'Cogito in 16mm'
A new video essay from the Centre for Philosophy and Art asks what happens when philosophy is not simply discussed on film, but attempted through film itself.
Opening image from the video essay, featuring a murmuration styled to resemble footage shot on a Bolex film camera.
Cogito in 16mm is an original video essay concept from Marina Christodoulou, inspired by Alexandre Astruc’s 1948 essay The Birth of a New Avant-Garde: La Caméra-Stylo. Generously funded by The British Society of Aesthetics small grant award for the ‘Philosophy through Film’ project, Vanessa Brassey has adapted and produced the script as a completed video essay. Demonstrating the accessibility of video production tools, the essay invites philosophers to re-evaluate the limitations and possibilities of the putatively ‘cinematic’ medium.
A pre-watch visual glossary serves as the filmic analogue of traditional essay referencing
Astruc famously argued that cinema was becoming a language in its own right: a medium through which an artist might express thought with the same freedom and precision as a writer using words. Taking that proposition seriously, Cogito in 16mm asks whether contemporary philosophy can itself be executed through film.
Still from the pre-watch section of Cogito in 16mm
Rather than simply illustrating a philosophical argument, the film experiments with image, rhythm, repetition and cinematic point of view to explore the possibilities — and the limitations — of film as a medium for philosophical thought. In doing so, it invites discussion about what cinema can think, what it can show that prose cannot, and where the moving image may resist the demands of argument altogether.
Still from pre-watch section of Cogito in 16mm
The film is accompanied by a short pre-watch visual glossary, designed to introduce several recurring images and references before viewing. The cat draws on the films of Chris Marker; the birds recall Hitchcock’s use of visual motifs to direct attention; and the turtles introduce the philosophical problem of infinite regress. Together, these images form a visual vocabulary that reappears throughout Cogito in 16mm, sometimes guiding the argument and sometimes complicating it.
Still from Cogito in 16mm (§3 ‘It Could Have Been Otherwise’)
Cogito in 16mm will be distributed in Autumn 2026
Credits
Cogito in 16mm
By Marina Christodoulou
Adapted and Illustrated by Vanessa Brassey
Video editing by Jen at Envis Media
From Alexandre Astruc’s 1948 essay The Birth of a New Avant-Garde: La Caméra-Stylo
Produced by the Centre for Philosophy and Art
Generously supported by the British Society of Aesthetics.