Projections

We have a new sponsor. The Society for the Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image (SCSMI) joins our other sponsor, the Forum for Movies and Mind (FMM), in supporting the journal’ s goal of investigating the ways in which film opens up the exploration of the mind and the ways in which studies of the mind deepen our understanding of film. (See pages 141–142 to learn more about our sponsors.) We continue to be both focused and eclectic; a term we have used for ourselves before is “parallactic”—we study the subject from a variety of points of view to achieve a fuller vision and understanding. Having SCSMI aboard enriches our journal. The organization has an excellent and renowned group of scholars, and the cognitive study of film is already influencing our understanding of film and mind profoundly.

Interview with Lars von Trier

Characters are of central importance for our film experience, and they confront us with a multitude of questions concerning their production, structures, meanings, effects, etc. Subjective intuitions do not suffice to answer those questions and to analyze, describe, and discuss characters in differentiated and comprehensive ways. To do this, we need a set of conceptual tools, an infrastructure for argumentation. This article summarizes the central results of my book Die Figur im Film in those respects, starting from a heuristic core model. The “clock of character” distinguishes between four aspects of characters: (1) As artifacts, they are shaped by audiovisual information; (2) As fictional beings they have certain bodily, mental, and social features; (3) As symbols, they impart higher-level meanings; and (4) as symptoms they point to socio-cultural causes in their production and to effects in their reception.

Contemporary film theory is noted for its sturm und drang, though in the case of the soundtrack, incompatible attitudes and methods are found mostly below the surface where theoretical presuppositions are ruled by unpredictable melodic contours and accents. This article provides a comprehensive overview of philosophical issues concerning audition. It aims to orient a diverse array of sound theories in relation to a set of core issues involving perceptual processing, language, and mind. The article sounds out various cognitive frameworks, where each type of frame projects a favored description and explanation of sonic phenomena. It argues that what is heard in a sound depends on how one listens, and with what purpose.

Bryan Barber's film Idlewild features a dream of one of the main characters. Leon Balter's recent work on what he terms nested ideation, dreams or works of art within works of art, provides an opportunity to analyze this aspect of the film. This article discusses the dream in terms of disavowed and antithetical reality in the life of the protagonist concerning his mother's death when he was four.

Review Essay on: COGNITIVISM GOES TO THE MOVIES: Paisley Livingston and Carl Plantinga, eds., THE ROUTLEDGE COMPANION TO PHILOSOPHY AND FILM; Carl Plantinga, MOVING VIEWERS: AMERICAN FILM AND THE SPECTATOR’S EXPERIENCE; Torben Grodal, EMBODIED VISIONS: EVOLUTION, EMOTION, CULTURE, AND FILM

Review of Norman Holland, LITERATURE AND THE BRAIN

Review of Stephen Weissman, CHAPLIN: A LIFE

Review of Vicky Lebeau, CHILDHOOD AND CINEMA

Review of Patrick Colm Hogan, UNDERSTANDING INDIAN MOVIES: CULTURE, COGNITION, AND CINEMATIC IMAGINATION

Review of Esther Rashkin, UNSPEAKABLE SECRETS AND THE PSYCHOANALYSIS OF CULTURE

Review of András Bálint Kovács, SCREENING MODERNISM: EUROPEAN ART CINEMA, 1950–1980