What does cinema think that nothing but it can think?

The article deals with questions of contemporary film theory by explaining and reflecting on the theses as proposed by the American film and literary critic Nico Baumbach in his work Cinema/Politics/Philosophy (Columbia University Press, 2018). Baumbach is able to analyse the questions of what status film has in relation to politics, philosophy and art in a contemporarily relevant way, approaching film studies through reading authors such as Rancière, Badiou and Agamben in dialogue with Althusser, Deleuze and Benjamin. The article focuses on the positioning and meaning of Baumbach’s thought in the contemporary field of film theory. We position the author’s thought as necessarily dependent on historical context and emphasise its potential for further contemplation, especially as regards the fruitful connection of the dominant branches of film theory that understand film in other ways than merely as the ‘seventh art’.