Ashley Woodward - Acinemas ; Lyotards Philosophy of Film

Acinemas

Acinemas

Lyotards Philosophy of Film

Edited by Graham Jones and Ashley Woodward

EDINBURGH

University Press

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editorial matter and organisation Graham Jones and Ashley Woodward, 2017

the chapters their several authors, 2017

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The right of Graham Jones and Ashley Woodward to be identified as the editors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).

Contents

Acknowledgements

T his book began as a research project centred around a two-day conference, Acinemas: Aesthetics and Film in the Philosophy of Jean-Franois Lyotard, held at the University of Dundee, 78 May 2014. We would like to thank everyone who participated in the conference, and the Scots Philosophical Association and the School of Humanities at the University of Dundee for supporting it. Particular thanks are due to Peter W. Milne, who has not only contributed to the translations, written a chapter, and provided the basis for the Bibliography, but who suggested the initial idea from which this book has developed. Thanks are due to Amlie Berger Soraruff for many helpful suggestions on the translations. Thanks also to Jon Roffe. And of course, we would like to thank everyone who contributed to this book.

Specific thanks are due to the following people and organisations for permission to include the indicated material:

Jean-Michel Durafour and Toni dAngel, editor of La Furia Umana, for Cinema Lyotard: An Introduction. Dolores Lyotard for Acinema, The Unconscious as Mise-en-scne, Two Metamorphoses of the Seductive in Cinema, The Idea of a Sovereign Film and Memorial Immemorial. Paisley N. Livingston for permission to include, as well as to modify, his translation of Acinema. The Center for 21st Century Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee for The Unconscious as Mise-en-scne. Claudine Eizykman and Guy Fihman for Lyotards Film Work. Jean-Louis Deott for Memorial Immemorial. Ken McMullen for the still from Ghost Dance. The National Film Board of Canada for the image from The Metamorphosis of Mr Samsa and Warner Bros. for the still from Inception. And finally, Cindoc Paris Films Coop for the images from LAutre scne and Mao Gillette.

Grateful acknowledgement is made for permission to reproduce material previously published elsewhere. Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked, the publisher will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity.

Abbreviations

Abbreviations used to refer to works by Jean-Franois Lyotard

Translators Note

A s far as possible we have tried to maintain a consistency of terminology in the translations of the four essays by Lyotard on film. The following are brief explanations of some of our terminological choices.

Cinaste. See Metteur en scne.

Dcoupage. Editing is a common but misleading translation. In his original translation of Acinema, Paisley Livingston translates it as the final script and the spatio-temporal synthesis of the narration. This captures something of the complexity of the term as it is used in French film theory, but for the sake of parsimony we have preferred scene organisation. For a detailed discussion of the various meanings of this word and its history and uses in French film theory, see Timothy Barnards extensive note in his translation of Andr Bazin,