
View more

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









Hosted by
Supported by

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.

DESIGN