Cinematic Experience Research Articles

The Ambivalent Vision: The "Crip" Invention of "Blind Vision" in Blind Massage

Blind Massage, a film directed by Lou Ye (2014), depicts disability and sexuality through stories of blind masseurs. It employs “blind vision”, a novel form of cinematography that depicts blindness, assisting the film in unfolding the subjective experience of the blind masseurs in both sexual and non-sexual scenes. With the invention of blind vision, Blind Massage introduced a non-normative cinematic experience that decentres vision, while cinema had previously been perceived as an intrinsically visual-centred art form. This paper, therefore, asks: How does the am­bivalent representation of vision contribute to the cinematic representation of disabled sexuality? Does it reinvent or reinforce the normative understanding of disabled sexuality? As a response, the paper argues that the invention of blind vision destabilises the ableist foundation of cinema that centres on visual experience as the source of pleasure. It mainly grounds the argumentation on criticism of Mulvey’s (1975) gaze theory, which discusses visual pleasure and narrative cinema with the psychoanalytic gaze notion. The notion of blind vision will be elab­orated on, not only in cinematography but also as a cultural implication that touches on disability studies and sexuality studies. Methodologically, this paper will, use crip theory, feminist film theories, and psychoanalysis to understand the representation of disabled sexuality in Blind Massage. The paper will be structured as follows. It will first review previous academic discussions on disabled sexuality in cinema. Then, it will elaborate on the invention of blind vision through scene and cinematography analyses and consider how Blind Massage echoes with a Mulveyian gaze theory in terms of marking the gaze as a normative power. Finally, I argue that blind vision could be regarded as an approach to reverse such power and release the potential resistance towards normativity in cinema, with a Lacanian revisit and reworking of the Mulveyian gaze theory.

The montage of “Cine Rabeca”: music, memory and ethnography in an expanded cinema experience.

“Cine Rabeca” is a documentary that expands onto the stage and blends live music with ethnographic archive. It is a cine-concert, where musicians Luiz Paixão and Renata Rosa are permanently on stage, dialoguing with their own filmic memories. During the performance, a new time is composed out of what is seen, heard and imagined. The passage of time is felt in the contrast between images of the rural world of Pernambuco, Brazil, in 1990-2000 and the image of the presence of the musicians on stage. In this cinematographic re-encounter with their trajectories, Paixão and Rosa improvise with their rabecas (fiddles) and recreate themselves. Through music, they circulate amongst rural and ancestral festivities and the narrative is permeated with the language of memory, which explores traces and reminiscences.Time and memory articulate themselves in a singular space that experiments with a form of collaboration between the languages of music, film, and anthropology. This paper explores the process of making this expanded documentary and how it has remained live during the last years, constantly transforming itself amongst the borders of the stage and the screen, between life and film. It shows a process of unfinishing that transcends the finalization of documentaries; of the very life that follows ethnographic recordings.

A Debilitating Colonial Duration: Reconfiguring Fanon

Abstract I argue that the temporality of colonialism is a disabling duration. To elaborate, I focus on a site in Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks where disability/debility and racism intertwine – Fanon’s refusal of “amputation” in his experience of cinema. While such disability metaphors have been problematized as ableist, I argue that amputation is more than a metaphor of lack. It extends what racializing debilitation means and makes tangible the prosthetics that colonialism imposes and the phantoms and affects of colonized life that it attempts to sever. Engaging with disability studies, especially Black and anticolonial theories, I articulate racism and (dis)ability as more than parallel or analogy and conceptualize a debilitating colonial duration, as instanced in our pandemic time. By reconfiguring the possibilities foreclosed through colonialism, I ask what routes there may be to make colonial duration hesitate and destabilize its inevitability, while dwelling with its wounds and ruptures.

