"Body Genres" and Experimental Cinema

Description

In her famous article “Film Bodies. Gender, Genre and Excess“ (1991) Linda Williams distinguished three body genres: pornography, horror and melodrama. Though Williams’ “Anatomy of Film Bodies“ with its three types of excess (pleasure, fear, pain) goes beyond the classic narrative system, it has never been applied to the field of experimental cinema. A theory of body genres focused on experimental cinema has not only to take into account the representation of bodies in the film and the audience’s physical reaction (Williams’ main focuses), but also the body of the filmmaker and the body of the film itself. In the field of experimental cinema, the best known example of films affecting (1) the body of the spectator are flicker films. In a more general way one could also think in this regard of the spectator’s work of decipherment which requires a bodily concentration and attention far more intense than would a conventional film. In many recent experimental films, such as Skin Film (2007) by Emma Hart or Bloodlust (1998) by Thorsten Fleisch (2) the body of the filmmaker, its materials and/or fluids, serve as a resource. Here, bodily inscriptions in contemporary experimental films challenge us to rethink cinematic materiality and its relation to the body. Finally, what is equally at stake, is (3) the body of the film, which pits the mechanical/technical side of the creative process against its sensory side by evoking the physical and tangible dimension of the filmstrip itself.

Title of Event

XIV MAGIS Gorizia International Film Studies Spring School: Bodifications

Organiser/Management