Foucault at the Movies

July 16, 2018
Maniglier, a philosophy lecturer at the University of Paris-Nanterre, and Zabunyan, a film studies studies professor at the University of Paris-8, dutifully collect 10 interviews, reviews, and short articles on cinema by French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault, as well as insightful (and lengthier) commentaries from themselves. Because of Foucault’s limited engagement with film, his written pieces and interviews vary noticeably in quality and depth, with one piece, about René Féret’s 1975 mental institution expose Histoire de Paul, coming in at only a few pages. Another selection, an interview with famed French journal Cahiers du cinéma about representations of the Occupation era and French Resistance on film, overshadows the others with its depth and complexity. Knowledge of Foucault’s larger projects, such as his concern with mental health institutions, will help. It’s actually an early observation from Maniglier and Zabunyan’s introduction, only tangentially related to Foucault, that comes across as the most insightful: they propose that philosophers should engage more fully with film, rather than rely on it as a source of examples for explaining existing philosophical concepts. This work is a bit slight, but, as Foucault would undoubtedly be the first to admit, so was his writing on film.