[acc-cca-l] Public lecture in Toronto: “Moment and Myth in the Philosophy of Film” Dec. 8th

[Philippe Theophanidis]

[△EXTERNAL]


For those in Toronto this week

• • •

The Spiral Collective<https://spiralfilmphilosophy.ca/about/> is pleased to announce  its 2023 “Spiral Talks” Lecture and Screening, free to the public

• Moment and Myth in the Philosophy of Film •

with
 Dr. <https://english.ufl.edu/trevor-mowchun/> Trevor Mowchun<https://english.ufl.edu/trevor-mowchun/>
University of Florida

— DATE —
December 8, 2023
Talk: 5pm
Screening: 7pm

— LOCATION —
Toronto Metropolitan University
Image Arts Building (IMA), room 307
122 Bond Street, Toronto

• • •

In this talk, Mowchun retrospectively identifies some of the underlying impulses that shaped the writing of his recent book, Metaphysics and the Moving Image, and its guiding intuition that, in film, the end of the Western tradition of metaphysics is confronted with the possibility of its transformative renewal, a renewal that may help to reverse the tradition’s ill-effects on our relationship with Being. The author questions why this idea is borne out almost exclusively through a corpus of narrative fiction films. While these films are shown to enact various disclosures of Being, along with the sense of concealment that never leaves the latter’s side, Mowchun wonders why the more obvious philosophical possibilities of avant-garde film never entered his radar of analysis, undergoing what appears to be a methodological denial in favour of the sense-making and identificatory systems of narrative film, even highly modernist films which challenge the integrity of these systems. To this end, the avant-garde film and its direct encounter with its subject matter (risking abstraction) will be tested against the book’s unconscious bias towards narrativity to see what it can offer a “cine-metaphysics for a post-metaphysical age.” Depending on the results of this speculative addendum, the author will then decide if his original corpus of narrative films does not have something in common with the avant-garde after all, and if the revelatory moments he finds in them are not indicative of something deeper than any narrative: myth.

Followed by a Screening and Discussion at 7pm.

• • •

Program

▶︎ NORTHSTARLING (Daniel Gerson & Trevor Mowchun, 2019, 16mm/digital, black and white, 13 min)
A woman’s stream of consciousness quickens during the coldest time of year. The deep-freeze of winter is summertime for time itself.

▶︎ DRINK SOME DARKNESS (Trevor Mowchun, 2020, digital, colour, 10 min)
A sentient patch of projector-light leads the viewer through a liminal space fit with three doors, each its own microcosm of feeling, its own film within the film. Inspired by a poem of haunting revelation from the great Swedish poet, Tomas Tranströmer.

▶︎ UNMASTERED (Trevor Mowchun & Shaun Gamboa, 2023, digital, colour, 17 min)
Three friends hold a formal discussion on a complex film character whose fractured and libidinal psyche inspires a journey into the unconscious realm of the film in which he appears. An “unmastering” of the cinematic masterpiece and the intellectual discourses that become its slave.

▶︎ FIBONACCI PRIVACY FENCE (Trevor Mowchun, 2023, digital, color, 15 min)
When I was in high school, no matter how hard I tried I was always terrible at math. I could never grasp the fundamentals well enough to perceive any kind of creative opening or spark in the severity of the work. One step after another, each more obscure to me than the last. I suppose I was not inclined to solve abstract problems that I couldn’t clearly envision or relate to. Perhaps my teachers were to blame. Anyways, for all that time and energy spent on a system or language (which is it?) I will likely never understand, I hereby exact my poetic revenge!

▶︎ DEGREE OF DIFFICULTY (Trevor Mowchun, digital, in progress)
When the class ends the students peacefully file out. The tired teacher is the last to leave. He passes through empty hallways with no sign of the students he tried to teach, nor the few who managed to teach him something. On the way to the parking lot, he crosses paths with other students from other classrooms. Were all these classes as predictable as this route? A film exploring the physical movements, rhythms, and possible aftershocks of a life of the mind we call the university.

• • •

Trevor Mowchun<https://english.ufl.edu/trevor-mowchun/> is Assistant Professor and Director of Film and Media Studies at University of Florida. He is the author of Metaphysics and the Moving Image: “Paradise Exposed”<https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-metaphysics-and-the-moving-image.html> (Edinburgh University Press, 2023). Some of his film writing can be described as experimental, making use of diaries, diagrams, aphorisms, and marginalia. This is consistent with his work as an experimental filmmaker in films such as World to Come (2015) and Drink Some Darkness (2020).

• • •

The event is organized by The Spiral Collective<https://spiralfilmphilosophy.ca/about/> in collaboration with:

The Communications Program, Glendon Campus, York University
School of Image Arts, Toronto Metropolitan University

Spiral is a Toronto-based collective dedicated to exploring intersections of film, media, and philosophy with a special interest in issues and themes of political resistance and aesthetic dissonance.

spiralfilmphilosophy at gmail.com<mailto:spiralfilmphilosophy at gmail.com>
spiralfilmphilosophy.ca<http://spiralfilmphilosophy.ca/>
Facebook<https://www.facebook.com/events/714333773559735/>

[Mowchun - Talk.jpeg]
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