This is an exploration of the figuring of absence in film. This study considers the placement of the breathing body in the film experience and its implications for the study of embodiment in film and sensuous spectatorship. Davina Quinlivan shapes her engagement with film by the foregrounding of the human body in the filmic diegesis and the viewing experience. This emphasis on the human body as an breathing body coupled with its fresh engagement with continental philosophy, Post-Structuralist Film Theory and Contemporary Western Cinema, makes a unique and valuable contribution to the field. Case studies are taken from the work of major directors, including Cronenberg and von Trier. Key concepts explored are filmic space (air and the elemental in film), corporeality (bodies on screen and the film itself as a breathing body) and inter-subjectivity (community and sociality). It makes a notable contribution to the study of film sound and haptic perception.
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Acknowledgements to Follow How can we start to think about something we cannot see? The Place of Breath in the Cinema considers the locus of the breathing body in the film experience and its implications for the study of embodiment in film and sensuous spectatorship. The significance of breathing in film is explored formally and contextually: as an alternative dimension of filmic bodies mapped on-screen and on the soundtrack, and as a way of re-examining thematic notions of mortality, embodied trauma and loss. As a particular characteristic of their work, Quinlivan considers the role of breath in the films of Atom Egoyan, David Cronenberg and Lars von Trier. Quinlivan builds on the philosophical thought of Luce Irigaray to explain how the place of breath in cinema reveals, in equal measure, the power and pleasure of film viewing, offering new insight into cinema’s intimate disclosure of what it means to be human. Aimed at film scholars and students, this book changes our understanding of the human body’s involvement in film aesthetics and spectatorial experience. Davina Quinlivan is an independent critic and writer, as well as part-time lecturer in Film Studies at King’s College, London and Kingston University.
About the Author
Davina Quinlivan is an independent critic and writer, as well as part-time lecturer in Film Studies at King’s College, London and Kingston University.
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