Biography: arts and entertainment Books

Book SynopsisFor the first time this volume makes Jean-Pierre Meunier’s insightful thoughts on the film experience available for an English-speaking readership. Introduced and commented by specialists in film studies and philosophy, Meunier’s intricate phenomenological descriptions of the spectator’s engagement with fiction films, documentaries and home movies can reach the wide audience they have deserved ever since their publication in French in 1969.Trade Review"This is a very likeable scholarly project about Jean-Pierre Meunier, a Belgian film theoretician who wrote an important theoretical work on spectatorship over fifty years ago. It exemplifies the very best in contemporary cinema scholarship dedicated to completing its own history, and may it keep doing so."- Christophe Wall-Romana, University of Minnesota, H-France Review Vol. 21 (May 2021), No. 78 "Supplemented by insightful critical essays and an especially useful and informed introduction, this English translation of a pioneering phenomenological film theorist’s work is without doubt a major event in Anglophone film studies and the philosophy of film. Meunier’s writings are highly significant both historically and conceptually — and as the volume’s essays and interview further demonstrate, his nuanced account of moving-image experience is strikingly current and widely applicable."- Daniel Yacavone, The University of Edinburgh "The Structures of the Film Experience, originally published in 1969, provides unique insight into and even prefigures many of the concerns of contemporary phenomenological and cognitive film theory. Thus it is a welcome development to see this book translated into English. This volume contains not only Meunier’s book-in-translation, but also an introduction, a recent interview, and more than a dozen chapters by leading scholars who contextualize, explicate, and wrestle with Meunier’s ideas. This unique and well-designed volume thus makes a vital contribution to film theory."- Carl Plantinga, Calvin CollegeTable of ContentsJulian Hanich/Daniel Fairfax: Introduction Julian Hanich/Daniel Fairfax: "Every Theory Needs a Reference to Lived Experience": An Interview with Jean-Pierre Meunier Part I Jean-Pierre Meunier: The Structures of the Film Experience: Filmic Identification Introduction Part One: Introduction to the General Structures of Experience Chapter I: Perception I. The point of view of traditional psychology II. The findings of phenomenology Chapter II: Identification I. The origins of the concept II. Identification as the behavior of private intersubjectivity III. The principal aspects of identification a) The motor aspect b) The affective aspect c) The dramatic aspect d) Identification as the basis for the valorization (or devalorization) of other people IV. Fleeting and structuring identifications V. Identification, projection, introjection VI. Identification, mimicry and imitation VII. Identification and personality VIII. Identification, communication and information Part Two: The Film Experience Chapter I: Filmic Consciousness Faced with its Object I. The film as an object of perception II. Film, real and unreal III. The imaginary consciousness IV. The attitudes of filmic consciousness faced with its object a) The home movie b) The documentary film c) The fiction film V. From the home movie to the fiction film VI. Movement 1. The experience of movement 2. Movement in the cinema a) Movement in the home movie b) Movement in the documentary film c) Movement in the fiction film VII. Conclusion Chapter II: Filmic Behavior, Identification I. The types of filmic identification a) Identification in the 'home-movie attitude' b) Identification in the 'documentary attitude' c) Identification in the 'fiction attitude' II. The Differentiation of Identification According to Different Characters Chapter III: Towards Post-Filmic Behavior General Conclusion Part II Critical Essays, Historical Assessments, Phenomenological Expansions I: PLACING MEUNIER IN THE HISTORY OF FILM THEORY Dudley Andrew: Stages of an Encounter with Filmic Identification Daniel Fairfax: Between Phenomenology and Psychoanalysis: Jean-Pierre Meunier's Theory of Identification in the Cinema Robert Sinnerbrink: The Missing Link: Meunier on Imagination and Emotional Engagement II: ON THE HOME-MOVIE ATTITUDE Vivian Sobchack: 'Me, Myself, and I': On the Uncanny in Home Movies Marie-Aude Baronian: Remembering Cinema: On the film-souvenir III: ON IDENTIFICATION Christian Ferencz-Flatz: You Talkin' to Me? On Filmic Identification in Video-Selfies Victor Fan: Illuminating Reality: Cinematic Identification Revisited in the Eyes of Buddhist Philosophies Kate Ince: Whose Identification? A Brief Meditation on the Relevance of Jean-Pierre Meunier's The Structures of the Film Experience to Contemporary Feminist Film Phenomenology IV: REFERENTIALITY AND MEDIATION Guido Kirsten: Jean-Pierre Meunier's Modalities of the "Filmic Attitude": Towards a Theory of Referentiality in Cinematic Discourse Florian Sprenger: Phenomenology, Immediacy, and Mediation: On Derrida, Meunier and Landgrebe V: PHENOMENOLOGICAL EXPANSIONS Jennifer M. Barker: Cinema and Child's Play Vinzenz Hediger: Engines of the Historical Imagination: Towards a Phenomenology of Cinema as Non-Art Julian Hanich: When Viewers Drift Off: A Brief Phenomenology of Cinematic Daydreaming List of Illustrations List of Contributors

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