Presented by the Centre for Cinema Studies and Cinema Thinks the World, the Critical Thinkers Series features research talks by notable and emerging scholars in Cinema and Media Studies. For the final talk of the Fall series, Dr. David H Fleming (University of Stirling) presents “Fractalactic Filmosophy: A Head Trip-tych”.
Shelves currently groan under the volumes of spilled ink exploring what “Film Philosophy” is, or does. In lightly dancing over this dense polemical thicket, Film-Philos-Oramadynamically remixes a cornucopia of global films about/featuring real philosophers (including Confucius, Laozi, Socrates, Plato, Karl Marx, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Frantz Fanon, Iris Murdoch, Brice Parain, Francis Jeanson, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Alain Badiou, Marshall McLuhan, Cornel West, and Slavoj Źiźek) that gets inmixed with a larger corpus of films by philosophical filmmakers (such as Fei Mu, Jean-Luc Godard, Astra Taylor, Sophie Fiennes, and Richard Linklater) to create a reeling pedagogical example of screen-philosophy in action. Amidst swirling illustrative-cum-expressive cogitations upon philosophical stalwarts such as death and love, the curated meta-triptych also collectively challenges viewers to think through the dehiscing afterlives of philosophy/philosophers and film as they appear archaeologically remixed/remediated by ever-changing media ecologies.
This event is free and there is no need to RSVP. Coffee and tea will be provided!
About Dr. David H Fleming:
David Hamilton Fleming is Senior Lecturer in Film and Media at the University of Stirling. His research around film and media philosophy increasingly straddle practice and theory, as is evidenced by the coupling of this feature-length film and his forthcoming monograph Global Philosophers on Film:Conceptualising Aesthetics. David is currently co-editor of Edinburgh University Press’s radical book series “Screens, Thinking, Worlds” and the author of five monographs: Infinite Ontologies of the Chthulustream (2025) and The Squid Cinema From Hell (2020) with William Brown; Chinese Urban Shi-nema (2020) with Simon Harrison; and the sole-authored Rendering Confucius Cinematically: Chinese Film Philosophy and the Efficacious Screen-Play (2024) and Unbecoming Cinema: Unsettling Encounters with Ethical Event Films (2017). His gonzo video-essay Hiber-nation: The Green Ray from Under the Skin (2024) is currently screening via [In]Transition.
