Kaisu Koski
and
Pia Tikka
“[…] the rhythm, the way bodies are framed and lit, that’s when we start to lose ourselves, and cinema comes closest to what it essentially is: sensual experience of the world.”
Philippe Grandrieux, Director
As guest editors, we are excited to introduce this special issue on “Cinema and the Body” for the second volume of the International Journal of Cinema. We are proud to provide a platform for new viewpoints and developments in the cinematic arts. This issue presents a rich selection of essays, reviews and interviews, approaching the theme of cinema and the body in diverse ways. The theme is explored through a wide range of cinematic genres such as science fiction, horror, documentary, film noir, and experimental films. Furthermore, the authors provide new insights to the topic from multiple frontiers in their discipline, which include the introduction of new interpretations to phenomenological concepts related to the critical analysis of film styles or authorship, the linking to recent empirical findings from cognitive neuroscience to the explanatory framework of film viewing processes, as well as addressing a variety of specific viewpoints, for instance, to Chinese, Russian, Portuguese, and American film culture.
This issue identifies the omnipresence of the body in cinema as a fusion of the corporal and the visual. The performer’s perspective of the cinematic body is considered in various viewpoints to body movement onscreen. The scientific representations of the body are reflected in neurocinematics, a new research paradigm that studies films through brain research. Empirically grounded studies increase our understanding of, for instance, how camerawork and editing influence the spectator’s body. The cinema and the body are considered to be fundamentally intertwined with such socio-politically and ideologically determined domains as spectatorship, authorship, and film criticism. Furthermore, physiological characteristics of the human body are paralleled with those of the cinema, exploring, for instance, how the film camera’s eye embodies human sight in the act of filmmaking, and how the bodies of the author and the spectator physically determine the images created by and for the right-handed, implicitly dominating cinematic imagery. Finally, the essays in this issue elaborate on the cultural representation of gendered, racial and colonial bodies, the failure of body perfection, and the bodies of hypochondriacs and vampires.
Influenced by Shapiro’s polemic discourse in 1993, “The Cinematic Body,” the concept of the body in cinema emerged as a radically new approach to cinematic theory. The post-modern cinema has both deconstructed and reconstructed the presence of the human actor. With the continuing evolution of 3D cinema and holograms, the flatness of the cinema is replaced by a three-dimensional, digitally reconstructed simulation of the body: the transformation of human form into disembodied digital bytes problematizes our very notion of embodiment. Placing the body central to artistic and scientific inquiry offers an antidote to cinema as a purely visual medium, and is a critical component of the discussion of representation in cinema: it not only increases the awareness of how the presence of the onscreen body is constructed and perceived, but it rethinks the physicality of the spectator and the filmmaker as well.
We hope this issue inspires filmmakers and performers, as well as scholars, students and spectators. We are also hopeful that the essays in this issue will create a stimulating dialog between scholars and cinematic practitioners.
Kaisu Koski and Pia Tikka
Pia Tikka
Pia Tikka is a director-cinematographer with expertise in neurocinematics (Hasson et al. 2008), i.e., a novel paradigm of neuroscience that studies human cognition by means of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Within this framework she has a special interest in unraveling the role of the brain in filmmakers’ expertise. Tikka’s concept of “enactive cinema” (2008) together with the embodied mind approach (Varela et al. 1991), further suggests opening up the discussion to the domain of the implicit emotion-driven interaction loop between the viewer-participant’s psycho-physiological response and the cinematic narrative.
Kaisu Koski
Kaisu Koski has expertise and interest revolving around “performativity” and cinema, and the scientific-medical representation of the body through the moving image. Furthermore, she promotes cinema as a research methodology, which is arts-based and comparable, but significantly different from anthropological/ethnographic film. In such a research context, the ethical issues and questions about raw data versus its artistic dramatization, for example, become important. Other interesting issues in her practice are the artist-researcher’s own body in the image vs. research participant’s body, and how these bodies are manifested in onscreen performance.
