Bloomsbury The Continental Philosophy of Film Reader

The first collection of its kind, The Continental Philosophy of Film Reader is the essential anthology of writings by continental philosophers on cinema, representing the last century of film-making and thinking about film, as well as all of the major schools of Continental thought: phenomenology and existentialism, Marxism and critical theory, semiotics and hermeneutics, psychoanalysis, and postmodernism. Included here are not only the classic texts in continental philosophy of film, from Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction†? to extracts of Deleuze's Cinema and Barthes's Mythologies, but also the earliest works of Continental philosophy of film, from thinkers such as Georg Lukács, and little-read gems by philosophical giants such as Sartre and Beauvoir. The book demonstrates both the philosophical significance of these thinkers' ideas about film, as well their influence on filmmakers in Europe and across the globe. In addition, however, this wide-ranging collection also teaches us how important film is to the last century of European philosophical thought. Almost every major continental European thinker of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has had something to say-sometimes, quite a lot to say-about cinema: as an art form, as a social or political phenomenon, as a linguistic device and conveyor of information, as a projection of our fears and desires, as a site for oppression and resistance, or as a model on the basis of which some of us, at least, learn how to live. Purpose built for classroom use, with pedagogical features introducing and contextualizing the extracts, this reader is an indispensable tool for students and researchers in philosophy of film, film studies and the history of cinema. Review This is a long overdue collection of readings which have shaped the trajectory of continental philosophy and film, from Eisenstein and Münsterberg to Frampton and Halberstam. Invaluable for teaching and as a research guide, this is the first volume to bring all these names together in this context, demonstrating the breadth of the field and the extraordinary contributions made by these thinkers to debates about film. The intellectually minded film world has been waiting for this anthology. Westfall's book does not only provide a comprehensive collection of texts essential in European philosophy of film or film aesthetics; it also succeeds in drawing a distinguishing line between continental and analytic philosophy of film, a line that used to be blurred. The book plausibly establishes the existence of continental philosophy of film as a distinct tradition. This is the most complete compilation of European film-philosophers I have ever seen, and the selection features some of the most influential writings in the history of the discipline. I would love to have such a resource. About the Author Joseph Westfall is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Houston-Downtown, USA. He is the author of The Kierkegaardian Author (2007), and co-editor (with Alan Rosenberg) of Foucault and Nietzsche: A Critical Encounter (Bloomsbury, forthcoming).