Camera and reality. Cinematic thought and its importance for contemporary philosophy

Claudio Rozzoni

Postdoctoral Project sponsered by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) - SFRH/BPD/82038/2011 

The project aims to delve deeply into the concept of film image, with the task of analyzing cinema as a perceptual experience giving the spectators the possibility to discover new ways of thinking. In particular, special attention is paid to the relationship between camera and “reality”, with the task of showing how the cinematographic creation can interact with our ‘everyday encounters’ with reality: a necessary step of the project is thus to study these two dimensions – that is to say, the alleged ‘reality’ of life and the alleged ‘unreality’ of cinema – in order to describe what they have in common: the essential element that underlies them.

Accordingly, it will be possible to find new means of characterizing the ‘peculiar reality’ – or ‘unreality’ – of film image, not only by making a contribution to the question concerning its essence, but, also, by providing an original method of describing the sense of the spectator’s experience: the conditions under which one is allowed to speak about a ‘reality’ of cinema and, thus, about the ‘reality’ of the feelings, of the values and the ideas it rouses in the viewer.