In the world of online film publications, Film-Philosophy would qualify as a firmly entrenched veteran. Begun as an e-mail list in 1996, this first-generation site has cultivated a small but focused international readership. Over the past decade, the U.K.-based enterprise has played a role in the renewed wave of interest in thinkers who yoked together philosophy and film such as Gilles Deleuze and Stanley Cavell—not to mention Henri Bergson and Hugo Munsterberg. The academic Daniel Frampton founded Film-Philosophy, and his long-gestating reflections culminated in his ambitious 2006 book, Filmosophy (a work whose cumbersome title has perhaps unsurprisingly failed to catch on). That said, the dual-discipline rubric has spurred its fair share of intellectually engaged writing.
David Sorfa, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at Liverpool John Moores University, has been Film-Philosophy’s managing editor since 2006. “We have special issues coming up on disgust and on animation,” he says. “One theme that runs through many of the recently published articles is the question of what it might mean for films to ‘do’ philosophy themselves (rather than merely act as examples of prior philosophical theses).” That’s a major challenge, and it’s been most recently met by, for example, an issue (edited by Douglas Morrey) devoted to Claire Denis and her sometime collaborator Jean-Luc Nancy; articles on the Dardenne Brothers’ cinema in relation to the thought of Emmanuel Levinas; and a compelling reconsideration by Gal Kirn of the collectively made 1932 German film Kuhle Wampe.
