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Return to Reality:  
Towards A More Tactile Cognition of Film Theory 

 

Murat AKSER  
Kadir Has University, makser@khas.edu.tr  

 

 

Abstract 
Film theory has lost itself in the woods among debates of the mind and the senses. Ther are those who are 
interested in a more tactile sense of the real in film studies. This issue of CINEJ focuses on the 
documentary truth and how it aims to present us a real and a better world. 
Key Words: cinema, philosophy, tactility, real 

 

 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative  

Works 3.0 United States License. 

 
This journal is published by the University Library System of the University of Pittsburgh as part  

of its D-Scribe Digital Publishing Program and is cosponsored by the University of Pittsburgh Press.

Volume 1.1 (2012)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)  |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2012.47 | http://cinej.pitt.edu 



CINEJ Cinema Journal: To Find Is To Choose, To Choose Is To Create 

  Volume 1.1 (2012)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2012.47   |   http://cinej.pitt.edu 
1 

How Film Theory Got Lost in Philosophy and Psychology 

 

Film theory has found a new introspective venue: that of the psyche and mind. For decades film scholars 
endevaoured to inspect the effects of moving images on the viewers (Akser, 2011, p. 2). How does the psychology 
of cinema work? How do we perceive the newly created reality on the screen I our minds? Some went on to create 
Apparatus (Metz), the others went on to study the way we observe female bodies (Mulvey) in our voyeuristic 
perverse male minds. What of this fascination with the ontology and psychology of film experience? In recent 
decades after the end of the Freudian regime in film studies, there emerged a renewed and invigoreate Lacanian 
regime.  

Yet there are those who go after the truth in tactile reality and documentary format. Asu Bergen Gencosmanoglu is 
looking at historiography of architecture in cinema. Basak Goksel Demiray does a comparative analysis of Kill 
Bill, Deathproof through the concept of sadistic voyeuristic gaze images not like reality and of people but of 
shooting like in video games. Historical truth is the subject matter of Katrin Mascha’s article. Rowina Santos 
Quantino’ piece is on cinema verite aptly title “Post-Verité Documentary Film and the Practice of Public History”. 

Silvia R Tandeciarz in her article “Secrets, Trauma, and the Memory Market” deals with the return of the 
repressed in recent Argentine post-dictatorship cultural production. Özlem Tuğçe Kaymaz looks at Erol Morris’ 
The Thin Blue Line and how editing can destroy the sense of actuality in documentary cinema. Esma Kartal sees 
the images of God in Bergman’s The Seventh Seal. Selen Gökçem looks at the gay gaze in Tom Ford’s film A 
Single Man. Finally does a critique of direct cinema in her case study of The Grey Gardens. 

References 

Akser, M. (2011) Reinvigorating film studies: an immodest proposal. Cinej, 1(1): 1-3. doi: 10.5195/cinej.2011.26 

Ray, Robert B. 2001. How a Film Theory Got Lost and Other Mysteries in Cultural Studies, Indiana University 
Press.