20 November

Lucas Ferraço Nassif (IFILNOVA)

ABSTRACT Assembled by Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok in the book “Le Verbier de L’Homme aux Loups” (1976), cryptonomy is a way of reading and writing with an undecipherable crypt that guarantees the impenetrability of the intra-symbolic inner worlds of the image. Yet, what are the contributions of cryptonomy, a concept from psychoanalysis, to philosophy, more specifically to philosophy of art and film, and for those who work with images? What philosophy can learn as a method with concepts that come from psychoanalytic clinics? What are the philosophical effects of operating with cryptonomy and “Twin Peaks: The Return” (2017)? As a tool of both research and production of concepts, what happens when cryptonomy is used to think and to feel with the TV show created by Mark Frost and David Lynch? To formulate a hypothesis, we debate Part 8 and the impact of the Trinity Test on the image of the desertshore – which will incorporate the explosion and its radiation, mutating its semiotic diagram of forces and building the crypt. “Twin Peaks: The Return” activates cryptonomy on the strength of its mysteries that will not be solved or have secured interpretations, confronting phallic comprehension. Thus, with cryptonomy, we may learn how to see and to listen to images on both the limit of meaning and the threshold of chaos. This presentation is part of my new book “Unconscious/Television”, soon to be published by Becoming Press. 

Lucas Ferraço Nassif holds a Ph.D. in Literature from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. He’s a researcher at the Cinema and Philosophy Laboratory, part of the NOVA Institute of Philosophy, and a member of the Portuguese Center of Psychoanalysis. Director and editor of the films "Reinforced Concrete", "Being Boring", and "Unfamiliar Ceiling/The Beast"; and author of the book "Missing Links", published by Barakunan, and awarded by the Association of Moving Image Researchers [AIM] in Portugal as the best monographic book of 2023.


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Film and Death
Film and Death
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Film-Phil Seminars

It consists of a set of monthly seminars open to the academic community and the general public.
The seminars will be delivered by team members and by invited speakers and collaborators.

P2 Close-Up on Film-Philosophical Time

2026

25 February: Vasco Baptista Marques (NOVA University Lisbon)

More details to follow (Hybrid)

2025

29 January: Cristóbal Escobar (University of Melbourne), "A Classic Never Dies: On Cinematic Intensity and the Contemporary"

Online event

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19 February: Outi Hakola (University of Helsinki), "Filming the Moment of Death”

Hybrid

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26 March: Marc Cerisuelo (Université Gustave Eiffel and Institut Universitaire de France), "Psychopomp fictions"

Hybrid

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16 April: Federico Rossin "How experimental cinema deals with death"

Hybrid

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28 May: Muhammad Haris (Habib University), "Natural Language Generation and the Script for a Film on Genocide"

Online event

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4 June: Jeremi Szaniawski (UMass Amherst), "Death, Dying, and the Death Throes (?) of Necrorealism in the Films of Alexander Sokurov and Yevgeny Yufit"

Hybrid

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30 July: Bárbara Bergamaschi (NOVA University of Lisbon), "Eroticism, Formlessness, and Death in Tscherkassky’s Cinematic Hauntology"

Hybrid

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24 September: Davide Sisto (University of Turin), "Thanabots. Digital immortality between sci-fi movies and reality"

Hybrid

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15 October: Seán Cubbit

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27 November: Christine Greiner

More details to follow (Online event)

2024

18 September: Christine Reeh-Peters (​Protestant University of Applied Sciences/Bochum), "Film Specters - Towards an Ethics of Film and Death"

Hybrid

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23 October: James Williams (Deakin University), "Death, Démontage and Time in Bande Dessinée as a Precursor to Film: The Works of Jean-Marc Rochette"

Hybrid

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20 November: Lucas Ferraço Nassif (IFILNOVA), "Where the Desertshore Was, There Should Be the Crypt"

Hybrid

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4 December: Anna Magdalena Elsner (University of St. Gallen), "Documenting Dying or Capturing Care? The Afterlives of Palliative Care in French End-of-Life Documentaries"

Hybrid

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P1 Close-Up on Film-Philosophy as Metaphilosophy

2023

22 November: Robert Sinnerbrink (Macquarie University), “What is a Philosophical Reading of Film? On Film-Philosophy and Philosophical Film Criticism”

Online event

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11 December: Jakob A. Nilsson (Örebro University), "Cinecepts: On the Articulation of Philosophical Concepts Through Audiovisual Media"

Online event

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2024

24 January: Thomas E. Wartenberg (Mount Holyoke College), “Thoughtful Cinema: Illustrating Philosophy Through Film”

Hybrid

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14 February: David Ferragut (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), “Matter and Mind. On philosophy in Early Cinema”

Hybrid

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9 March: Thomas Lamarre (University of Chicago), “Half Life: Radiation and Animation”

In-person event

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24 April: Lucy Bolton (Queen Mary University of London), “The desecration of the beautiful star: death and the female biopic”

Hybrid

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15 May: Bernd Herzogenrath (Goethe University of Frankfurt), “The Way of All Flesh: Decasia and Death of|as Film”

Hybrid

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17 June: Marco Grosoli (IFILNOVA), "Looking Through the Eyes of Those Who Are No Longer: Death and Cultural Politics in Leonora addio (Paolo Taviani, 2022)"

Online event

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4 July: Catherine Wheatley (King's College London), "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow: film, mourning, and the passing of the world"

Hybrid

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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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