The Technological Development of Photography and Filmmaking

choice one
1. Does the technological development of photography and film have an impact on the conception and consumption of the arts in general? Compare it with at least one other artform (painting, theatre, photography, film, etc.).

2. Take one or more films and analyse what, if anything, is distinctly ‘cinematic’ or ‘filmic’ about them (as against merely theatrical or photographic), considering how this relates to the conflict between the respective positions of Scruton, Bazin and Arnheim over whether film is an art of its own.

3. Two schools of thought about the ontology of film are the ‘realists’ (like Bazin) and the ‘formalists’ (like Arnheim or Eisenstein). Explain these different perspectives, which (if either) you think is right, or whether both make a contribution to an adequate ontology of film.

4. Are Eisenstein’s and Bazin’s ideas about filmmaking grounded in different aesthetic/social/political/ontological conceptions of the reality that film should show? What are the relations between such conceptions and the different cinematic techniques they discuss?

5. The technical development of photography and film is often thought to mark a break from drawing and painting due to its apparent ability to directly reproduce the object depicted. How valid is this assumption? What are the implications of the development of digital technology for the realist model of the reproduction of reality?

6. ‘Computer media redefines the very identity of cinema.’ Argue for or against this claim, discussing the new possibilities of material manipulation of the image related to other forms of cinematic and pre-cinematic production of moving images?
7. Does the development of ‘mass arts’ in the early twentieth century, exemplified by cinema, entail political consequences? Are we still living in an era of the ‘aestheticisation of politics’ that Walter Benjamin spoke of?

8. ‘Films can make a unique contribution to philosophy by means which are specific to the cinematic medium.’ Critically evaluate the arguments for and against this thesis, specifying the kinds of contributions film can make to philosophy (if any), as well as the limits of film-philosophy (if any).

9. Take one or two films and examine in what ways they can be said to be ‘philosophical’. Do they do anything philosophical that cannot be done in philosophical dialogue or writing? Please refer to the readings (Alexandre Astruc, Karen Hanson) and provide at least 5 references altogether.