Film’s lessons in vision : towards the virtue of an impure artform

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Frimberger, Katja (2025) Film’s lessons in vision : towards the virtue of an impure artform. New Blackfriars. ISSN 1741-2005 (In Press)

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Abstract

In this article, I explore the unexpected virtue of filmmaking in the impure 7th art of the moving image. In the first part, I look at the virtue of art more generally, drawing on Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain’s Aquinas-inspired conception of poetic virtue. My aim for the rest of the paper is then to see how the artform of the moving image, and its processes of production and reception, map onto this. I show how poetic intuition is conceived by filmmakers like David Lynch and translated into the realities of filmmaking in small indie movies like the Sci-Fi mystery thriller The Silent Messenger, in which I was involved in as producer and performer. Enlisting the help of film philosopher Alain Badiou and film phenomenologist Vivian Sobchack, I claim that for the virtue of film to come into full presence, both filmmaker and viewer need to take responsibility for their moral capacity for gaze. It is only when the viewer loses themselves (their self) in the shared sight of the filmmaker; and the artist respects the audience’s own intellectual creativity, that film can teach us that seeing is always a relational enterprise; one that brings our human relationships – in all its tragedy and beauty – into shared vision.

ORCID iDs

Frimberger, Katja ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2542-4040;
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)