Joshua Oppenheimer: The Act of Killing - a podcast by ZKM | Zentrum für Kunst und Medien Karlsruhe

The Real of Reality | International Conference on Philosophy and Film

Wed, 02.11.2016 – Sun, 06.11.2016

ZKM_Media Theater, ZKM_Lecture Hall, ZKM_Media Lounge, ZKM_Cube

After the 1965 military coup in Indonesia more than one million people were murdered. Until today the victims and their descendants didn’t dare tell their story, because the perpetrators are still in power. Not only are they in power, they boast about being the winners of history. The American documentary director Joshua Oppenheimer decided, together with his colleague Christine Cynn, to talk to the murderers. In a country which celebrates these murderers as heroes, the filmmakers dared to face the taboo and the terror. Free from any regret, the murderers tell about their deeds and are willing happily to reenact and restage them. Eventually, the film project gets the men to talk and think about their atrocities which they haven’t reflected hitherto. Through this reflection, the retroactive restating of reality becomes more real than the actual deeds ever had been for those men. The Real forges ahead through the “imitation” of the past events. The movie, which needed ten years for production, struggled with funding for a long time, but is now considered to be one of the most important filmic works of contemporary cinema. The movie was awarded more than 30 awards.

International Conference on Philosophy and Film

Photography and film in particular paved the way for complex philosophical questions regarding the nature of reality and its mechanical reproduction. What does film reproduce and how can we grasp this element, which has the transactive ability to form reality although originating in reality? This shaping takes palce through a complex interaction of image, action and narration and tends to permeate reality completely. It is an inconspicuous process that already affects our everyday life profoundly and is based on a revolution of the real. What does film show? Do we have access to reality that is not based on images or narrations? And what can film and its analysis contribute to philosophical debates on the real?

These are questions we are asking to engage in a dialogue between philosophy and film. For five days, one hundred and fifty philosophers, media scholars and filmmakers will connect philosophical theory with cinematic practice and open up new ideas and concepts. To accompany the program, there will be film screenings of documentaries of the invited filmmakers.

The participation at the conference is also possible without the presentation of a paper.

The conference will be held in English.

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