Cinema S Bodily Illusions

Do contemporary big-budget blockbuster films like Gravity move something in us that is fundamentally the same as what avant-garde and experimental films have done for more than a century? In a powerful challenge to mainstream film theory, "Cinema?s Bodily Illusions" demonstrates that this is the case. Scott C. Richmond bridges genres and periods by focusing, most palpably, on cinema?s power to evoke illusions: feeling like you?re flying through space, experiencing 3D without glasses, or even hallucinating. He argues that cinema is, first and foremost, a technology to modulate perception. He presents a theory of cinema as a proprioceptive technology: cinema becomes art by modulating viewers? embodied sense of space. It works primarily not at the level of the intellect but at the level of the body. Richmond develops his theory through examples of direct perceptual illusion in cinema: hallucinatory flicker phenomena in Tony Conrad?s The Flicker, eerie depth effects in Marcel Duchamp?s Anémic Cinéma, the illusion of bodily movement through onscreen space in Stanley Kubrick?s 2001, Godfrey Reggio?s Koyaanisqatsi, and Alfonso Cuarón?s Gravity. In doing so he combines insights from Maurice Merleau-Ponty?s phenomenology of perception and James J. Gibson?s ecological approach to perception. The result is his distinctive ecological phenomenology, which allows us to refocus on the cinema?s perceptual, rather than representational, power.

Do contemporary big-budget blockbuster films like Gravity move something in us that is fundamentally the same as what avant-garde and experimental films have done for more than a century? In a powerful challenge to mainstream film theory, Cinema’s Bodily Illusions demonstrates that this is the case. Scott C. Richmond bridges genres and periods by focusing, most palpably, on cinema’s power to evoke illusions: feeling like you’re flying through space, experiencing 3D without glasses, or even hallucinating. He argues that cinema is, first and foremost, a technology to modulate perception. He presents a theory of cinema as a proprioceptive technology: cinema becomes art by modulating viewers’ embodied sense of space. It works primarily not at the level of the intellect but at the level of the body. Richmond develops his theory through examples of direct perceptual illusion in cinema: hallucinatory flicker phenomena in Tony Conrad’s The Flicker, eerie depth effects in Marcel Duchamp’s Anémic Cinéma, the illusion of bodily movement through onscreen space in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001, Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi, and Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity. In doing so he combines insights from Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception and James J. Gibson’s ecological approach to perception. The result is his distinctive ecological phenomenology, which allows us to refocus on the cinema’s perceptual, rather than representational, power. Arguing against modernist habits of mind in film theory and aesthetics, and the attendant proclamations of cinema’s death or irrelevance, Richmond demonstrates that cinema’s proprioceptive aesthetics make it an urgent site of contemporary inquiry.

3D Cinema: Optical Illusions and Tactile Experiences questions the common frameworks used for discussing 3D cinema, realism and spectacle, in order to fully understand the embodied and sensory dimensions of 3D cinema's unique visuality.

On Nazi cinema

The Tactile Eye expands on phenomenological analysis and film theory in its accessible and beautifully written exploration of the visceral connection between films and their viewers. Jennifer M. Barker argues that the experience of cinema can be understood as deeply tactile—a sensuous exchange between film and viewer that goes beyond the visual and aural, gets beneath the skin, and reverberates in the body. Barker combines analysis of embodiment and phenomenological film theory to provide an expansive description of cinematic tactility. She considers feminist experimental film, early cinema, animation, and horror, as well as classic, modernist, and postmodern cinema; films from ten national cinemas; and work by Chuck Jones, Buster Keaton, the Quay Brothers, Satyajit Ray, Carolee Schneemann, and Tom Tykwer, among others.

Contains twelve essays arranged around the primordial subject of realism and anti-realism (the experimental or non-representational) in film. This book treats the subject of illusion from the point of view of the cinema's unsurpassed ability to create not only the illusion of reality, but also the reality of illusion on the silver screen.

Proposes that cinematic time is not a fixed idea, but a dynamic exchange between film and viewer. Doing Time addresses two areas of interest in recent film study—film temporality and film philosophy—to propose an innovative theorization of cinematic time that sees it as a dynamic process of engagement, or something we do as viewers. This active relation to cinematic time, which discloses a film’s temporal character, is called its “timeliness.” Here it is traced across a range of fascinating case studies from Hollywood and the global art cinema, uncovering each film’s characteristic way of “doing time.” Throughout, the ambiguities of filmic time are held as powerful attractions as they modulate film viewing: such pauses, gaps, repetitions, and stretches of time illuminate a living field that extends from viewing activity. Drawing on the writings of French film critic and theorist André Bazin, as well as the phenomenology of Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Lee Carruthers forwards a claim about the value of cinematic time for thinking. She also raises the tasks of film analysis and interpretation to renewed visibility. By prioritizing the viewer’s experience of filmic temporality, and offering a rich vocabulary for describing this exchange, Carruthers articulates a new sphere of theoretical inquiry that invites film viewers (and readers) to participate. Lee Carruthers is Assistant Professor of Film Studies at the University of Calgary.

The camera supposedly never lies, yet film's ability to frame, cut and reconstruct all that passed before its lens made cinema the pre-eminent medium of visual illusion and revelation from the early twentieth century onwards. This volume examines film's creative history of special effects and trickery, encompassing everything from George Méliès' first trick films to the modern CGI era. Evaluating movements towards the use of computer-generated 'synthespians' in films such as Final Fantasy: the Spirits Within (2001), this title suggests that cinematic effects should be understood not as attempts to perfectly mimic real life, but as constructions of substitute realities, situating them in the cultural lineage of the stage performers and illusionists and of the nineteenth century. With analyses of films such as Destination Moon (1950), Spider-Man (2002) and the King Kong films (1933 and 2006), this new volume provides an insight into cinema's capacity to perform illusions.