The metaphysics of cinephilia: industry, cinema and time

Abstract

Inscribed amidst the technological advances of modernity, Henri Bergson’s philosophy of duration can help in the observation of certain phenomena that take over society. His metaphysical distinction between Time and Duration serves as a starting point. Time is different in nature from Duration, belonging to the field of space. We mistakenly take space for time due to the speed of action. Bergson naturally sees the tendency of the imagination to spatialize time. However, this form given to time helps the worker’s submission. The Taylorist model of industrialization uses the analysis of spatial time to delimit the efforts of workers in factories, removing freedom from the temporal equation and inserting machinic determinism for the human body. Being a fruit of the time, cinema, born from factories, comes with the pedagogical ais of the industrial model of spatialized time to accustom human perception to acceleration, therefore thinking about movement through actions in space and not in its feeling of flow. This is especially due to the abolition of dead times through editing, privileging spatial action. Thinking about Duration and understanding cinema as a flow could be a way to get rid of the bonds of space, on a path towards freedom. As a reference, we will take the book The metaphysics of Cinephilia: a Bergsonian reading of cinema (A metafísica da cinefilia: uma leitura bergsoniana do cinema).