Haunting the Left Bank Mortality and Intersubjectivity in Varda, Resnais and Marker

(Steven Ungar, Professor Emeritus, Department of Cinematic Arts, University of Iowa)
Engaging with contemporary film-philosophical research, this book investigates the effects of a haunting presence of death in life. It considers moments in which the films of Agnès Varda, Chris Marker and Alain Resnais and theories of intersubjectivity, gender and mortality in contemporaneous works by Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Emmanuel Levinas and Maurice Merleau-Ponty coalesce around this ethical epicentre, the equality enacted by death on every mortal. Challenging hierarchical divisions between subjects constructed around geo-political, gendered or spectatorial difference, it establishes a paradigm in which intersubjective interactions, especially through the gaze, are instead ethical and egalitarian.
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