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Foucault at the Movies
Michel Foucault’s work on film, although not extensive, compellingly illustrates the power of bringing his unique vision to bear on the subject and offers valuable insights into other aspects of his thought. Foucault at the Movies brings together all of Foucault’s commentary on film, some of it available for the first time in English, along with important contemporary analysis and further extensions of this work.
Patrice Maniglier and Dork Zabunyan situate Foucault’s writings on film in the context of the rest of his work as well as within a broad historical and philosophical framework. They detail how Foucault’s work directly or indirectly inspired both film critics and directors in surprising ways and discuss his ideas in relation to significant movements within film theory and practice. The book includes film reviews and discussions by Foucault as well as his interviews with the prestigious film magazine Cahiers du cinéma and other journals. Also included are his dialogues with the noted French feminist writer Hélène Cixous and film directors Werner Schroeter and René Féret. Throughout, Foucault and those he is in conversation with reflect on the relationship of film to history, the body, power and politics, knowledge, sexuality, aesthetics, and institutions of internment. Foucault at the Movies makes all of Foucault’s writings on film available to an English-speaking audience in one volume and offers detailed, up-to-date commentary, inviting us to go to the movies with Foucault.
Patrice Maniglier and Dork Zabunyan situate Foucault’s writings on film in the context of the rest of his work as well as within a broad historical and philosophical framework. They detail how Foucault’s work directly or indirectly inspired both film critics and directors in surprising ways and discuss his ideas in relation to significant movements within film theory and practice. The book includes film reviews and discussions by Foucault as well as his interviews with the prestigious film magazine Cahiers du cinéma and other journals. Also included are his dialogues with the noted French feminist writer Hélène Cixous and film directors Werner Schroeter and René Féret. Throughout, Foucault and those he is in conversation with reflect on the relationship of film to history, the body, power and politics, knowledge, sexuality, aesthetics, and institutions of internment. Foucault at the Movies makes all of Foucault’s writings on film available to an English-speaking audience in one volume and offers detailed, up-to-date commentary, inviting us to go to the movies with Foucault.
264 pages, Paperback
First published January 20, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
November 12, 2025
Si parla di cinema parlando di altro
January 16, 2019
I should state from the get go that I am a big fan of Foucault, and I come from a film and media studies point-of-view. No one has more influenced my historical approach to my own research (besides Gramsci and Raymond Williams). I was particularly excited to read a book concerning Foucault's analysis of cinema. Well, it is not as great as you might think.
First of all, roughly 99 pages of the 190 page book are introductions by Patrice Maniglier and Dork Zanbunyan. Zabunyan's introduction is fairly illuminating by highlighting how some of Foucault's core concepts like the non-discursive, geneaological history, and the series manifest themselves in his analysis of films. Maniglier's much longer and bloated section belabors many basic points of Foucault's, trudging on with the obvious while largely not revealing anything new concerning his analysis of film.
Foucault was no Deleuze, who had a passion about film and a philosophic-poetic way of writing about film form and content. Perhaps most interesting is the way in which Foucault interrogates film's relationship to academic history, punctuated by his two interviews concerning the translation of his book *I Pierre RIviere* into film. But much of what he says seems dubious like suggesting film cannot offer the precision as writing so somewhat like Sade cannot be adequately represented on film due to its amorphous nature. Really? If anything, Foucault's writing on film helps us better understand his philosophical theories, but doesn't really help us understand anything about film itself. I would say go to Deleuze's two cinema books if you want top notch philosophical writing about film. If you are a Foucault fan, this book is definitely worth readying. But if you are looking for insights into the medium of film, I would suggest passing this book up.
First of all, roughly 99 pages of the 190 page book are introductions by Patrice Maniglier and Dork Zanbunyan. Zabunyan's introduction is fairly illuminating by highlighting how some of Foucault's core concepts like the non-discursive, geneaological history, and the series manifest themselves in his analysis of films. Maniglier's much longer and bloated section belabors many basic points of Foucault's, trudging on with the obvious while largely not revealing anything new concerning his analysis of film.
