The Film-Phil Lisbon Seminars: Vanessa Freerks

April’s Film-Phil Lisbon Seminar will be led by Vanessa Freerks (University of Fort Hare) who will talk about “Imagining death otherwise: Baudrillard and cinema’s vital illusion”. The session will be held on 2 April 2026, at 15:00 WEST, in room B607 at NOVA FCSH (Av. de Berna, 26 C) and online via Microsoft Teams. To receive information about joining the meeting online, it’s mandatory to register in advance here.

Abstract

In what follows, I start by outlining Baudrillard’s conception of cinema as an essential partner in the technology of hyperreality, and situate it within his broader critique of contemporary culture. Baudrillard does not simply critique cinema in the face of technologically driven hyperreality; he simultaneously offers an alternative vision. Against hyperreality, Baudrillard foregrounds the power of illusion as vital to cinema. The world is given to us as enigmatic and unintelligible — and art’s task is to help us cope with our vital illusion — the fact that we do not know the real, merely the appearances behind which it hides.

Bio

Vanessa Freerks is a research fellow at the University of Fort Hare (South Africa) at the Centre For Leadership Ethics in Africa (CLEA). She engages with a range of critical themes, from post-structuralist critiques of consumer society to phenomenological, feminist, and ecological inquiries.