Ateneo - UPO

What makes cinema an art of ghosts?
Since its inception, cinema has been associated with the appearance of immaterial presences: bodies that return, images that outlive their subjects, and the faces of the dead that continue to gaze at the audience. This course offers a history of cinema through the lens of spectrality, demonstrating that the ghost is not merely a character but a fundamental property of the cinematic image.
From eighteenth-century phantasmagoria to spirit photography, from Méliès to Kiyoshi Kurosawa, and from André Bazin to Jacques Derrida, the course explores how cinema has continually redefined the relationship between presence and absence, memory and technology, and body and image.

Course materials prepared by the instructor will be uploaded to DIR before the course begins. The reference filmography will be listed on DIR and announced at the start of the course (Wednesday, November 4, 8:30 AM – Room 5, New Wing).

This course offers an original perspective on the history of cinema through the concept of **spectrality**, understood as an aesthetic, cultural, and theoretical category that runs through the evolution of moving images, from pre-cinematic phantasmagorias to contemporary digital technologies.
Through the analysis of films, theoretical texts, and visual dispositifs, the course aims to develop a critical understanding of cinema both as a representational medium and as a cultural practice capable of questioning the relationships between presence and absence, memory and archive, body and image, reality and simulation.
Particular attention will be devoted to the dialogue between film history and philosophical inquiry, showing how some of the central questions of modern and contemporary thought—such as trace, temporality, memory, and spectrality—find a privileged field of exploration in the cinematic medium.
By the end of the course, students will be able to:
- reconstruct the main historical developments in the representation and theorization of spectrality in cinema;
- critically analyze films using historical, aesthetic, and theoretical approaches;
- relate cinematic works and film theory to key issues in modern and contemporary philosophical thought;
- adopt an interdisciplinary approach to the study of moving images, integrating perspectives from film history, aesthetics, and philosophy.

No prior knowledge of film history or film theory is required. A basic familiarity with contemporary philosophical thought is recommended, together with an interest in the critical reading of theoretical texts and the analytical study of cinematic works.

The course will consist primarily of lectures complemented by the screening and close analysis of selected film sequences, the guided discussion of theoretical texts, and the examination of visual and audiovisual materials related to film history and pre-cinematic visual media.
The teaching approach combines historical contextualization, formal film analysis, and critical discussion, encouraging an interdisciplinary understanding of moving images through the dialogue between film history, aesthetics, and philosophical inquiry.

The list of required and recommended films will be provided at the beginning of the course. Additional reading materials and audiovisual resources will be made available throughout the semester via the University's online learning platform, where applicable.

Assessment will consist of an oral examination designed to evaluate students' knowledge of the topics covered during the course, their ability to critically analyze cinematic works in relation to the main historical, aesthetic, and theoretical concepts discussed, and their capacity to connect films with the assigned readings.
Evaluation will take into account the accuracy of content, the quality of critical argumentation, the appropriate use of disciplinary terminology, and the ability to develop an independent interpretation of films and theoretical texts.

This course offers a reappraisal of film history through the concept of spectrality, understood not simply as the representation of the supernatural, but as a constitutive feature of the cinematic image: the ability of cinema to preserve traces, evoke absences, and bring back bodies, places, and times that have disappeared.
Rather than following a purely chronological structure, the course is organized around key figures of spectrality: apparition, trace, doubling, memory, the face, the medium, the archive, and the digital. Each of these figures provides a way to explore different moments in film history, connecting pre-cinematic visual devices, early cinema, cinematic modernity, and contemporary audiovisual forms.
Beginning with phantasmagorias and optical technologies that preceded the invention of cinema, the course examines early cinema as an art of appearance and disappearance, the relationship between the cinematic image and memory in André Bazin's theory, the representation of trauma and temporality in modern cinema, and the transformation of spectrality in the digital age, characterized by persistent images, virtual archives, and new forms of simulation.
Through the analysis of films, theoretical texts, and interdisciplinary perspectives, the course explores how the figure of the ghost can become an organizing principle for a history of cinema understood as a history of images, their survivals, and their transformations.

By the end of the course, students will have acquired a basic knowledge of the main historical, aesthetic, and theoretical moments through which cinema has explored the notion of spectrality, from the origins of the cinematic apparatus to contemporary audiovisual forms.
Students will be able to:
- identify and discuss the main transformations in the relationship between image, presence, absence, and memory throughout film history;
- analyze cinematic works through historical and critical approaches, with attention to formal, technical, and aesthetic aspects;
- understand the relevance of key theoretical concepts addressed in the course (trace, temporality, archive, memory, simulation, spectrality) and their relationship to cinematic images;
- connect films, theoretical texts, and different historical and cultural contexts;
- develop an independent critical approach to the interpretation of audiovisual works.