“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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Lucas Ferraço Nassif and Pedro Inock at IBERANIME Santarém 2025
On May 17, Lucas Ferraço Nassif and Pedro Inock, members of the FILM AND DEATH team will be at IBERANIME (CNEMA, Santarém), the biggest meeting of fans of japanese culture in Portugal. They will give a talk titled “Anime and Philosophy”, discussing this global phenomenon as a producer of knowledge and philosophical thought on very […]
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Susana Viegas at filarch 25: architecture | cinema
On May 22 and 23, ESAD (Escola Superior de Artes e Design), in Caldas da Rainha, will host filarch 25, an international conference dedicated to architecture and cinema. Susana Viegas, the Principal Investigator at FILM AND DEATH, will give the opening keynote presentation: “Do Cemitério dos Inocentes ao cinema: a atualidade das Danças Macabras”. In […]
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Reading Group on Catherine Malabou’s “Destructive Plasticity”
Catherine Malabou first arose to prominence in the International philosophical landscape in the 1990s, thanks to her groundbreaking interpretation of G. W. F. Hegel’s system as one revolving around plasticity, which eventually became the key concept of her own philosophical production. Itself a plastic concept, plasticity (“the nature of that which is ‘plastic’, being at once […]
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The Film-Phil Lisbon Seminars: Muhammad Haris
The next Film-Phil Lisbon Seminar will be led by Muhammad Haris (Habib University) who will talk about “Natural Language Generation and the Script for a Film on Genocide”. Muhammad Haris is the Director for the Program in Comparative Humanities at Habib University in Karachi, Pakistan. The program’s curriculum is grounded in cross-disciplinarity, cooperation, and a […]
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Out now! Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image n.16
We are delighted to announce that Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image n.16, dedicated to the theme “Anime and Philosophy,” is now online! This special issue gathers a rich array of contributions exploring the philosophical dimensions of anime, ranging from its aesthetics and narrative structures to its metaphysical and ethical provocations. It features […]
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Call for Short-Term Residencies in Film-Philosophy and Death
We are inviting applications for short-term residencies spanning Autumn 2025 through Summer 2026. Residents will become members of the FILM AND DEATH project during their stay and will be provided with access to workplace, internet, and university libraries. Residents are expected to actively participate in the project’s activities, present their research through a seminar open […]
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CfP Revista de Comunicação e Linguagens nº. 63: “Death-Images: Revisiting Deleuze’s “Time-Image” in cinema after 1985”
Death-Images: Revisiting Deleuze’s “Time-Image” in cinema after 1985 In her article “Death as Film-Philosophy’s Muse: Deleuzian Observations on Moving Images and the Nature of Time,” Susana Viegas has shown that Gilles Deleuze’s concept of the “time-image” (i.e. a way for moving images to present time breaking with the conception of the latter as a discrete […]
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CfP Swan Songs
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 […]
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