In this course-seminar, we will explore the spectral dimension inherent to cinema. From its earliest days, cinema has been considered by critics and writers (such as Maxim Gorky) as an art that brings the dead back to life and presents ghosts on screen. This conception, deeply linked to the cinematic medium, akin to other technologies born in the 19th century (sound and image recording, telephone, etc.), has been further developed through the reflections of André Bazin on the ontology of cinema, Roland Barthes on the noème of photography, or Jacques Derrida on hantology, the science of specters (cf. Ghost Dance by Ken McMullen, 1983).
Building on these theoretical foundations, we will focus on films featuring ghosts and questioning our relationship with the dead. Traversing the history of cinema, from Georges Méliès to the present day, we will examine how the dead are represented, whether in German expressionism (Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, Fritz Lang); classic Hollywood cinema (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Jacques Tourneur) or Japanese cinema (Kenji Mizoguchi, Akira Kurosawa); in modern cinema (Alain Resnais, François Truffaut) or contemporary filmmaking (Pedro Costa, Apichatpong Weerasethakul).
Each film screened after class will be presented by one or two students during the next course session.