Cinema and existentialism

m ABSTRACT In any stages of Civilization History and in all eras, it is likely to form a connection between philosophy and art, which may be sometimes strong but some other times loose. However, What Art History clearly shows is that art has only been developed in the surroundings where philosophy has also been dominant. Art, on the other hand, has undermined when philosophy has lost its power. "Human", being the major question, determines the quality of that connection between philosophy and art. In other words, when "human" is considered as the major question, then the connection gets stronger and tight. When the case is to understand "human" and life with "human", as well as to comment on it, then art and philosophy will reach a common ground. From this point of view, one of the distinguishing features of 20th century is the strong connection between art and philosophy in which existentialism also plays an important role as a contemporary philosophy. What takes existentialist philosophy out of its border (with its norrow sense) is "the man seeking himself." This is the concept that cinema as an art and existentialism meet. The aim of this study is to search for its own steps of man through philosophy and cinema with keeping the integrity of life and man in mind, and to find out the dimensions of the relation between existentialism and cinema, however the major purpose is, actually to think about cinema in a philosophical way and to analyze and comment an it with that point of view. In other words, what is expected from that study with the title "Cinema and Existentialism" is to take a further step to make a connection between philosophy and art and also to introduce and illustrate the possibilities that that philosophical point of view in eveluating cinema can result in.