Art Is Magic

Art Is Magic

Cinema, philosophy and paideia

ABSTRACT I here read the Iranian film Hit the Road through the eyes of the French philosopher Alain Badiou. In doing so, I hope to illuminate the triadic link between cinema, philosophy and paideia (ethical-political education). To explore, I adopt a philosophical methodology with the double ambition to reveal the latent pedagogies of the film and to acquire insights on the distinctiveness of a Badiouan conception of cinema. My questions are to what degree and in what ways cinematic experience can be said to promote ethical-political formation. I start by portraying Badiou’s cinematic philosophy. Next, I expose how Hit the Road confronts us with a hidden real. Third, I close the paper by considering Badiou’s idea of cinema as an influential form of ethical-political education.

A case for film as an andragogical tool for business schools in Africa: Trends, challenges and prospects

ABSTRACT This article extends the work of existing studies on the development of learners to be ethical leaders in Africa. It makes a case for the use of film as an andragogical tool in the education of adult learners in Africa. Premised on social learning theory, the paper proposes that film, as an audio-visual case study that offers a cinematic experience, accommodates students’ varying learning styles. It is found to be resourceful in the dissemination of ideas or knowledge of particularly recommended subjects such as leadership and ethics. Purely based on secondary data, key themes uncovering the challenges and prospects of using film, especially in Nigeria are discussed. In addition to the systematic literature review results showing a poor trend of film usage in Africa higher education settings, a strong case was made for the use of film analysis given its practical relevance, components, and benefits. Beyond achieving the set objectives, a key contribution is the proposition for an enhanced reflective practice to accentuate the third phase of social learning theory and promote experiential learning which is more engaging for students. Future studies can gather primary data to explore how film is used in African business schools and evaluate its impact on adult learners.

The Prospect of Art-Science Interplay in Filmmaking as Research: From Abstract to Implicit Film

Abstract The neuroscientific and psychological use of fiction films for clinical and academic research is growing. However, artistic research using insights from these fields to advance the filmmaking practice is still in its infancy. Expanding on the author’s previous Leonardo publication proposing the use of scientific hypothesis formation for overcoming filmmaking uncertainty, this artistic research explores the feasibility of integrating scientific findings of abstract and ambiguous image perception to create a novel abstract filmmaking method. This research aims to revive the classical abstract film genre into an implicit cinematic experience.

Diegetic existence: transmedia instauration in artists’ cinema

ABSTRACT This article engages with differences of experiences generated by transmedia migration of filmic content in artist-filmmaker Albert Serra’s two-channel installation Personalien and feature film Liberté (2019). Made from the same raw footage, the films were seen as iterations of one fictional world. How is diegesis transformed by Serra’s distinct negotiation of viewers’ patience and perversity at the museum and the film theatre? Responding to this issue requires retrieving Anne and Etienne Souriau’s concept of diegesis. Diegesis was exported to narratology and semiotics, though the notion was soon robbed of its relevance: its equal sensitivity to medial environments, circumstantial conditions of experience, and modulations of fictional existence. Reintegrating diegesis within Souriau’s multilayered and intensive ontology of filmic universes is of renewed interest in times of cinematic relocation, when cinematic experiences are reactivated in new contexts. Artists’ moving-images require us to give due weight to the ontic thickness of film. What environments do each experience configurate? Which operations are required in the theatre and the museum? Will viewers support the existence of Serra’s precarious worlds? Resituating diegesis within Souriau’s philosophy of instauration, I address intermedial differences in Personalien and Liberté and reflect on logical and metaphysical disparities.

Shared cinematic experience and emerging technologies: Integrating mixed-reality components for the future of cinema

The enduring appeal of traditional cinema viewing in the face of alternative experiences, including streaming services and emerging technologies, such as extended reality, is rooted in its esthetic, cultural, and social significance. While the psychological appeal of shared cinematic experiences has gained attention in scholarship, there is a need to further explore the potential enhancement of these experiences through the integration of immersive technologies. The communal nature of cinema fosters social connection, especially in a post-pandemic context marked by widespread social isolation. This study highlights the psychological benefits of shared cinematic experiences and emphasizes the next phase of cinematic evolution, which integrates mixed-reality components while retaining the traditional communal and focused viewing experience. By merging physical and virtual elements, mixed reality offers a unique avenue for exploring the intersection of technology and psychology in the context of cinema. In addition, this article addresses practical applications for filmmakers and industry professionals by outlining technical considerations for integrating mixed-reality elements throughout the filmmaking process, from production to distribution and viewing. The integration of mixed-reality components represents a significant step in the evolution of cinema, providing valuable insights into its potential implications for the research community and the film industry.

