What is called “time travel” cinema is but one aspect in a tripartite series of interweaving modes of disjunctive narration which is also – simultaneously – a cinema of “many worlds” and “altered states”. Exploiting Gilles Deleuze's three syntheses of time, space, and consciousness from Difference and Repetition (1968) allows a conceptual development of these cinematic series through three popular Hollywood film cycles beginning with Planet of the Apes (Franklin J. Schaffner, 1968), The Terminator (James Cameron, 1984), and Back to (...) the Future (Robert Zemeckis, 1985). In so doing, film and philosophy are deployed as two series which together create inexhaustible atemporal, aspatial, and ahuman disjunctions, ungrounding everyday spatio-temporal identities, and affirming productive images of cinematic thought. (shrink)

This article explores the affinities between film and philosophy by returning to a shared meditation on death and the nature of time. Death has been considered the muse of philosophy and can also be considered the muse of film-philosophy. But what does it mean to say that to film-philosophise is to learn to die, or a kind of training for dying? Film is an artistic object that reminds us of death’s inevitability; it is a meditation on the transient and finite (...) nature of time. Films as diverse as Mizoguchi’s Tales of Ugetsu, Resnais’s Hiroshima mon Amour, and Guzmán’s Nostalgia for the Light take an uncanny approach to the subject, expressing the paradoxical coexistence of life and death and of different temporal dimensions. This article explores the philosophical concept of the death-image and time through a Deleuzian approach to cinema, meditating on the flashback, the coexistence of the present and the past, and the emergence of a new type of Lazarean character – one who returns from the dead. The article aims to clarify not simply death’s unquestionable omnipresence in film but also cinema’s role as a contemporary version of the trope of memento mori. (shrink)

This article discusses Michel Serres's topological thinking and his approach to space and time from a film studies perspective, specifically looking at connections between Serresian philosophy and the work of Christopher Nolan, using Dunkirk (2017) as an example of folded time. The article provides a selective overview of Serres's topological thinking, which opposes a geometrical approach to space and time, as well as indicating connections between Serresian thought and film studies more broadly. Serres makes frequent use of visual metaphors that (...) rely upon motion, which means discussing Serres's philosophy in relation to film can be a purposeful way to make sense of his topological thinking about spatialized time. Serresian philosophy can bring new ideas to film studies while discussion of Serres's thinking from a film studies perspective can help to visualize some of his philosophical ideas. The article considers similarities with, and distinctions from, Gilles Deleuze's understanding of time in cinema, which is modelled on the work of Henri Bergson. One essential difference is that Serres approaches topological time in relation to space whereas Deleuze only considers topological aspects to time through the virtual qualities of the non-spatialized time-image. Key aims of the article are to contribute to film studies through the application of Serresian thinking in relation to Dunkirk as well as offering a new approach to the recurrent themes of space and time in Nolan's work. The main objective is to present Serresian topological thinking as an alternative approach to space and time in film studies, which includes the capability to potentially complement or enhance ideas developed by Deleuze and Bergson. In keeping with Serresian philosophy this article pursues a new way of thinking about folded time in relation to film, based upon exploring new territory and synthesizing ideas rather than attempting to present a universal argument. (shrink)