Abstract

By the late 20th century, cinema entered the discourse of critical thought, thanks to figures like Stanley Cavell, Gilles Deleuze, and Jean-Luc Nancy. This transition marked a shift in cinema’s role—from art, ideology, and language to a form of philosophical thought. This paper examines the relationship between cinema and philosophy, focusing on Deleuze’s ontology of cinema as thought. I argue that exilic cinema introduces a third ontology—Masked Imagination-Blank Space—which synthesizes the ontologies of primitive, classical, and modern cinema (photography, movement-image, and time-image). By tracing the critical history of cinema as thought through the lens of exilic cinema, this study contributes to contemporary film theory, philosophy of cinema, and philosophy of exile.

Presenters

Yonas Belay Abebe
Student, MA, Institution of Philosophy, Leiden University, Netherlands

Details

Presentation Type

Paper Presentation in a Themed Session

Theme

Media Theory

KEYWORDS

EXILIC CINEMA, ONTOLOGY OF CINEMA, BLANK SPACE, MASKED IMAGINATION

Digital Media

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