In his philosophy of ethics and time, Emmanuel Levinas highlighted the tension that exists between the "ontological adventure" of immediate experience and the "ethical adventure" of redemptive relationships-associations in which absolute responsibility engenders a transcendence of being and self.

In an original commingling of philosophy and cinema study, Sam B. Girgus applies Levinas's ethics to a variety of international films. His efforts point to a transnational pattern he terms the "cinema of redemption" that portrays the struggle to connect to others in redeeming ways. Girgus not...

This study examines a selection of films made in the last quarter of the twentieth century in an effort to trace how the notion of "American" has changed drastically from that portrayed in American cinema up to the 1950s. In works such as Mississippi Masala, Lone Star, Malcolm X, Raging Bull, When We Were Kings and Bugsy Sam Girgus finds a new and ethnically varied array of characters that embody American values, ideals and conflicts. He charts these changes through analysis of cinematic tensions between fiction, documentary and modernism.