Metaphysics and the Moving Image: Paradise Exposed

Introduction: The Death of God, the Birth of Film, and the New Metaphysics

Chapter One Image Breakthrough: Disclosure and Derailment in Painting, Photography, and Film

I. Art in the Wake of Metaphysics

II. The Myth of the Lumière Leaf

Chapter Two The Evolution of the Concept of ＂World＂ from Philosophy to Film

I. The World in the Palm of Philosophy

II. Film in the World’s Palm, or the World in its Own Image

III. Metaphysical Figures in Days of Heaven

Chapter Three Paradise Exposed: Psychic Automatism in Film

Primer: ＂While the will is off its watch＂

I. The Mechanical Garden

II. Heinrich von Kleist’s Marionette Theater

III. Robert Bresson’s Filmic Models

Chapter Four Nature, Whose Death Shines a Light: Exteriority and Overexposure in The Thin Red Line

I. Introduction

II. Dramaturgy of Nature

III. A Cinematic Sublime

IV. Metaphysics of the Front

Chapter Five ＂Mother, I am Dumb ...＂ The Reevaluation of Friedrich Nietzsche in The Turin Horse

Trevor Mowchun is Assistant Professor and Director of Film and Media Studies at University of Florida. His scholarly essays and criticism have appeared in Film International, New Review of Film and Television Studies, Cineaction, Evental Aesthetics, and Senses of Cinema. He also co-wrote and directed World to Come, an experimental drama on the spiritual disenchantment that plagues a religious community in the wake of tragedy.