Foucault was no Deleuze, who had a passion about film and a philosophic-poetic way of writing about film form and content. Perhaps most interesting is the way in which Foucault interrogates film's relationship to academic history, punctuated by his two interviews concerning the translation of his book *I Pierre RIviere* into film. But much of what he says seems dubious like suggesting film cannot offer the precision as writing so somewhat like Sade cannot be adequately represented on film due to its amorphous nature. Really? If anything, Foucault's writing on film helps us better understand his philosophical theories, but doesn't really help us understand anything about film itself. I would say go to Deleuze's two cinema books if you want top notch philosophical writing about film. If you are a Foucault fan, this book is definitely worth readying. But if you are looking for insights into the medium of film, I would suggest passing this book up.
January 5, 2019
Foucault at the Movies is a translation of what was a slimmer volume in its original form. The additional length is what makes this volume even more valuable. While the original included excerpts from Foucault that the essayists referenced O'Farrell translated the entire interviews which brings these into English for the first time. That alone would make this book worth its price. The essays, which were the meat of the original, are also wonderful additions to film and Foucault studies but without the full translations of the original texts would have left most English speakers wondering about context.
If you're hesitant to pick this up because you have seen enough about using Foucault to "read" movies, such as the ever-popular panopticism/surveillance and Rear Window type of discussion, put your concerns aside. The essays are less about using Foucault in that manner and far more about applying how Foucault did his work to how film might be made to communicate better and more readily. So rather than applying his ideas in interpreting specific films it is more about applying his methodologies to the practice of filmmaking with examples of films that seem to do so fairly successfully.
In addition to the more obvious audience of theorists and film critics this would be a wonderful book for anyone looking to become a filmmaker. I admit that I have both used and taught Foucault, especially within various area studies, so this volume speaks to me very much. The translations are, for me, a large part of the pleasure of this book. My French is rudimentary and I labor over any work which is not available in English, so adding to English translations is most valuable.
Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.
If you're hesitant to pick this up because you have seen enough about using Foucault to "read" movies, such as the ever-popular panopticism/surveillance and Rear Window type of discussion, put your concerns aside. The essays are less about using Foucault in that manner and far more about applying how Foucault did his work to how film might be made to communicate better and more readily. So rather than applying his ideas in interpreting specific films it is more about applying his methodologies to the practice of filmmaking with examples of films that seem to do so fairly successfully.
In addition to the more obvious audience of theorists and film critics this would be a wonderful book for anyone looking to become a filmmaker. I admit that I have both used and taught Foucault, especially within various area studies, so this volume speaks to me very much. The translations are, for me, a large part of the pleasure of this book. My French is rudimentary and I labor over any work which is not available in English, so adding to English translations is most valuable.
Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.
July 9, 2019
Intriguing. Difficult. Less Foucault than his erstwhile introducers.
May 9, 2018
Academic and well-focused, Foucault at the Movies explores the intersection of this theorist and the medium of film in a detailed and thoughtful way.
The authors connect Foucault to the French New Wave movement of cinema and bring his key ideas to bear in a way that is fascinating and well-grounded.
Recommended for scholars and students who wish to learn more about Foucault, as well as those who study film.
The authors connect Foucault to the French New Wave movement of cinema and bring his key ideas to bear in a way that is fascinating and well-grounded.
Recommended for scholars and students who wish to learn more about Foucault, as well as those who study film.
July 16, 2018
Foucault at the Movies offers an two essays, by Dork Zabunyan and Patrice Maniglier, that serve as exegeses of the ways in which Foucault's work can be applied to theorizing on cinema, followed by Foucault's own interviews with Cahiers du cinema and discussions with Hélène Cixous, Werner Schroeter, and René Féret.. Zabunyan writes directly about using Foucault as a tool for approaching the moving image, and in particular how Foucault's grappling with history and popular history informs film studies and related areas. Maniglier takes on "Foucault's Metaphysics of the Event Illuminated by Cinema," a mercurial piece of writing that engages with the contradictions between approaches to history. While Zabunyan's essay could be used as an introduction to Foucaultian thought and film, Maniglier's is not for beginners. But I am not sure it is needed for advanced scholars either, as the topics included are ones long discussed in the film studies community and related areas in inquiry. The most valuable part of the book is its reproductions of Foucault's interviews with various directors and other thinkers on memory, popular history, and visual media. While the essays by the authors are valuable, they do not particularly offer new insights, instead spending a lot of space on defending Foucault from having not done more work with film. This is unnecessary: Foucault's writing is such that it can be easily applied to various media and a wide range of genres within media. An annotated volume of the interviews might well have been a better project.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews