Browse Hierarchy FLM6207P: Film and Ethics

This module provides an introduction to the relationship between ethics and diverse forms of cinema, tracing the emergence of a relatively new but increasingly influential approach to the medium. How can the interactions between documentary filmmakers, their subjects and viewers be understood in ethical terms? What is specific about the way narrative cinema frames the moral dilemmas and decisions around which it so often revolves? To what extent does the filmic institution render viewers ethically complicit in scenarios of suffering and violence? What is distinctive about the contribution of cinema to debates in ethical philosophy? And how do given films relate to the poststructuralist ethical preoccupation with the possibility of unconditional openness towards the other? Students will address these and other questions through analysis of a wide-ranging corpus of films and critical, theoretical and philosophical texts produced in Europe, North America and beyond.