Philosophical Film Salon #14: Orson Welles

Philosophical Film Salon #14 presents Orson Welles' 1973 documentary film, which moves in the borderland between fact and fiction, original and copy, reality and artwork.

The film presents itself as a documentary about art forger Elmyr de Hory and writer Clifford Irving, who wrote Hory's biography - but is simultaneously an essayistic investigation into what truth actually is. Welles appears himself and initially promises that everything in the film will be 'factual', which plants suspicion in the viewer: is the documentary 'real' or not? The film was the last in Welles' career and functions as his final reflection on the film medium and art's role.

After the screening, philosopher Luka Rudež gives a brief presentation based on Gilles Deleuze's concept of 'the powers of the false' in his reading of Friedrich Nietzsche. The presentation forms the basis for a shared conversation about art's relationship to truth and falsehood, and about humans as the beings who seek truth while simultaneously producing and surrounded by countless falsehoods.

Luka Rudež (M.A. in the history of ideas) works with humanity's relationship to the sub- and superhuman - particularly the vegetative and the celestial - and their effects in the political sphere, with a focus on thinking together medieval and 20th-century philosophy. The event takes place in the Small Hall.