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Time, Memory, Consciousness and the Cinema Experience: Revisiting Ideas on Matter and Spirit

This research stems from the author’s background as an anthropological film maker and film and cinema theorist in three distinct ways: (i) it introduces the philosophy of mind into film studies through a historical understanding of the interconnectedness of technological innovation and a scientific as well as philosophical understanding of human cognitive processes, (ii) it re-reads core primary resources from the period of the emerging cinema and resituates the visual work by Etienne-Jules Marey in the context of Henri Bergson in a novel way by recognising the intrinsic synergies in their thinking on underlying dynamisms of motion beyond form as driving impulse for innovation and (iii) it brings these two thinkers in close dialogue with Aby Warburg’s conception of the Mnemosyne Atlas. The imperative of the underlying research is to liberate the discourse of the cinematic apparatus from the limitations of technologically determining frameworks and to make a case for agency during the act of perception in the engagement with audio-visual media.