Introduction

Oxford University's Stephen Mulhall argues that some films can themselves be genuinely philosophical. He asks how is it so much as possible for there to be representations on a screen of real objects that nevertheless aren't present to us? What exactly does it mean to talk about a character in a film, as opposed to acharacter in a novel or a play? And what exactly is the relationship between the image on the screen and the reality which in some sense seems to have been involved in the production of that image?