Mapping Film Studies

The title of Chateau’s book sounds more essentialist than it is actually meant to be. Most readers might expect systematic research into at least one of two questions: 1. what is philosophical in film? and 2. what is cinematic in philosophy? The purpose of Chateau’s book is not really to seriously engage in these questions but rather to enumerate the numerous encounters that have taken place between cinema and philosophy. In the introduction Chateau writes that he wants to ‘review the encounters between the totality of phenomena covering the notion of cinema and the philosophical point of view ’ (5). He explains that ‘as soon as one searches a little from 1970 onwards, one becomes aware that more or less serious, more or less direct, more or less voluntary scientific expeditions into the philosophy of cinema are abundant ’ (6). True, it is impossible to systematize all of these expeditions. For this reason a selection inspired by a certain theme would have been useful or even indispensable. The book is encyclopaedic in scope and does not pretend to be a philosophical study of cinema. It had first been published in 2003 by Nathan, which is a publisher specializing in education books and textbooks. Chateau mentions almost everything that has ever been said about film in connection with philosophy or about philosophy in connection with film. The information is provided through summaries of the most important film theories, film reviews, extracts from books, and quotations

Biology · Computational biology · Cinema and Media Studies