Cinema & Philosophy at Nimas: a film series
All great films are philosophical — not because cinema seeks to apply or illustrate philosophical concepts, but rather because cinema is itself a distinctive form of reflective thought.
This is the premise behind the Cinema & Philosophy at Nimas film series. Throughout the 2026/27 academic year, the series will present one screening per month, featuring major works from film history selected and discussed by researchers and lecturers from the NOVA Institute of Philosophy (IFILNOVA) and the NOVA University Lisbon Master’s programmes in Philosophy of Art and Aesthetics and Artistic Studies: Maria João Mayer Branco, João Pedro Cachopo, Nélio Conceição, João Constâncio, Bartholomew Ryan and Paolo Stellino.
Wednesday, 25 November at 18h
Screening of Ikiru, directed by Akira Kurosawa
Commentary by João Constâncio
IKIRU
by Akira Kurosawa
With Takashi Shimura, Nobuo Kaneko, Kioko Seki, Makoto Kobori
Japan, 1952 – 143′
trailer
Ikiru is not only one of Kurosawa’s greatest works, but also one of the most important films in the history of cinema. Describing it as “the most beautiful, the wisest and the most moving Japanese film”, André Bazin wrote of Ikiru that “its universality is not geographical but geological; it emerged from the depths of the subterranean moral strata where Kurosawa knew how to seek it out”. Kanji Watanabe, an obscure municipal bureaucrat, is told that he is suffering from a terminal illness and has only a few months left to live. Confronted with the emptiness of his existence, Watanabe devotes himself to transforming a derelict plot of land into a park where children can play, a project to which he commits all his remaining strength.
João Constâncio is Full Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at NOVA FCSH, Director of IFILNOVA, and Coordinator of the PhD Programme in Philosophy at NOVA. He has published extensively on Nietzsche, and also written and lectured on fundamental questions of Aesthetics, Philosophical Anthropology and the Philosophy of History in the works of Plato, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Heidegger. His most recent projects include a book on Hieronymus Bosch (Sobre o absurdo. Tentações de Santo Antão, de Hieronymus Bosch, Lisboa, Documenta, 2024), a book on Plato’s Phaedrus (Três discursos sobre Eros. Meditação sobre o Fedro de Platão, Lisboa, Tinta-da-China, 2025), and a translation and commentary of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata (Edições do Saguão, 2026). He is also editing, together with Simon May, a volume titled Who is Heidegger’s Nietzsche?, which is due to appear in 2026 in Cambridge University Press.
1st semester of 2026/27 — next screening
3 December — Winter Light, directed by Ingmar Bergman
Commentary by Paolo Stellino