The Filmmaker's Philosopher

Reviews / Votes

The Filmmaker's Philosopher is a highly effective text that handles complex, ever-elusive philosophical thinking with great confidence and clarity. It will undoubtedly be useful to a great variety of researchers, from Mamardashvili scholars to film-philosophers who are yet to discover his invigorating ideas. -- Ilia Ryzhenko * Film-Philosophy * The Filmmaker's Philosopher is a deep, sustained study that reads with great interest to the end. In addition to its rigorous philosophical explorations and insightful new readings of particular films, DeBlasio crafts a vivid portrait of Mamardashvili himself, with his sartorial elegance, the smoky lecture halls of late socialism, and the exhilaration of free thought. The book is a must-read for Russian film studies, but will also greatly interest students and specialists of late Soviet culture and philosophy. -- Justin Wilmes, East Carolina University * Slavic Review Vol. 79, Issue 4 * The Filmmaker's Philosopher is a deep, sustained study that reads with great interest to the end. In addition to its rigorous philosophical explorations and insightful new readings of particular films, DeBlasio crafts a vivid portrait of Mamardashvili himself, with his sartorial elegance, the smoky lecture halls of late socialism, and the exhilaration of free thought. The book is a must-read for Russian film studies, but will also greatly interest students and specialists of late Soviet culture and philosophy. -- Justin Wilmes, East Carolina University * Slavic Review Vol. 79, Issue 4 * DeBlasio's book has the merit of introducing Merab Mamardashvili to scholars who do not read Russian and it does so from an interesting angle. [...] two hundred pages of pleasant and clear narrative [...] -- Elisa Pontini, Radboud University * Studies in East European Thought (2020) 72 * [A] fascinating and original book [...] DeBlasio is a reliable guide to both the cinema and the philosophy. -- Anthony Anemone, The New School * The Russian Review, Vol. 80, No. 2 * We have been missing this book. Merab Mamardashvili was force of freedom in the Soviet academy, not for what he said, but how. His life spanned the cold-war divide, influencing an entire generation of filmmakers and intellectuals. He showed the crowds in his lecture halls that thinking out loud can itself be a political act. DeBlasio's book moves back and forth between the man and the films he inspired, providing a fresh understanding of his times. -- Professor Susan Buck-Morss, CUNY Graduate Center