opp x Philiminality Oxford:
Film-Philosophy Week: A Wong Kar-wai futurespective
Can our imagination plunge into the future to recover what we lost? In his mesmerising mood piece In The Mood For Love (2000) and its sequel 2046 (2004) Hong-Kong director Wong Kar-wai swirls around the all-too-familiar concerns around altered forms of time, dislocation, longing, and grief.
During the first week of the winter vac opp and Philiminality invite you to embark on a journey through live streamed films and discussions to:
discover how films can do philosophy through the screen,
inspire communal visual meditations during challenging times,
and practice radical openness to our own philosophical and cultural assumptions.
Optional learning resources will be provided for the most adventurous, and communal reflection will be guided by Martina Bani, a recent graduate from the MSt in Film Aesthetics. We aim for this to be a week that practices expanding our horizons through a kind of philosophy less salient in our curricula, enmeshing film and community in the task of living.
In the Mood for Love (on Sun 13th Dec 7pm) & 2046 (Fri 18th Dec 7pm), discussing them at 5pm on Tue 15th & Tue 22nd Dec.
Zoom link (the same for each event):
Topic: Film-Philosophy Week: A Wong Kar-wai futurespective
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85327230159...
Meeting ID: 853 2723 0159
Passcode: love2046
learning resources
These resources are completely optional and meant to provide, enlarge, question, and in no way impose, understandings of In the Mood for Love and the concepts around film-as-philosophy.
It is recommended to access them after the film viewing, to avoid influencing your experience of the film (especially Section 2). However, you can start reading beforehand if you feel that you would not have enough time between screening and discussion. Additional learning resources are also provided below if you are keen to further research on ITMFL/2046 and/or on film-philosophy after this week.
For questions and/or comments regarding the resources and in general, please message Martina, Lea, or alicehank on Facebook/Instagram or by email.
Part One: 13th and 15th December.
Section 1: Film and Philosophical Imagination.
Blog article: In the mood for philosophy: on the importance of setting the mood for philosophical thinking
Podcast episode “On the very idea of Film as Philosophy”: philosophy bites: Stephen Mulhall on Film as Philosophy
Section 2. Texture, Temporality, and Grief in In the Mood for Love
Martina’s work on texture in In the Mood for Love: In the Mood for Love - Texture (excerpt)
ITMFL video-essay: In The Mood For Love: Frames Within Frames by Nerdwriter1
Grief in 2020 - HBR article
Further learning for the adventurers.
Stephen Mulhall: Film as Philosophy: On the very idea
Giuliana Bruno’s Surface chapter on texture, time, and grief in In the Mood for Love, available at 2Surface, Texture, Weave
Gary Bettinson: Sensuous Cinema of Wong Kar-wai : Film Poetics and the Aesthetic of Disturbance, especially Chapter 1: “Wong Kar-wai and the poetics of Hong Kong cinema”
Spaces of Repetition and Disappearance in A Companion to Wong Kar-Wai, edited by Martha P. Nochimson, John Wiley & Sons. Especially pages 134-137; 143; 152-157.
Stanley Cavell (2005: 94) on the “grain” of film.
From: Cavell, S., 2005. “The Thought of Movies”. In: S. Cavell & W. Rothman, Cavell on film, Albany: State University of New York Press.
Stanley Cavell on the democratic nature of film (as philosophy):
Another important feature of Cavell’s conception of philosophy lay in his assertion that philosophy is not limited to any subject matter. As he describes in The World Viewed, given that film comprises a popular art form, film’s philosophical potential is equally open for all. Film operates in the condition of democratic poetry, such that one does not need special training in order to comprehend or appreciate a film’s philosophical accomplishment. Film takes the unseen, philosophically weighted aspects of everyday life and makes them available for anyone who is paying attention. Here the philosophical stakes of film’s power are joined to its socio-political significance; the everydayness of film is part of its potency for activating and cultivating thought (Loht, 2020: 259-60).
From: Loht, S., 2020. “Film Exists in a State of Philosophy: Two Contemporary Cavellian Views”. In: David LaRocca (ed.), The Thought of Stanley Cavell and Cinema : Turning Anew to the Ontology of Film a Half-Century after The World Viewed, New York.