DELEUZE AND CINEMA

Thinking the image as the image of thought. Note on Deleuze’s filmosophy

Gilles Deleuze is one of the first philosophers who tried to consider film history and film as a visual medium in an analytical and systematic way. His filmosophy considerations about time and space, i.e. movement and time of film images, triggered a series of studies that have been analyzing film from a philosophical perspective for about the last ten years. The author of this text critically reviews the discussion opened by Deleuze, especially regarding analysis of image as a movement and movement as time. Author’s basic idea is that these approaches, apart from its importance for film scholarship, also carry metaphysical and philosophical weight: we are not talking about a mere representational film history or a »synchronic-diachronic taxonomy«, we are talking about a real ontological history of time as such. Film is not just one of the dominant visual arts; it also enables us to become philosophically aware of the world we live in. Considering that that kind of interpretative horizon helps us understand cuts in the film practice, discontinuities in film history, as well as cognitive processes that open the door to a world in which image should become though, and though an image, the author applies Deleuze’s ideas to some recent films.

Tonči Valentić