The effect of Surround sound on embodiment and sense of presence in cinematic experience: a behavioral and HD-EEG study.

Although many studies have investigated spectators' cinematic experience, only a few of them explored the neurophysiological correlates of the sense of presence evoked by the spatial characteristics of audio delivery devices. Nevertheless, nowadays both the industrial and the consumer markets have been saturated by some forms of spatial audio format that enrich the audio-visual cinematic experience, reducing the gap between the real and the digitally mediated world. The increase in the immersive capabilities corresponds to the instauration of both the sense of presence and the psychological sense of being in the virtual environment and also embodied simulation mechanisms. While it is well-known that these mechanisms can be activated in the real world, it is hypothesized that they may be elicited even in a virtual acoustic spatial environment and could be modulated by the acoustic spatialization cues reproduced by sound systems. Hence, the present study aims to investigate the neural basis of the sense of presence evoked by different forms of mediation by testing different acoustic space sound delivery (Presentation modes: Monophonic, Stereo, and Surround). To these aims, a behavioral investigation and a high-density electroencephalographic (HD-EEG) study have been developed. A large set of ecological and heterogeneous stimuli extracted from feature films were used. Furthermore, participants were selected following the generalized listener selection procedure. We found a significantly higher event-related desynchronization (ERD) in the Surround Presentation mode when compared to the Monophonic Presentation mode both in Alpha and Low-Beta centro-parietal clusters. We discuss this result as an index of embodied simulation mechanisms that could be considered as a possible neurophysiological correlation of the instauration of the sense of presence.

"Reading Too Much into It": Affective Excess, Extrapolative Reading, and Queer Temporalities in MCU Fanfiction

abstract: This article engages José Esteban Muñoz's concept of queer utopian temporality through the heuristic of fanfiction. Beginning with a discussion of accusations of "excessive reading" as a normalizing disciplinary tactic of media viewership, I problematize representations of LGBT+ experience in mainstream television and cinema through Muñoz's figuration of "straight time." I then turn to close readings of several fannish texts created in conversation with the 2014 Marvel Cinematic Universe film Captain America: The Winter Soldier (Anthony Russo and Joe Russo) to demonstrate fanfiction's utility in imagining queer utopian temporalities through the practice of "reading too much into" extant narrative media texts.

Mozgó fényképek. The scandal and debate around moving images in early Hungarian cinema

ABSTRACT This paper traces the Budapest staging of a very popular German play in Europe and US at the end of the 19th century that can be regarded as one of the earliest narratives of the cinematic experience in Hungary. Originally published with the title Hans Huckebein in 1897 and written by Oscar Blumenthal and Gustav Kadelburg, the play remained outside the horizon of early cinema scholars, although it is a rich inventory of different modes of using and interpreting moving images. The Budapest performance of the play incorporates the screening of a cinema program, including a hitherto unknown (Lumière?) film commissioned by the theatre. The characters and the theatrical audience become film viewers, and this experience is extensively debated on stage. Instantaneous photography and moving image recording allowed for trespassing the boundary between private and public, since the model’s consent was not technically required for the recording process. The ‘scandal’ staged by the play is the presentation of a (moving) image ‒ considered personal and private ‒ in the public space of the cinema. The debate around this scandal contributes to the redefinition of both personal identity, construed increasingly as an image, and the public sphere as a realm of censored images. The article sets out to map the variability of practices and cultural codes ‒ such as theatrical plots, practices of instant and studio photography, personal image protection, copyright ‒ that affected the interpretation and uses of moving images.

