Output details

The reality of film : theories of filmic reality

The Reality of Film is structured around two main arguments. First, the book argues that existing theories of film are typically couched in terms of affirming one set of films as worthy of reality while another set of films is dismissed as unreal or illusory. The clearest example of this opposition is that between counter cinema and dominant cinema. Therefore, secondly, against this entrenched opposition, the book argues that all films are capable of producing their own realities. The kinds of realities films are capable of producing amount to what the book calls ‘filmic reality’.

The book engages with a range of theories of film in order to advance its arguments. Key chapters offer interpretations of the writings of André Bazin, Christian Metz, Stanley Cavell, Gilles Deleuze, Slavoj Žižek and Jacques Rancière. In doing so, the book offers an account of the history of film theory stretching from the 1940s to the present day.

The book has received three substantial reviews, one a comprehensive five-page review by Warren Buckland in the New Review of Film and Television Studies (9:3, 2011). A second review of the book was published in Screen (53:3, Autumn 2012), a third in Film-Philosophy (16:1, 2012).

Research for the book was first conducted with the support of an AHRC ‘Research Leave Award’ (2005-2006).