Unbecoming Cinema

Unsettling Encounters with Ethical Event Films

By (author) David H. Fleming

Publication date:

15 August 2017

Publisher

Intellect Books

Dimensions:

229x178mm
7x9"

ISBN-13: 9781783207756

Unbecoming Cinema explores the notion of cinema as a living, active agent, capable of unsettling and reconfiguring a person’s thoughts, senses, and ethics. Film, according to David H. Fleming, is a dynamic force, arming audiences with the ability to see and make a difference in the world. Drawing heavily on Deleuze’s philosophical insights, as well as those of Guattari and Badiou, the book critically examines unsettling and taboo footage, from suicide documentaries to art therapy films, from portrayals of mental health and autism to torture porn. In investigating the effect of film on the mind and body, Fleming’s shrewd analysis unites transgressive cinema with metaphysical concepts of the body and mind.

A PDF version of this book is available for free in open access via the OAPEN Library platform, Unbecoming Cinema. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License and is part of Knowledge Unlatched.

Introduction: On Ethics and Eventual Encounters
David H. Flemming

Part I: Exposing and Revealing
David H. Flemming

Death 24X A Haecceity: Or Deleuze, Life and the Ethico-Aesthetics of Documenting Suicide in (and off) The Bridge
David H. Flemming

Cinema and/as Autism: Dis-ordering Movements from the Intellect to Intuition, Ego to the Eco, and 'Pre-chunked' Perception to In-forming Haecceitic 'Shapes' (via Deligny and Guattari)
David H. Flemming

Part II: Distorting and Perverting
David H. Flemming

Head Cinema as Body without Organs: On Jodorowsky's Bitter Pill Films and Their Spinozian Parallels
David H. Flemming

That's 'Really' Sick: Pervert Horror, Torture Porn(ology), Bad-Taste and Emetic Affect in Lucifer Valentines "Unbecoming 'Cinema of Repulsions'
David H. Flemming

'Unbecoming Cinema presents a compelling, fascinating and definitely challenging account of the cinematic ethics of negativity and, with its collection of analyses and discussions of disturbing ethical film events, it constitutes an incredibly effective and precious document for those interested in the possibility of building a practical and experimental film ethics that passes through an embodied film-philosophy. However, Fleming's text also expresses a political and ethical act itself. In this terrifying age of sad passions, when hatred, anguish, and, most of all, resentment appear as the only emotions we are still able to feel, showing us how to embrace the negative, and how to reprocess and to transform it into active knowledge and affirmative power is an act of absolute and joyful resistance.'