Medieval Saints and Modern Screens: Divine Visions as Cinematic Experience

Medieval Saints and Modern Screens: Divine Visions as Cinematic Experience

Understanding Liminality and Intangible Difficult Heritage through Film

ABSTRACT The tourist's role in engaging with difficult heritage is described as a liminal one, in a state of ”limbo” outside of their ordinary lives, embracing the challenging historical narratives presented by difficult heritage while also maintaining a certain detachment. This liminality parallels the cinematic experience, where the audience temporarily resides in a similar state of in-betweenness, delving into imagined traumatic pasts from the safety of the present. This paper contributes both to literature on difficult heritage and to intangible cultural heritage to reveal the need for a more nuanced appreciation of intangible difficulty heritage when concerning genocide and war. It presents the 'Dealing with Trauma through Film' project, with a particular emphasis on its materiality within the context of the German-Namibian conflict and genocide, regarded as difficult heritage. Nelson's concept of liminality plays a pivotal role in understanding the dynamic between the film audience and the experience of the actors involved. The primary focus here is on the production of the German movie 'Der Vermessene Mensch' (The Measures of Men and outlines the intricate representation of intangible aspects of difficult heritage related to conflict through the medium of film.

What Women Want

The feeling of being caught between immersion in cinematic fictions and having one’s attention pulled away from them by a range of distractions has shaped the experience of cinema for many decades. In the 1910s, several developments emerged in tandem with each other: the promotion of films and their stars/directors, narrative becoming the dominant form of cinema production, and the materialization of tension between immersion and distraction for audiences. The environment in which 1910s promotional and narrational strategies thrived set the stage for how we have thought about the bodies of women on screen, behind the camera, and in the seats of the theater. This essay focuses on the example of Cleo Madison as a filmmaker, actress, and a site of discursive energy to explore these issues.

Moviebox: A Movie Recommendation System

Abstract: In the vast world of cinema, numerous critically acclaimed movies often go unnoticed, despite their significant artistic and cultural value. Recognizing this disparity, our research endeavors to bridge the gap by developing a comprehensive movie recommendation system that highlights these "Out of the box" films. In the initial phase, we meticulously collected a bespoke dataset by scraping data from IMDb, encompassing a wide range of movies from various genres and regions. In the subsequent phase, we constructed an advanced algorithm utilizing content-based filtering techniques. This algorithm analyzes both user behavior and movie features to provide personalized recommendations that align with users' unique preferences. By embracing this approach, our research aims to enhance the discoverability and appreciation of lesser-known yet meaningful movies, empowering users to explore a diverse array of cinematic experiences.

Crafting Care through Text and Subtitles

This paper investigates the underappreciated, yet integral role of text, subtitles, and intertitles in the realms of interactive films and multimedia storytelling, employing a unique lens of craft, collaboration, and care. Drawing from Gilles Deleuze's notion of the 'speech-act' and The Care Collective's interpretation of care, the study explores the use of written text as a tool that guides the narrative, widens accessibility, and promotes justice and equity in viewing experiences. The complexity of the subtitling process, going beyond mere translation, is highlighted. Delving into Deleuze's concept of 'scriptual', the paper outlines how reading subtitles adds a layer of abstract universality to films, demanding more than passive consumption from viewers. Analyzing the dynamics and impacts of subtitles in interactive films, it underscores their critical role in shaping viewer comprehension and perception. The exploration of five interactive projects – 4Stelle Hotel (2014), Life on Hold (2015), "The Displaced" (2015), Sea Prayer (2018), and Another Dream (2019) – offers concrete illustrations of how subtitles and intertitles contribute to creating sensory, caring, and emotional experiences, facilitating viewer engagement and understanding. By enhancing navigation and narrativity, this paper argues that subtitles and text can nurture a culture of care, aligning with the principles of The Care Manifesto. The conclusion brings focus on the affect and sensation in relation to written text and subtitles. Recognizing viewer agency in interpreting narrative, it emphasizes the potential of text and subtitles to catalyze dialogue, shared experiences, and a sense of care and connection among viewers. The paper further underscores the role of subtitles and intertitles as conduits, amplifying audiences' sensory and emotional experiences and fostering a deeper understanding of characters, cultural nuances, and broader social, cultural, and political realities. The potential of these interactive experiences to stimulate political engagement is also discussed, marking a new benchmark in the cinematic experience. Subtitles have a transformative impact on the audience's agency. They not only serve as linguistic translation tools but also as conduits that imbue the narrative and characters with immediacy, individuality, and complexity. This assists the audience in navigating the intricacies of the story, unlocking hidden layers of meaning, and understanding cultural nuances. This enhanced comprehension grants viewers agency in directing their choices and interpretations, fostering a more profound connection with the story and its characters. In summary, this study underscores the significance of integrating text and subtitles in interactive film projects, accentuating their capacity to foster inclusivity, collaboration, and care within the narrative. It presents a compelling case for filmmakers and media professionals to design text and subtitle systems that enrich the viewing experience, disrupt uncaring societal structures, and, ultimately, contribute to a more empathetic and inclusive world.

