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Program

Film & Philosophy: How Films Think
Presented by the Graduate Film Studies Group
University of Florida, November 5-7, 2010

Friday November 5, 2010
Panel Presentations in Pugh 210

8:30 am check in and light breakfast

9:00-10:15 AM
Reading Film Through … I
Moderator: Allison Rittmayer

“A Stare(way) to Life – A Look at ‘Camera Looks’ Following Jean Paul Sartre,”
Rotem Yifat, Tel Aviv University
“Film’s Unthought, the Virtual,”
Gary Hink, University of Florida
“Cinema Derridé: as Film,”
Richard Burt, University of Florida

10:30-11:45 AM
What Philosophy Offers Film
Moderator: Kevin Sherman

“Film as ________?: Problems and Possibilities from Perkins to Rodowick,”
Georg Koszulinski, University of Florida
“Film as a Tool for Improvisation,”
Paige Fowler, University of Florida
“Embody Your Oeuvre: Intellectual Profiles and the Philosophical Documentary,”
Nicholas de Villiers, University of North Florida

lunch break

12:45-2:30 PM
Specto ergo… I Watch therefore…
Moderator: Anthony Coman

“Contextualizing Ben Affleck’s Gone Baby Gone,”
Mitch Margolis, University of Florida
“The Character’s Becoming: Performance and Philosophy in Film,”
Steven Rybin, Georgia Gwinnett College
“Watching the Viewer: An Analysis of Kiarostami’s Shirin,”
Stephanie Williams, Lynn University
“Thiriez’s Razor: Ontologies of the Self and Embodying the Subject in La Moustache,”
Allison Rittmayer, University of Florida

2:45-4:00 PM
Waging War on the Screen
Moderator: Allison Rittmayer

“Viewing Torture and War: Conceptual, Sensational, or Ethical?,”
Jillian Smith, University of North Florida
“The Wind in the Trees, Explosions on the Field: Philosophy and Ethics in Contemporary Combat Films,”
Lauren Glenn, University of Florida
“Thinking in Words, Looking at the World: The Experience of Insight Explored through the Literary and
Visual Figurative Tropes of Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line (1998),”
Adam Rosadiuk, Concordia University, QC

6:00 PM – Hippodrome State Theater
Lecture by Director Andrew Bujalski, followed by a screening of his film Beeswax (2009)

Saturday November 6, 2010
Panel Presentations in Pugh 210

8:30 AM check in and light breakfast

9:00-10:15 AM
Reading Film Through … II
Moderator: Tamar Ditzian

“Thinking Without Guarantees: Film and Problem of Philosophical Transmission,”
Erich Freiberger, Jacksonville University
“What Philosophy Finds in Cinema: Focus on Alain Badiou,”
Katie Kohn, Harvard University
“‘Landscape as a Witness of Death’: Sokurov and the Unthinkable”
Sergey Toymentsev, Rutgers University

10:30 AM -12:15 PM
Screened Sexuality
Moderator: Justin R. Grant

“Godard and Female Bodies: Bridging Traditional Western Aesthetics and Consumer Culture,”
Missy Molloy, University of Florida
“Becoming-Woman, Becoming-Animal, and Becoming-Photograph in Ginger Snaps,”
Tamar Ditzian, University of Florida
“Mangia! or Pasolini, Godard and Scenes From the Mouth of Hell,”
Andrew Wilson, University of Florida
“Philosophy’s Desire,”
Maureen Turim, University of Florida

Lunch Break

1:30-3:15 PM
Theories of Film & Philosophy
Moderator: Peter Gitto

“Film as Law,”
Suzanne Bouclin, University of Ottawa
“Becoming-Filmic: The Practice of Grammatology in Everyday Life,”
Michael Williams, Berklee College of Music
“Projection and Reflection: Analyzing Philosophical Dimensions in Moving Images,”
Dittmar Dittrich, Loyola University, New Orleans
“In Defense of Philosophical Film Theory,”
Alexander Greenhough, Stanford University

