Ido Lewit

Ido Lewit

Ido is a PhD student at the German Department and the program in Film and Media Studies at Yale. He has completed his BAs (Film Studies and Philosophy) and MA (Film Studies, summa cum laude) at Tel Aviv University where he wrote a master’s thesis on the relation between the films of the Coen Brothers and the writings of Franz Kafka. Before coming to Yale, Ido taught Film Narratology, Introduction to Film Theory and a class on Israeli Cinema at Tel Aviv University and at the Open University of Israel.

Ido is the co-editor of Mediamorphosis: Kafka and the Moving Image (Wallflower Press/ Columbia UP, 2016) and the author of a number of journal articles and book chapters. His fields of research include German cinema, German media theory, film-philosophy, Franz Kafka, and the discursive impact of technology on film, the latter being the subject of his dissertation project.

Ido has also studied music at the Jazz Department of the Conservatorium van Amsterdam and is an occasional bass guitar player.

Recent Publications:

  • Forthcoming: “The Coroner and the Real: Death, Media, and ‘Deep Truth’ in the Films of Werner Herzog,” Journal of Cinema and Media Studies (formerly Cinema Journal).
  • 2019: “‘He Couldn’t Tell the Difference between The Merry Widow and Tristan and Isolde’: Kafka’s Anti-Wagnerian Philosophy of Music,” The Polish Journal of Aesthetics 53.2 (2019): 109-123.
  • 2019: “Life in the Black Lodge: The Twin Challenge of Watching Twin Peaks,” in The Politics of Twin Peaks, eds. Amanda DiPaolo and Jamie Gillies. London: Lexington Books, 177-192 (with Shai Biderman and Ronen Gil). [book chapter]
  • 2019: “When the Still Image Projected on the Screen Bursts into Movement”: Cinematic Space-Time in Kafka’s “A Country Doctor,” Kafka after Kafka: Conference Proceedings, ed. Iris Bruce and Mark Gelber. Camden House. [book chapter]
  • 2018: “Traces in the Snow: Fargo, between the Wasteland and the Home,” Fireflies: Journal of Film and Television, Vol. 01: Cities, Spaces, Journeys, eds. Anat Zanger and Nir Ferber. (2018): 150-163. [journal article]
  • 2017: (with Shai Biderman) “TV’s Fargo and the Philosophy of the Coen Brothers,” Film and Philosophy 21 (2017): 17-30. [journal article]
  • 2017: “The Curious Humanist: Siegfried Kracauer in America by Johannes von Moltke,” Film Quarterly 70.4 (2017): 131-133. [book review]
  • 2016: Mediamorphosis: Kafka and the Moving Image (Co-editor, Introduction, and chapter). Columbia University Press, 2016. [edited volume]
  • 2015: “Orson Welles’s The Trial and The Problem of Interpretation after the Holocaust,” Journal of the Kafka Society of America 37-38 (2013-2014): 115-126. [journal article]

Selected Participation in Conferences:

  • November 2019: “Video Technology as a Discourse Network: Caché Once Again.” Designing Culture and Character: Technology in Film, Television, and New Media (The 2019 Film & History Conference); Madison, WI.
  • November 2018: “Failure in Motion: Subverting the Legacy of the Bildungsroman in Wenders’ Wrong Move.” Space, Place & Adaptation: Literature/ Film Association Annual Conference; New Orleans, LA.
  • June 2018: “The Coroner and the Real: The Articulation of Truth in The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser and Grizzly Man.” Post-Truth and the Moving Image: The Twelfth Tel Aviv International Colloquium on Cinema and Television Studies; Tel-Aviv University, Israel.
  • December 2017: “The Tableau Vivant as Intermedial Clash: Narrative Temporality and Power-Relations in Fassbinder’s Fontane Effi Briest.” The Tableau Vivant – Across Media, History, and Culture: Columbia University, NY.
  • 2016: “Constructing Narrative Unintelligibility: The Case of Inside Llewyn Davis.” Film-Philosophy: Prospects, Directions and New Perspectives; Tel-Aviv University, Israel.
  • 2015: “Cinematic Constructions of Kafka’s Media: The Case of Inside Llewyn Davis.” Literature/ Film Association Annual Conference; York, PA.
  • 2015: “Hetereoglossia and the Cinematic Adaptation of Kafka.” Kafka after Kafka: International Conference at Ben-Gurion University, Beer Sheva.
  • 2014: “Before the Goy’s Teeth: Parallels between Parables – Kafka’s The Trial and the Coen Brothers’ A Serious Man.” German Studies Association; Kansas City, MO.
  • 2013: Welles’s Dekaf: De-Kafkaing as a Post-Holocaust Reaction in Orson Welles’s The Trial.” Modern Language Association; Boston, MA.