The Eye of the Cinematograph

Lévinas and Realisms of the Body

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by Keyvan Manafi

Type

Studies

Subject

Theory

Keywords

philosophy, aesthetics

Publishing date

2024

Publisher

Edinburgh University Press

1st publishing

2023

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Paperback • 256 pages
6 x 9 ¼ inches (15.5 x 23.5 cm)

ISBN

978-1-3995-0725-7

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Book Presentation:
The Eye of the Cinematograph investigates the ethical and aesthetic implications of the automatic formation of the body’s image by the camera. Drawing on Emmanuel Levinas’ thought, Manafi asks what happens when the other makes their body available to the gaze of the camera to be automatically recorded, and this giving of the body is preserved within the image, juxtaposed with other images to allude to a story that might otherwise remain untold.
To locate the ethical at this intersection of the body and the aesthetic, this book articulates an ethical account of a diverse range of film theories to demonstrate alternative encounters with the other that realisms of the body offer. Manafi discusses works by Chantal Akerman, Bruno Dumont, Pedro Costa, Gus Van Sant, Sohrab Shahid Saless, Abbas Kiarostami, Amir Naderi, Jafar Panahi, Carlos Reygadas and Andy Warhol to make a case for the ethics and aesthetics of incompleteness and performative failure.

About the Author:
Keyvan Manafi completed his PhD in film and philosophy at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, where he currently works as an Arts academic programs advisor.

Press Reviews:
Manafi’s monograph is a commendable example of a graduate dissertation manifesting into a monograph [...] Through Manafi’s attempts to render Levinas’ ethics through the lens of cinema (a bold gesture against the grain of the philosopher’s own general dissociation from the arts), he helps to showcase new encounters with the cinematic image, in an effort to bring further understanding to the often ineffable cinematic image that keeps us returning with renewed inquiry and openness. -- M. Sellers Johnson ― Senses of Cinema

Manafi’s monograph is a commendable example of a graduate dissertation manifesting into a monograph. [...] Through Manafi’s attempts to render Levinas’ ethics through the lens of cinema (a bold gesture against the grain of the philosopher’s own general dissociation from the arts), he helps to showcase new encounters with the cinematic image, in an effort to bring further understanding to the often ineffable cinematic image that keeps us returning with renewed inquiry and openness.
-- M. Sellers Johnson ― Senses Of Cinema

The Eye of the Cinematograph demonstrates beautifully what Levinas can bring to film-philosophy – a cinematic ethics evoking the alterity of the Other. Bringing Levinas and Bazin together, Manafi explores the ethical potential of spectatorship, the realisms of the body, and the ethical epiphany possible through film. An eloquent, impressive work.
-- Robert Sinnerbrink, Macquarie University

Proposing a novel marriage between Bazinian realism and Levinasian philosophy, Keyvan Manafi’s The Eye of the Cinematograph compellingly asks us to look closely at the filmed body in all its promises and indeterminacies. This is an elegantly written book that sheds new light on the confluences between film ethics, nonprofessional acting and durational cinema.
-- Tiago de Luca, University of Warwick

See the publisher website: Edinburgh University Press