Films That Never Were – Films That Could Never Be? Towards a Theory of Ghost Cinema | Phillipe Met

Summary: Despite a plethora of world encyclopedias of film and dictionaries of national cinemas, one particular history or archaeology of cinematic art remains to be told or written – that of the non-films or off-films which have literally filled filmic annals almost since the invention of the medium and make up what I propose to call ‘ghost cinema’. Films that never came to completion or fruition, films that were inherently or constitutively unfilmable, elusive films that haunt us as film enthusiasts, abortive films that go on to covertly inspire and fertilise the latter opuses of their unsuccessful originators. I will look at specific instances and possible paradigms (French and non-French, filmic and literary) in an effort to delineate this unchartered territory and examine the mythical, fetishistic aura that these mirage-films tend to acquire over time.