Cinema and Anachronism - (Cine-Aesthetics: New Directions in Film and Philosophy) by Daniele Dottorini (Hardcover)

About the Book

This book establishes a starting point toward a theory of the anachronism of cinematic images through an exploration of existing films, theories, and discourses.

Book Synopsis

In this book, Daniele Dottorini establishes a starting point toward a theory of the anachronism of cinematic images through an exploration of existing films, theories, and discourses concerning the temporality of images that have shaped the history of cinema.
Dottorini examines the cinematic form as a specific way of working with the temporality of images, emphasizing its medium specificity in its ability to employ a confrontation with the history of both the image itself and the discourses that have reflected on it simultaneously, particularly within the contemporary sphere. The image is always in a sense spectral, phantasmal, and open, he argues - it is a field of tensions which has the unique ability to form connections to other images, epochs, gazes, and visions of the past as it is used time and again in new and different works.
By building on the work of scholars and artists that have come before him, including Warburg, Pasolini, Deleuze, Benjamin, Godard, and Herzog, among many others, Dottorini positions the image as not only - and not even primarily - a datapoint to be analyzed, but as a form that is constantly moving, changing, and forming new connections. Ultimately, this book constitutes a significant contribution to our understanding of the image as a path built through encounters and comparisons, which is but one facet of establishing a history of cinema as a story of returns and survivals.

Review Quotes

Daniele Dottorini's book puts film theory into motion in a rare way. His rigorous conceptual work takes us into a series of heterogeneous temporalities that embrace the sensitive material of filmic forms. Anachronism is no longer an object of study here; it becomes an opportunity for the reader to experience time in a way that only cinema can make possible. Thus, we embark on a journey of images unlike any other.
Dork Zabunyan, Professor of Cinema, Université Paris 8, France

Images in films can be photographically produced or digitally composed. They can register the real or be saturated with internal contradictions and paradoxes. Image sequences can track continuing actions or jump abruptly across times and places. They can capture the past visually and present the visually unreal or impossible. Daniele Dottorini develops a systematic account of the kinds of shocks, surprises, and meanings that are uniquely presentable on film. His work will be indispensable for thinking about the full range of film's powers.
Richard Eldridge, Charles and Harriett Cox McDowell Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Swarthmore College, USA

About the Author

Daniele Dottorini is Associate Professor of Cinema at the University of Calabria, Italy