For Alain Badiou, films think, and it is the task of the philosopher to transcribe that thinking. What is the subject to which the film gives expressive form? This is the question that lies at the heart of Badiou's account of cinema.He contends that cinema is an art form that bears witness to the Other and renders human presence visible, thus testifying to the universal value of human existence and human freedom. Through the experience of viewing, the movement of thought that constitutes the film is passed on to the viewer, who thereby encounters an aspect of the world and its exaltation and vitality as well as its difficulty and complexity. Cinema is an impure art cannibalizing its times, the other arts, and people - a major art precisely because it is the locus of the indiscernibility between art and non-art. It is this, argues Badiou, that makes cinema the social and political art par excellence, the best indicator of our civilization, in the way that Greek tragedy, the coming-of-age novel and the operetta were in their respective eras.

Acknowledgments viiiForeword ix1 "Cinema Has Given Me So Much" 12 Cinematic Culture 213 Revisionist Cinema 344 Art and its Criticism 405 The Suicide of Grace: Le Diable probablement 486 A Man Who Never Gives In 507 Is the Orient an Object for the Western Conscience? 548 Reference Points for Cinema's Second Modernity 589 The Demy Affair 6410 Switzerland: Cinema as Interpretation 6711 Interrupted Notes on the French Comedy Film 7212 Y a tellement de pays pour aller 7713 Restoring Meaning to Death and Chance 8214 A Private Industry, Cinema is also a Private Spectacle 8615 The False Movements of Cinema 8816 Can a Film Be Spoken About? 9417 Notes on The Last Laugh 10018 "Thinking the Emergence of the Event" 10519 The Divine Comedy and The Convent 12920 Surplus Seeing: Histoire(s) du cinéma 13221 Considerations on the Current State of Cinema 13822 The Cinematic Capture of the Sexes 15123 An Unqualified Affirmation of Cinema's Enduring Power 16224 Passion, Jean-Luc Godard 16625 "Say Yes to Love, or Else be Lonely": Magnolia 17626 Dialectics of the Fable: The Matrix 19327 Cinema as Philosophical Experimentation 20228 On Cinema as a Democratic Emblem 23329 The End of a Beginning: Tout va bien 24230 The Dimensions of Art: Forgiveness 25231 The Perfection of the World, Improbable yet Possible 258Notes 261