Addresses the issue of how film represents reality by focusing on metaphysical realist thought.
World, Time, Film addresses the issue of how film represents reality through a focus on ‘philosophical realist’ theory, adopting an ‘externalist’ position in relation to cognition, arguing that what is environmentally external shapes what is internally cognitive.
The book begins by exploring relation between subject and world in relation to the concept of Umwelt, and then by covering revisions of that concept. French naturalist and realist traditions of art and film are explored in relation to this. The book then applies ideas drawn from extended mind theory to an understanding of the relation between minded subject and world, and to issues of time and temporal experience.
Each theory chapter is followed by a linked chapter applying the theory to film, making this one of the first books to apply concepts and theories drawn from philosophical realism and externalism to film in a systematic manner.
Introduction
1. Umwelt and Uexküll
2. Umwelt and Harré
3. Umwelt, La Bête humaine, and La Règle du jeu
4. Beyond Umwelt: Metaphysical Realism
5. Metaphysical Realism, Film History: Theory and Practice, and Documentary
Film
6. Externalism, and the Extended Mind
7. Philosophical Realism, and Encounters at the End of the World
8. Temporality: the Arrow of time, the Flux, and the Specious Present
9. The Specious Present, the Flow of Time, Music, and Chronicle of Anna
Magdelena Bach
Conclusions
Bibliography
Index
Ian Aitken was a chair professor, and is now an Emeritus Professor, affiliated to Hong Kong Baptist University. His areas of expertise lie in British documentary film studies, the British official film in South-East Asia, and theories of cinematic realism. His most recent book publications include Cinematic Realism (2020), The Major Realist Film Theorists (ed.), The British Official Film in South-East Asia (2016), and The Colonial Documentary Film in South and South-East Asia (2016).
