Political Cinema: A Philosophical Investigation

In this thesis I develop a theory of political cinema. I use philosophical tools in order to build up a framework for the classification, analysis, and assessment of political cinema. I define the category of political cinema and, to do that, I also tackle the problem of what it means to be 'political'; then I analyze the relation between the value of a film as a political film and its value qua art. I move from two hypotheses: 1) the purpose of a political film can differentiate it from other kinds of films; 2) this very purpose can affect our aesthetic appraisal of political films. Hence, my aim is twofold. I aim to map the category of political cinema, and to identify analytical tools that could be used to assess the value of political films. This means that, through philosophical enquiry, I aim to construct a framework that could be of use in art-critical practice and that can help with the classification and assessment of political films.

I argue that a political film's epistemic value is crucial for its own assessment, as it determines the value of a film as a political film (capable of affecting the audience's system of beliefs concerning a specific, political, issue) and the value of a film qua art.

To proceed in my investigation, I use tools of analytic philosophy of art and cognitivist film theory, but I also import insights from cognate disciplines that can help us develop a more accurate analysis of the relation between films and the 'political'. In particular, I import tools from political science, political philosophy, epistemology, and cognitive science. Moreover, I take it that the theoretical effort needs to be tested with specific case studies, so I also use specific films as examples of the applicability and explanatory power of the theoretical framework I propose.