Agency and Imagination in the Films of David Lynch: Philosophical Perspectives offers a sustained philosophical interpretation of the filmmaker’s work in light of classic and contemporary discussions of human agency and the complex relations between our capacity to act and our ability to imagine. With the help of the pathological characters that so often leave their unforgettable mark on Lynch’s films, this book reveals several important ways in which human beings fail to achieve fuller embodiments of agency or seek substitute satisfactions in spaces of fantasy. In keeping with Lynch’s penchant for unconventional narrative techniques, James D. Reid and Candace R. Craig explore the possibility, scope, and limits of the very idea of agency itself and what it might be like to renounce concepts of agency altogether in the interpretation and depiction of human life. In a series of interlocking readings of eight feature-length films and Twin Peaks: The Return that combine suggestive philosophical analysis with close attention to cinematic detail, Reid and Craig make a convincing case for the importance of David Lynch’s work in the philosophical examination of agency, the vagaries of the human imagination, and the relevance of film for the philosophy of human action. Scholars of film studies and philosophy will find this book particularly useful.

Director David Lynch is best known for films that channel the uncanny and the weird into a distinct "Lynchian" aesthetic, in which sound and music play a key role: Lynch not only writes his intended sounds into the script but also often takes on the role of creating the sounds himself. This concise study explores what makes Lynch’s sonic imprint distinct, breaking down three different sound styles that create Lynch’s sound aesthetic across his films. Showing how sound offers new insights into the aesthetic and narrative work of Lynch’s filmmaking, this book highlights new dimensions in the work of a key American auteur and deconstructs the process of building a unique sound world.

Leaving a promising career in academic philosophy to embark on a career in film, American director Terrence Malick has created cinematic works of art that are also deeply philosophical. His contribution to philosophy through a half century of filmmaking has become the focus of increasing scholarly attention. Inviting the reader along a journey of reflections at the intersection of film, art, and philosophy, Life Above the Clouds brings together an international team of contributors to present the most current and definitive statement of the filmmaker's work. Accessibly written and exploring films such as Badlands, Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line, The New World, The Tree of Life, To the Wonder, Knight of Cups, Song to Song, and A Hidden Life, the nineteen essays herein will be of interest not only to scholars and students of philosophy, theology, film studies, and aesthetics, but also to anyone with a true love of film.

Written in three weeks of creative inspiration, Rainer Maria Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus (1923) is well known for its enigmatic power and lyrical intensity. The essays in this volume forge a new path in illuminating the philosophical significance of this late masterpiece. Contributions illustrate the unique character and importance of the Sonnets, their philosophical import, as well as their significant connections to the Duino Elegies (completed in the same period). The volume features eight essays by philosophers, literary critics, and Rilke scholars, which approach a number of the central themes and motifs of the Sonnets as well as the significance of their formal and technical qualities. An introductory essay (co-authored by the editors) situates the book in the context of philosophical poetics, the reception of Rilke as a philosophical poet, and the place of the Sonnets in Rilke's oeuvre. Above all, this volume's premise is that an interdisciplinary approach to poetry and, more specifically, to Rilke's Sonnets, can facilitate crucial insights with the potential to expand the horizons of philosophy and criticism. Essays elucidate the relevance of the Sonnets to such wide-ranging topics as phenomenology and existentialism, hermeneutics and philosophy of language, philosophy of mythology, metaphysics, Modernist aesthetics, feminism, ecocriticism, animal ethics, and the philosophy of technology.

This important new contribution to studies on authorship and film explores the ways in which shared and disputed opinions on aesthetic quality, originality and authorial essence have shaped receptions of Lynch's films. It is also the first book to approach David Lynch as a figure composed through language, history and text. Tracing the development of Lynch's career from cult obscurity with Eraserhead, to star auteur through the release of Blue Velvet, and TV phenomenon Twin Peaks, Antony Todd examines how his idiosyncratic style introduced the term 'Lynchian' to the colloquial speech of new Hollywood and helped establish Lynch as the leading light among contemporary American auteurs. Todd explores contemporary manners and attitudes for artistic reputation building, and the standards by which Lynch's reputation was dismantled following the release of Wild at Heart and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, only to be reassembled once more through films such as Lost Highway, Mulholland Dr. and INLAND EMPIRE. In its account of the experiences at play in the encounter between ephemera, text and reader, this book reveals how authors function for pleasure in the modern filmgoer's everyday consumption of films.

Over the last two years, Breskin interviewed seven of contemporary filmmaking's greatest directors--David Lynch, Francis Ford Coppola, Oliver Stone, Spike Lee, David Cronenberg, Tim Burton and Robert Altman. Here they discuss the role of women in their films, the relationship of politics to art, their styles and philosophies, and more.

