Confucius and Film-Philosophy: Regarding the Ludic Politics of Chinese Screen-Plays

Interweaving methods drawn from Film Studies, Comparative Philosophy, Games Theory and Media Archaeology in response to broader calls to deepen and thicken the scope and purview of film-philosophical enquiry, this talk explores the strategic deployment and cinematic qualities of three Chinese films featuring arguably the best-known and most influential thinker in world history: Confucius. Using three very different renderings of China’s master philospher/signifier drawn from three very different epochs—Fei Mu’s 1940 patriotic art film Kǒng Fūzǐ, Hu Mei's 2010 “Huallywood” blockbuster Kǒngzǐ, and the AI-infused 2023 “Xi Jinping Thought on Culture” theory-film When Marx Met Confucius—David Flemming explores the political and ehtico-aesthetic differences and repetitions surrounding the production and projection of these philosphical “screen-plays” while exposing how the encounter between Chinese thought and “Western” film-philosophy appears mutually enriching and expanding from both sides.

David H. Fleming is Senior Lecturer in Film and Media at the University of Stirling, Scotland. His research, which increasingly straddles theory and practice, gravitates around the intersectionalitites of screens, technology and thought. He is a Principal Editor of Edinburgh University Press’s new book series “Screens, Thinking, Worlds” and a board member of the Film-Philosophy journal. He is also the author of five monographs including Infinite Ontologies of the Chthulustream (forthcoming 2025) and The Squid Cinema From Hell (2020) with William Brown; Chinese Urban Shi-nema (2020) with Simon Harrison; and Unbecoming Cinema: Unsettling Encounters with Ethical Event Films (2017). His gonzo video-essay Hiber-nation: The Green Ray from Under the Skin (2024) will be screening via [In]Transition from their December 2024 issue onwards, and he is currently working on completing two interfacing monographs entitled Global Philosophers on Film and Cinematically Rendering Confucius. His feature-length film-philosophy poem entitled Film-Philos-Orama: A Head-Trip-Tych will also be screening this week at UBC.