A half-century after Jean Mitry's magisterial integration of classical film theory, Daniel Yacavone has done the same for its modern counterpart, managing not just to reconcile, but to recruit the extremes of cognitivism and of phenomenology for his prodigious satellite mapping of the terrae incognitae he rightly calls 'Film Worlds.' Without hyperbole or histrionics, Yacavone delivers a stable and progressive ... Read moresuite of concepts that address films as texts and embodied affect. He has culled these from a balanced review of an impressive roster of film theorists and the twentieth-century thinkers they have drawn on, some of whom have been waiting in the wings to contribute to a compelling vision like Yacavone's. That vision not only illuminates how films work but also how they work on us, and even work for us.
Dudley Andrew, Yale University A major reconsideration of the nature of aesthetic experience through the medium of cinema. It offers new insights into the hermeneutical and phenomenological perspectives of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Mikel Dufrenne, as well as Nelson Goodman's concept of world-making. It also presents a significant revision of our understanding of modern and contemporary film theory from Mitry and Metz to Bordwell and Deleuze. This brilliant and original work will be of interest to philosophers and film scholars alike.
D. N. Rodowick, University of Chicago Yacavone articulates an approach to cinema that incorporates elements of various tendencies in current film theory-including, chiefly, those of a broadly sociocultural bent, those focused on empirical studies and cognitive science, and those stressing the phenomenological dimension of spectatorship-and to unite them via the concept of cinematic 'worlds.' His command of the theoretical literature is impressive, and his references to analytic and continental philosophy and film theory are wide-ranging and inclusive of most of the approaches adopted over the last century.
Ronald Bogue, University of Georgia Film Worlds is a synthetic and holistic work, one that seeks to include rather than exclude as many philosophies of film as possible. Yacavone's aesthetics of cinema turns out to be a rather wide tent, and almost anybody working at the intersection of film and philosophy can find shelter beneath it somewhere. Los Angeles Review of Books [A] notable tour de force across centuries of reflections on the transformative powers of cinematic aesthetics.
Steffen Hven New Review of Film and Television Studies Show Less