The 2019 Philosophy of Film Without Theory Conference took place at the University of York on the 10th-11th January, 2019.
The Conference Co-directors Craig Fox and Britt Harrison welcomed 30 speakers (8 plenary and 22 parallel-session) speakers and a further 37 non-speaking delegates from 14 countries. Participants came from as far afield as Guyana and Australia, Sweden and Spain, Croatia and the United States.
The Conference was funded by the White Rose College of Arts & Humanities (WRoCAH), the British Society of Aesthetics (BSA), the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the University of York’s Philosophy Department.
The following presentations were given:
Conference Co-Directors & Plenary Speakers
Paying Attention to Love in Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage – Craig Fox
Dramatic argument in The Godfather: the value of contradiction – Britt Harrison
We do not have to have a theoretical interest in morality’: Murdoch’s Metaphysics as a Guide to Movies – Lucy Bolton
That’s What Art Does”: Disclosing Religious and Ethical Possibilities through Film – Mikel Burley
Going to the pictures with Roger Scruton: imaginative identification in literature and in film – Sophie Grace Chappell
Imaginative engagement, psychological resistance and emotional cost in Antonioni’s L’avventura – Victor Dura-Vila
The character as a spectator in the picture – Rob van Gerwen
Ordinary Language Film Studies – Andrew Klevan
Film and Skepticism: Cavell on our Relation to Others on Film – David Macarthur
“The flesh is weak.” Empathy and becoming human in Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin – Colin Heber-Percy
Parallel Session Presenters:
On Forms that Think: Toward a Wittgensteinian Philosophy of Film – Carla Carmona
Cinema: The Dark Art – Keith Dando
With Friends like These – Katheryn Doran
A preliminary genealogical analysis of 20th and 21st-century film theory – Michael D’Este
Illuminating Comparisons – Eran Guter
Abandoning Theory and Embracing Race: Film as Philosophy in 2018 representations of Black America on Screen – Andrew Kendall
A Portrait of Mickey Mouse? What We See (and What We Say We See) in Animation – James Mathar
Wittgenstein (a true film-enthusiast) meets Herzog (a false anti-philosopher) – Mihai Ometita
Lonely Interactivity: Philosophical Identity of the digital spectator – Tobias G. Palma
On Not Taking Thomas Kuhn to the movies: Linearity, Time and 100 Railway Films – Christopher Sheldon
What makes film ‘philosophical’? – Claire Skea
Philosophical Approach to Film History as a Challenge to Analytic Aesthetics – Mario Sluga
Forgiveness, moral theory, and the Dardenne brothers’ Le Fils – Hugo Strandberg
Theory vs. Theorizing: Wittgenstein’s Philosophy as a Tool for Conceptualizing Film – Goran Stanic
Can We understand Authorship in Film Without Theory? – Elisabeth Swartling
Can Philosophy Be Done Through Cinematic Means in and of Themselves? – James Turner
Film hermeneutics and Wittgenstein‘s simple objects of comparison – Martin Urschel
Film and Philosophy: Can the Marriage Work? – Iris Vidmar
Pornography and the Aesthetics of Embodiment – Leigh Viner
Film, Wittgenstein, and embodied cognition – Thomas Wachtendorf
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Philosophy of Film, Without Theory 