Academic philosophy may have lost its audience, but the traditional subjects of philosophy—love, death, justice, knowledge, and faith—remain as compelling as ever. To reach a new generation, Paul W. Kahn argues that philosophy must take up these fundamental concerns as we find them in contemporary culture. He demonstrates how this can be achieved through a turn to popular film. Discussing such well-known movies as Forrest Gump (1994), The American President (1995), The Matrix (1999), Memento (2000), The History of Violence (2005), Gran Torino (2008), The Dark Knight (2008), The Road (2009), and Avatar (2009), Kahn explores powerful archetypes and their hold on us. His inquiry proceeds in two parts. First, he uses film to explore the nature of action and interpretation, arguing that narrative is the critical concept for understanding both. Second, he explores the narratives of politics, family, and faith as they appear in popular films. Engaging with genres as diverse as romantic comedy, slasher film, and pornography, Kahn explores the social imaginary through which we create and maintain a meaningful world. He finds in popular films a new setting for a philosophical inquiry into the timeless themes of sacrifice, innocence, rebirth, law, and love.

A hands-on process of creating authentic stories, this book provides creative artists with an exciting analytical tool to help in the process of character creation. Various personality styles depicted in films are examined, as well as why they are celebrated in hundreds of films. Behavioural traits that define a person and recognisable attributes such as speech, profession, dress, and health are analysed in depth. This guide offers a valuable list of films to study to see how others interpret the personality as well as a useful template of questions to ask when developing consistent and convincing character psychologys.

Movies mirror our desires and dreams, but they also shape them, as we struggle to understand ourselves and our world in relation to God. Finding Meaning at the Movies is a guide for groups and indivuduals who wish to explore - through movies - major themes, issues, and questions that we all have in common. Sara Ansen Vaux takes the reader on a cinematic journey, showing how to look for messages of value and meaning by examining not only the content of a film, but also the ways (cinematography, color, sound) that a movie tells a story.

Experience God in the movies! A valuable resource guide examining over thirty films and their theological impact. Excellent for film buffs and church leaders alike.

In Beyond the Public Sphere: Film and the Feminist Imaginary, the renowned philosopher and critical theorist María Pía Lara challenges the notion that the bourgeois public sphere is the most important informal institution between social and political actors and the state. Drawing on a wide range of films—including The Milk of Sorrow, Ixcanul, Wadja, The Stone of Patience, Marnie, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Talk to Her—Lara dissects cinematic images of women’s struggles and their oppression. She builds on this analysis, developing a concept of the feminist social imaginary as a broader and more complex space that provides a way of thinking through the possibilities for emancipatory social transformation in response to forms of domination perpetuated by patriarchal capitalism.

This book assists in breaking through treatment resistance and defensiveness. Dozens of reproducible handouts, experiential activities, exercises, self-discovery tools and more are included.

This volume explores the philosophical and metaphysical manifestations of contemporary cinema. Starting with the hypothesis that movies provide an experience that is both a pathway into the thinking mechanisms of modern humans and into our collective psyche, this study focuses on the elements that form the “Romanian cinematic mind” as part of the European cinema-thinking. While this book is based on specific case studies provided by recent productions in Romanian filmmaking, such as Proroca (2017) and Touch me Not (2018), it also contextualises the national cinema within the larger, European art of making movies. Offering close interpretations of the works of world-renowned directors like Cristi Puiu, Cristian Mungiu, Corneliu Porumboiu or more recently Adina Pintilie and Constantin Popescu, this book questions the “Romanianess” of their cinematic techniques, and places their philosophical roots both in a particular mode of thinking and within continental philosophy.