A Philosophical Study in Film Theory

This research is to investigate the quiddity of film theory and the related debates in a descriptive analytic method. Being general and related to film, are the basic characteristics of film theory. The film theory includes rules and regularities that are descriptive or normative and is to explain their constitutive concepts. Descriptive rules or regularities act as a cause and in this sense the theory is explanatory. The explanatory aspect of the theory is to discover the concrete rules and regularities used by everybody. Accordingly, the film theory systematically formulates filmmakers and viewers' experiment of the film from conceptual aspect and explains the rules and regularities of film as a phenomenon. Although the theory's being historical faces the theorists with new subjects and issues, but does not basically change the previous theories. The theory of film will be active in three fields: producers, text and audience and their subdivisions and hence there will not be a comprehensive theory but theories in told different fields. Of course it can be achieved to coordinated and compatible theories in all above fields and we can have comprehensive theory in this sense. What causes the coordination and compatibility is philosophical foundations (mere philosophy and philosophy of art) on which theories based.