Editorial Team | Equipa Editorial:
Editors-in-Chief | Directores
- Prof. Dr. Philip David Zitowitz – Meiji University (Japan)
- Prof. Dr. António Costa Valente – Universidade de Aveiro (Portugal)
Editorial Board / Conselho Editorial
- Prof. Dr. Abílio Hernandez – Universidade de Coimbra (Portugal)
- Profa. Dra. Adriana Hoffmann – Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)
- Prof. Dr. Alessandro Griffini – ENEA (Italy)
- Profa. Dra. Anabela Branco Oliveira – Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro (Portugal)
- Prof. Dr. António Pedro Pita – Universidade de Coimbra (Portugal)
- Prof. Dr. Bienvenido Léon – University of Navarra (Spain)
- Prof. Dr. Carlos Figueiredo – Universidade Técnica de Lisboa (Portugal)
- Prof. Dr. David Cleverly – University of London (UK)
- Prof. Dr. Farshad Fereshteh Hekmat – University of Tehran (Iran)
- Profa. Dra. India Mara Martins – Universidade Federal Fluminense (Brazil)
- Prof. Dr. Jan Goldschmeding – IAMS (The Netherlands)
- Prof. Dr. João Paulo Queiroz – Universidade de Lisboa (Portugal)
- Prof. Dr. João Victor Boechat Gomide – Universidade FUMEC (Brazil)
- Prof. Dr. José Ribeiro – Universidade Aberta (Portugal)
- Prof. Dr. José Umbelino Brasil – Universidade Federal da Bahia (Brazil)
- Prof. Dr. Kajingulu Somwe Mubenga – National Pedagogy University (Congo)
- Profa. Dra. Manuela Penafria – Universidade da Beira Interior (Portugal)
- Prof. Dr. Marc Rigaudis – United States International University (Kenya)
- Prof. Dr. Marcella Giulia Lorenzi – University of Calabria (Italy)
- Prof. Dr. Mari Marikanta – University of Lapland (Finland)
- Profa.Dra. Rosa Oliveira – Universidade de Aveiro (Portugal)
- Prof. Dr. Rosemary Mountain – Concordia University (Canada)
- Prof. Dr. S.P. S. Dahiya – Maharshi Dayanand University Rohtak (India)
- Prof. Dr. Shamsoddin Royanian - Semnan University (Iran)
- Prof. Dr. Vania Baldi – Universidade de Aveiro (Portugal)
- Prof. Dr. Vítor Reia-Baptista – Universidade do Algarve (Portugal)
Production Editors | Produção Editorial
- Cláudia Ferreira – Universidade de Aveiro (Portugal)
- Rita Capucho – Universidade de Coimbra (Portugal)
Assistant Editors | Editores Assistentes
- Adama Ouedraogo – University Toulouse II(France)
- Ana Catarina Pereira – Universidade da Beira Interior (Portugal)
- Ana Maria Cremades – University of Seville (Spain)
- Chris Broodryk – University of Pretoria (South Africa)
- Daniel Pinna - Universidade Federal Fluminense (Brazil)
- Jackie Calderwood – De Montfort University (UK)
- Manuel Costa e Silva – ESAP (Portugal)
- Tim Wallis - Nazarbayev University (Kazakhstan)
- Zunting Zhang – Utrecht University (The Netherlands)
Technical Team | Equipa Técnica:
Promotional Marketing | Marketing Promocional
- Maria S. Nina
Webmasters
- Sérgio Reis
Design
- Gabriel Rego
- António Osório
Publisher | Editora
Debatevolution – Associação
Rua Prof. Dr. Egas Moniz, nº 149
3860-078 – Avanca
Portugal
debatevolution@gmail.com
www.debatevolution.com
International Journal of Cinema
www.journal-cinema.org
journal@journal-cinema.org
ISSN
International journal of cinema (printed / impresso) ISSN 2182-2158
International journal of cinema (online / em linha) ISSN 2182-2166
A totalidade das imagens ou pertencem aos autores ou foram retiradas de espaços da web onde se encontravam disponíveis.
All the images either belong to the authors or have been taken from web sites where they were available.
Indice | Index
Entrevistas | Interviews
Wiliam Pianco | Ana Catarina Pereira
"Bárbara Virgínia - A Primeira Realizadora de Cinema, em Portugal"
Recensões de Filmes | Film Reviews
Ana da Palma
"Guerrilla Grannies. How to live in this world"
Anabela Branco de Oliveira
"In the Nick of Time"
Depoimento | Testimonial
Isabel Fernandes Pinto
"A pele dos atores se consome"
Artigos | Essays
Odair Moreira da Silva
"Corpo e metamorfose: o monstro como reflexo autoral na significação do filme A mosca, de David Cronenberg."
Kim-mui Chan
"A Film Persona of Chin-hsia Lin: The Pleasure of Reflexivity and Identification"
Fátima Chinita
"O primado da ambivalência corpórea: Eraserhead como dupla alegoria"
Johan-Magnus Elvemo
"Human micro-rhythms as a foundation for meaning production in film editing"
Angela Joosse
"The Tensile Meeting of Body, Cinema, and Rhythmic Pattern in Marie Menken’s Arabesque for Kenneth Anger"
Susana Viegas
"Devir Outro: Hipocondria e Vampirismo em João César Monteiro"
Mariana Cepeda | Ângela Marques
"O céu de Suely: expressão corporal, performatividade de gênero e mulheres possíveis"
Eduardo Messias | Patrícia Campinas
"O meio plástico do cinema digital: Corpos hibridizados por intermédio da animação"
Shaila García Catalán | Víctor Navarro Remesal
"Where is my mind? Body, mind and brain in the history of science fiction films"
Julio Bezerra
"O corpo no cinema: um itinerário inicial"