3:30-4:45 PM
Traces Left on the Screen
Moderator: Todd Jurgess

“‘The Impermanence of Things’: Memory, Historicity, and Indexicality in Chris Marker’s Sans soleil,”
Jeremy Barr, Florida Atlantic University
“Collage, the Institutionalization of Subjectivity in Alan Bennett’s The History Boys,”
Carolina Conte, Jacksonville University
“After Thought: Cinema, Self and Soul in Hirokazu Koreeda’s After Life,”
David Neary, University College Dublin

7:00 PM – Harn Museum of Art at the University of Florida
Keynote Lecture:
D. N. Rodowick, “A Compass in a Moving World: On Genres and Genealogies of Theory”
Followed by a reception

Sunday November 7, 2010
Panel Presentations in Pugh 210

8:30 AM CHECK IN AND LIGHT BREAKFAST

9:00-10:15 AM
Auteur as Philosopher
Moderator: Elizabeth Dixon

“‘Corrupting Youth’: On Philosophy and New Media in the Dialogues of France tour détour deux enfants,”
Scott Ferguson, University of South Florida
“The Ethical Filmmaker: Chantal Akerman and Là-bas,”
Kate Rennebohm, Concordia University, QC
“To Know You is To Love You: Epistemology and Power Imbalance in the Hitchcockian Espionage Romance,”
Elizabeth Dixon, University of Florida

10:30 -11:45 AM
Materiality, Reality, Indexicality
Moderator: Mauro Carassai

“Errol Morris’ Standard Operating Procedure: Photographic Representations as Computerized Data,”
Joan Shaffer, University of North Florida
“Japan’s New Genre Cinema and Film Ontology Beyond the Photographic,”
Laura Lee, Florida State University
“Felix, the Monsters and the Kitties: Fantasies of Handwriting in Silent and Digital Animation,”
Aaron Kashtan, University of Florida

12:15-2:00 PM – Ustler Hall Atrium
Afternoon Keynote Lecture:
William Rothman, “Silence and Stasis”
Followed by a luncheon

2:30-4:15 PM
Reading Film through … III
Moderator: Georg Koszulinski

“Extraterrestrial Forms-of-life: Locating the Non-human Animal in District 9,”
Joanna Koulianos, University of South Florida
“‘Fettered to a Ringing Telephone’: The Immobile Bodies of Women in The Blue Gardenia,”
Carolyn Kelley, University of Florida
“Deleuze’s Transcendental Empiricism and the Ontology of Film,”
Pablo Utin, Tel Aviv University/University of Miami
“Bodies and Borders: The Films of Apichatpong Weerasethakul,”
Scott Nygren, University of Florida

4:30-5:45 PM
Feeling Films: Emotion & Trauma on Screen
Moderator: Abra Gibson

“Beyond the Platonic Antagonism: Pseudos or Theatrical Documentation of Disasters,”
Jong Chul Choi, University of Florida
“The Meaning of a Word, or Envisioning Language and Subjectivity,”
Ulrike Hanstein, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar
“Para-Index as Digit to the Unthinkable,”
Seung-hoon Jeong, NYU Abu Dhabi

7:00 PM – Ustler Hall Atrium
Keynote Lecture:
Mary Ann Doane, “Has Time Become Space?”
Followed by a reception

Acknowledgements

The Graduate Film Studies Group would like to thank our sponsors for supporting “Film & Philosophy: How Films Think,” as well as the many volunteers who assisted in the conference preparation.

Sponsors

Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere with
Support from the Yavitz Fund
Digital Assembly
Department of English
Center for Women’s Studies and Gender Research
RISK Cinema and the Harn Museum of Art
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Student Council
Center for Student Activities and Involvement
Student Government Finance

Special Thanks

Melanie Brunell
Mauro Carassai
Jarryd Collazo
Anthony Coman
Abra Gibson
Peter Gitto
Lauren Glenn
Justin R. Grant
Marina Hassapopoulou
Georg Koszulinski
Steven LeMieux
Scott Marshall
Charlie Meyer
Missy Molloy
Caleb Sheaffer
Kevin Sherman
Roger Beebe
Melissa Davis
Jane Dominguez
Tim Masset
Barbara Mennel
Janet Moore
Kerry Oliver-Smith
Robert Ray
Maureen Turim