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.

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11/08/2025

New article by Marco Grosoli on Apichatpong’s Cemetery of Splendour (2015)

A new article by our post-doctoral researcher Marco Grosoli is now out, published in Cinergie‘s latest issue, edited by Massimo Fusillo and Mirko Lino. Cinergie is an open-access, peer-reviewed, class-A journal and the full issue is available here. In his paper, titled “The Political Asleep: Non-Traumatic Spectrality in Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Cemetery of Splendour”, Marco Grosoli […]
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11/08/2025

Response to “Death, Disappearance, and Digitality: Existential Meditations on Cinema, Anime and Media”, by Corey P. Cribb

This publication proceeds from a talk given by Corey P. Cribb (Technological University Dublin) at Discovering/Uncovering: The NECS 2025 Conference, Lusófona University, June 19, 2025 (NECS) The goal of my talk today is to situate presentations by Susana Viegas (“Wandering Toward the End: Existentialism and Death in Gerry”), Lucas Ferraço Nassif (“Into the Wired: Lain […]
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20/08/2025

Lucas Ferraço Nassif at the Associazione Culturale Spiazzi

Following his ongoing collaboration with Becoming Press, which originated the release of his book Unconscious/Television (2025), post doctoral researcher Lucas Ferraço Nassif will be present at Πάμε Βενετία (pame venetia), a series of events celebrating the editor’s 10th book. Lucas will be speaking at the Associazione Culturale Spiazzi (Venice, Italy), on September 11, with a […]
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18/07/2025

The Film-Phil Lisbon Seminars: Davide Sisto

The next session of our Film-Phil Lisbon Seminars will be led by Davide Sisto (University of Turin), who will talk about “Thanabots. Digital immortality between sci-fi movies and reality”. Abstract This talk intends to focus on the topic of so-called digital immortality. In particular, it intends to analyze the birth and development of a particular […]
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15/07/2025

Book Discussion: Queer Post-Cinema, by Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky

On September 25, 2025, a discussion will take place about the book Queer Post-Cinema: Reinventing Resistance (ICI Berlin Press 2025), by Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky. The discussion will be held in English, in the auditorium A2 of NOVA FCSH (Campus Av. de Berna) and will feature the author, Susana Viegas and Iracema Dulley. About the book: The […]
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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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