רשת מדעי הרוח והחברה

The International Society for Philosophy in Film (ISPiF) promotes philosophical engagement with film by conceiving film as a form or expression of thought. Rather than a mere source of entertainment or collection of objects for aesthetic scrutiny, film expresses ideas and arguments worth engaging. From the perspective of ISPiF, to
engage films philosophically means to think through, along with, and/or against films, to make sense of them, to learn from them, and to further expand the practice, study, and teaching of philosophy into new regions through thoughtful engagement with film.

Theme: Comedy: Darkness and Light
In the popular imagination, we might say that tragedy is to comedy as
darkness is to light. Tragic art, which explores the depths of the human
psyche while laying bare the most painful aspects of the human situation, is
typically taken more seriously as art than its comedic counterpart.
Particularly in the realm of film, comedy is often dismissed as pure and/or
mere entertainment. As a film genre, comedy is light, flippant, ludicrous, or
fun— a pleasant diversion, but not the kind of thing that provokes (much
less demands) sustained philosophical scrutiny. Here, the popular
imagination may be wrong; comedy may prove as philosophically rich as
genres more aligned with the tragic— the very genres (including drama,
documentary, film noir, science fiction, war film) that tend to receive more
scholarly attention. The aim of this year’s symposium is to take seriously
the genre of comedy by approaching comedic films philosophically and as
instances of philosophy, while remaining mindful of the nuanced nature of
comedy as a genre in which darkness and lightness may dynamically
co-exist.

לעוד פרטים: כאן