Nietzsche & Cinema: DREYER'S GERTRUD January 20, 2007

On Saturday, January 20th at 7 PM, the Nietzsche Circle will present the second installment of its cinema series, Nietzsche & Cinema, with a screening and discussion of Carl Dreyer’s Gertrud.

For Gilles Deleuze, the cinematic time-image is the highest expression of a Nietzschean ethics, where philosophein is, simultaneously, expression and existential choice‹the medium and idiom of a life. Here the Nietzschean moral universe defines an ontology of descent and ascent, destruction and creation, a base will to power fueled by ressentiment and the will to truth, and a creative or artistic will that affirms life and its powers of transformation while seeking out possibilities for enhancing these powers and this life. Between these two wills lies the deepest ethical problem, which is also that of Dreyer’s Gertrud, his last and greatest film: the problem of choosing a mode of existence defined by the possibility of choice. And in so doing, to affirm eternal recurrence as “the power choosing possesses of being able to start again at each instant, to restart itself, and to affirm itself of itself, by putting all the stakes back into play each time.”

The film was chosen by David Rodowick of Harvard University, who will address the relationship between Gertrud and Nietzsche’s philosophy. Rodowick is the author of Gilles Deleuze’s Time Machine and, most recently, Reading the Figural, or, Philosophy after the New Media.

Date: Saturday, January 20th

Time: 7 PM sharp

Place: NYU’s Kimmel Center, Rm 804/805

Admission: $10

Seating is limited. To insure entry, early arrival is strongly suggested. Since no 35mm print of Gertrud is available, the screening will be of a dvd.

Official Website: http://nietzschecircle.com/nietzsche_thecircle_current_events.html