Part I: Do We Need a Film Theory?

1. Prospects for Film Theory: A Personal Assessment by Noël Carroll
2. Can Scientific Models of Theorizing Help Film Theory? by Malcolm Turvey
3. Philosophy of Film as the Creation of Concepts by Gilles Deleuze

 

The essays in this section raise the question regarding the point of doing film theory and what form film theory should take. Broad questions are examined such as, why study film from a theoretical point of view? And, is the theoretical study of film similar to studying the natural world? Seeing films made with non-standard editing and representational practices is a good way for the students to see that further study would help to uncover what all the divergent movies called "film" have in common.

Man With A Movie Camera, Chelovek s kinoapparatom (Dziga Vertov, 1929)

Week End, (Jean-Luc Godard, 1967)

Films by the French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard would be useful for getting students to see that there is something puzzling about what makes something a film. You could screen Godard's Week End or Pierrot le fou. These same films would be useful in illustrating Deleuze's claim that the goal of philosophy of film is the creation of concepts. Vertov's Man With a Movie Camera (1929) is a documentary about the filming of a documentary about a day in the life of the former Soviet Union.This very interesting self-reflexive film raises questions about the social status of film, the role of the director, and the camera's relationship with the audience.