“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: Robin Vanbesien
April’s first Film-Phil Lisbon Seminar will be led by our resident Robin Vanbesien (Sint Lucas School of Arts Antwerp), who will talk about “Posthumous Struggle and Transmission”. Abstract People forced into necropolitical mobility who die at Europe’s external borders often experience a “double death”: first physical, then social, as their identities and stories are lost. […]
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We welcome our new resident, Robin Vanbesien!
We are very pleased to welcome Robin Vanbesien as the third short-term resident to join our team. Robin Vanbesien is a Brussels-based artist, filmmaker, researcher, and educator. He explores how cinematic methods align with and contribute to situated struggles of place-making. How can cinema—with or without a lens or a screen—offer ways to acknowledge, reclaim, reassemble, rehearse, […]
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Pedro Inock will be the keynote speaker at Rendering Violence in Textual and Visual Media (UPenn)
On April 24-25, the Pennsylvania State University will host the conference Rendering Violence in Textual and Visual Media. Along with Se Young Kim (Colby College), Pedro Inock, doctoral researcher at the FILM AND DEATH project, will be a keynote speaker with a presentation titled “From Butcher of the World to Faithful Servant: Violence as Becoming”. […]
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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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