Within the loose group of studies that are sometimes labelled Heideggerian cinema – studies in which scholars consider film in conjunction with Heidegger's philosophy – little attention has been paid to Heidegger's actual view of cinema. This omission is not only odd but it is also problematic. In the off-hand comments Heidegger directs towards film throughout his collected works he criticises the medium for its covering over of Being, a fact that makes engaging with film through Heidegger's thinking a questionable (...) project. The present article aims to address this omission and to provide a conception of Heideggerian cinema that does not ignore, but answers, Heidegger's criticism. It argues that it is not the technological nature of cinema that is the source of Heidegger's hostility towards the medium but his conception of the film-photographic image as a transparent copy of the world. It is on this basis that cinema is denied the ca... (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis review essay of Shawn Loht’s new book, Phenomenology of Film: A Heideggerian Account of the Film Experience, not only offers an ontological reading of the filmic experience inspired by Heidegger’s philosophy but also contributes substantially to the ongoing debate of whether or not film is a medium that is legitimately philosophical. In addition to confronting unique ideas about film that emerge from Loht’s analysis of Heidegger’s phenomenological ontology of Dasein, including a reading of later Heidegger of the “Turn,” this (...) essay also seeks to think with and then beyond Loht in a way that might inspire readers to further pursue these issues in relation to a potentially reconceived understanding of the practice of film-as-philosophy. (shrink)