In a Moment: Film and the Philosophy of Modernity
Abstract
The category of “moment” emerges from the very centre of the modern experience. The intensity with which the feeling of “now” appears, together with the intensity, with which it disappears, make the experience of the moment emblematic of the age of “shock” and “intensity of sensual stimulation”, by showing the wide difference between the sensual experience and conceptual understanding, between seeing and knowing. This is how “moment” is described by Walter Benjamin and Martin Heidegger. From there, film is only a moment away. Both earlier, 19th century, Marey and Muybridges experiments with photography, and later reflections of Jean Epstein’s on photogeny and Sergei Eisenstein’s work of “attraction” show, that cinematographic movement and the experience of cinema seance express the key contradictions of the modern experience, between the intensity of sensual experience and the elusiveness of knowing.
- The text is a translation of the article In a Moment: Film and the Philosophy of Modernity by Leo Charney from the volume Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life, ed. L. Charney, V. R. Schwartz, University of California Press, Berkeley – Los Angeles – London 1996 © 1996 by The Regents of the University of California.
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Keywords:
modernity, philosophy, moment, knowingReferences
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Authors
Leo Charneykwartalnik.filmowy@ispan.pl
University of Iowa United States
Zajmuje się historią wczesnego kina; wykładał wiedzę o filmie na New York University, Northwestern University i University of Iowa. Współpracuje z portalem www.movies.com. Jest autorem książki Empty Moments: Cinema, Modernity, and Drift (1998) oraz m.in. redaktorem (wspólnie z Vanessą R. Schwartz) pracy zbiorowej Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life (1996).
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