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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09/06/2026

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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02/06/2026

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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16/06/2026

Welcoming David H. Fleming

We are very happy to welcome our new resident, David H. Fleming, to the FILM AND DEATH team! David H. Fleming is a Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor at the University of Stirling. His research straddles theoretical and practical aspects of film philosophy, and gravitates around the intersectionalities of Screens, Thinking, and Worlds—the name of the Edinburgh […]
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08/06/2026

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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03/06/2026

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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18/05/2026

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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24/04/2026

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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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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