Spectral Cinema

 

Spectral Cinema: Ghosts, Memory, and the Haunted Screen

Introduction

Spectral Cinema Theory examines how films express absence, loss, and the return of the repressed through ghosts, memories, and spectral imagery. Rooted in Jacques Derrida’s hauntology, it suggests that cinema is inherently haunted — every film is a trace of something gone.

Core Concepts

• The moving image is a ghost — a presence made from absence.

• Spectrality connects cinema with memory, trauma, and history.

• The screen becomes a site where the past returns to disturb the present.

Key Points

• Hauntology: Time is out of joint; cinema repeats the dead rather than representing the living.

• Historical Ghosts: Films visualize unresolved traumas (war, colonialism, loss).

• Aesthetic of Absence: Shadows, silence, and lingering frames evoke the unseen.

Examples

• The Others (2001) — transforms domestic space into a spectral world of denial and guilt.

• Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010) — explores reincarnation and collective memory.

• Caché (2005) — uses surveillance and memory to haunt postcolonial France.