Teaching creative writing for the multicultural, global, and digital generation, this volume offers a fresh approach for enhancing core writing skills in the major forms of Poetry, Fiction, Nonfiction, and Drama. A Guide to Creative Writing and the Imagination aims to provide students with organic, active learning through imitation and examples which not only emphasize writing and reading but look to other art forms for inspiration. This volume’s key features include: • Strengthening key underlying capabilities of what we mean by imagination: physical and mental alertness, clarity of perception, listening skills, attention to detail, sustained concentration, lateral thinking, and enhanced memory. • Taking direction from other art forms such as African American musical improvisation, Brancusi’s sculptural idea of “finding form,” key ideas from drawing such as foreground, background, and negative space—and some of the great lessons learned from National Geographic photography. • Incorporating techniques drawn from unusual sources such as advertising, military intelligence, ESL, working with the blind, stage magic, and oral traditions of remote indigenous cultures in Oceania and Africa. The work is intended for a global English market as a core or supplementary text at the undergraduate level and as a supporting frame at the M.F.A. level.

Film and philosophy have much in common, and books have been written on film and philosophy. But can films be, or do, philosophy? Can they “think”? Film as Philosophy is the first book to explore this fascinating question historically, thematically, and methodically. Bringing together leading scholars from universities across the globe, Film as Philosophy presents major new research that leads film studies and philosophy into a productive dialogue. It provides a uniquely sweeping, historical overview of the confluence of film and philosophy for more than a century, considering films from Jean Renoir, Lars von Trier, Jørgen Leth, David Lynch, Michael Haneke, and others; the written works of filmmakers who also theorized on the medium, including Sergei Eisenstein and Jean Epstein; and others who have written on cinema, including Hugo Münsterberg, Béla Balázs, André Bazin, Henri Bergson, Gilles Deleuze, Stanley Cavell, Alain Badiou, Jacques Rancière, and many more. Representing a major step toward establishing a media philosophy that puts the status, role, and function of film into a new perspective, Film as Philosophy removes representational techniques from the center of inquiry, replacing these with the medium’s ability to “think.” Hence it accords film with “agency,” and the dialogue between it and philosophy (and even neuroscience) is negotiated anew. Contributors: Nicole Brenez, U of Paris 3–Sorbonne; Elisabeth Bronfen, U of Zurich; Noël Carroll, CUNY; Tom Conley, Harvard U; Angela Dalle Vacche, Georgia Institute of Technology; Gregory Flaxman, U of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Alex Ling, Western Sydney U; Adrian Martin, Monash U; John Ó Maoilearca, Kingston U, London; Robert Sinnerbrink, Macquarie U, Sydney; Murray Smith, U of Kent, Canterbury; Julia Vassilieva, Monash U, Melbourne; Christophe Wall-Romana, U of Minnesota; and Thomas E. Wartenberg, Mount Holyoke College.

This book represents the culmination of Thomas Elsaesser’s intense and passionate thinking about the Hollywood mind-game film from the previous two decades. In order to answer what the mind-game film is, why they exist, and how they function, Elsaesser maps the industrial-institutional challenges and constraints facing Hollywood, and the broader philosophic horizon within which American cinema thrives today. He demonstrates how the ‘Persistence of Hollywood’ continues as it has adapted to include new twists and turns, as well as revisions of past concerns, as film moves through the 21st century. Through examples such as Minority Report, Mulholland Drive, Source Code, and Back to the Future, Elsaesser explores how mind-game films challenge us and play games with our perception of reality, creating skepticism and (self-) doubt. He also highlights the mind-game film's tendency to intervene in a complex fashion in the political moment by questioning the dominant power’s intent to program both body and mind alike. Prescient and compelling, The Mind-Game Film will appeal to students, scholars, and enthusiasts of media studies, film studies, philosophy, and politics.

Cinepoiesis, or cinema of poetry, strikes us as a strange combination, a phrase we initially read as an oxymoron. Poetry is often associated with the abstract and the evocative, while cinema suggests the concrete and the visible. Yet, various visual media use strong and often contradictory images, whose symbolic force and visual impact stimulate the public’s attention. Abstract and emblematic images surround us, and the poetic nature of these images lies in the way they speak beyond their apparent limits and stimulate connections on a subjective level. A prosaic world like the contemporary one, though, no longer seems to hold a place for poetry. We are inundated by the need to tell and to be told, the need to build our lives through narratives. But it is precisely here, in this contemporary landscape, that the cinema of poetry attempts to establish a space for itself, exchanging the productive and industrial apparatus for the poetic stimulus of a sensory experience. A Grammar of Cinepoiesis is a theoretical and practical guide to the cinema of poetry, to its tools and forms. It examines how the language of a “cinema of poetry” works both in its theoretical foundations and in its modes of representation, and how it takes shape in the exemplary practice of Italian authors such as Pier Paolo Pasolini, Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini, and the more recent Franco Piavoli and Matteo Garrone.