“The Amateurs” On (theatre of) persons with intellectual disabilities in a feature film

In the paper I want do show and discuss some aspects of a feature film “The Amateurs” and attempt to find out what questions the presented movie can provoke, what experiences it tells about, and whether it can provide a stimulus for social change and emancipation of people with intellectual disabilities. The movie is based on the artistic work of Polish theatre company BRO Biuro Rzeczy Osobistych Personal Affairs Bureau, whose activity has been running for twenty five years. In order to see and reflect on some aspects of the movie I employed secondary data analyses / a content analysis of found data / secondary data / sources: some excerpts from movie critics' reviews and an interviews with the director of “The Amateurs”. Theoretical approach in attempting an analysis of the movie is inspired by sensuous theory of film by Vivian Sobchack. The meeting between the viewer’s and actors with disabilities in the film in an embodied cinematic experience understood as a dialogic encounter. “The Amateurs” not only enable to show /see/ an important and often missing social issues, but also reveals a change in the meanings ascribed to persons with intellectual disabilities as actors and (co)creators of (film) art and culture.

An Interview with Wei Ma on Audio Description Script Writing for Blind-Accessible Films in China

Abstract Blind-accessible films offer blind and visually impaired individuals the opportunity of enjoying a cinematic experience alongside the rest of the audience. Wei Ma is a member of the China Film and Television Association of Higher Education Institutions. His book, How to Make Blind-accessible Films in China, provides an overview of the evolution of blind-accessible films in Europe and the United States, elaborates on the growth and development of blind-accessible films in China, and provides a comprehensive exploration of the theory behind audio description (AD) and AD script-writing methods for blind-accessible films. In this interview, Ma Wei elaborates on blind-accessible film AD script-writing skills from both practical and theoretical perspectives and discusses some creative rules, methods, and techniques in AD. This interview was conducted online in January 2022 and is based on the final interview transcript in Chinese, which Wei Ma confirmed in May 2022.

The fugitive image: Deframing, memory and the revolution in Desde La Habana ¡1969! Recordar/From Havana 1969! To Remember (Guillén Landrián 1970)

In 1968, the Cuban government led by Fidel Castro prepared the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the country’s independence wars marked by a notion of history conceived as a teleological process of which the revolution was the culmination. However, in Desde La Habana ¡1969! Recordar/From Havana 1969! To Remember (Guillén Landrián 1970), Landrián replaced the dominant conception of history with a fragmented and immersive sensorial experience. I argue that Landrián’s film staged a radical resistance to the homogenizing enterprise carried out by the official cultural policies in post-revolutionary Cuba. Contrary to the epic tone of Cuban cinema in the 60s, the revolution’s leaders in Landrián’s film are always deframed and displaced towards the margins of the shot, merged into a larger context of chaotic events. Hence, Landrián’s framing produced a dissident practice that introduced alternative temporalities, subjectivities and a unique cinematic experience in Cuban cinema.