Philematology

Keira’s Kiss

11 Oct , 2014 Philematology

Though intimacy has been a wide concern in the humanities, it has received little critical attention in film studies. The book Intimacy in Cinema. Critical Essays on English Language Films, edited by David Roche and Isabelle Schmitt-Pitiot and published by McFarland, investigates both the potential intimacy of cinema as a medium and the possibility of a cinema of intimacy where it is least expected.

As a notion defined by binaries—inside and outside, surface and depth, public and private, self and other—intimacy, because it implies sharing, calls into question the boundaries between these extremes, and the border separating mainstream cinema and independent or auteur cinema. Following on Thomas Elsaesser’s theories of the relationship between the intimacy of cinema and the cinema of intimacy, the essays explore intimacy in silent and classic Hollywood movies, underground, documentary and animation films; and contemporary Hollywood, British, Canadian and Australian cinema from a variety of …

Cinema and Intimacy

31 Aug , 2012 Philematology

Next week, I will be presenting part of my research on Cinematic Philematology at the 17th annual SERCIA conference, held at the Université de Bourgogne, Dijon.

The conference title is Cinema of Intimacy and/or the Intimacy of Cinema. In the presentation text, organizers states that “Unlike literary studies, film studies have rarely focused directly on intimacy as such … and English-speaking cinema might itself seem an unlikely candidate for this topic. Most film scholars and critics have tackled the question indirectly, by studying, for instance, the representation of the family or specific genres such as the biopic in which private lives occupy center stage. And yet as a photographic and aural medium that enables us to see and hear the bodies of actors, cinema is very much based on intimacy, although perhaps intimacy of a different nature from the kind literary scholars examine when studying letters and diaries …

L’arte del bacio

13 Jan , 2012 Philematology

Avanguardia passionale del corpo, le labbra condensano la forza vitale ed espressiva della persona nell’atto del desiderare e dell’amare. Se poi al cinema, dove spesso accorriamo per vivere avventure che altrove non potremmo, assistiamo al bacio fra due personaggi, allora è possibile persino che la scintilla di quel contatto fatto di sole immagini accenda il fuoco sulle nostre labbra. Per la poderosa capacità di coinvolgimento del cinema, vedere un bacio sullo schermo può vuol dire in qualche modo anche poter baciare o essere baciati. Nell’articolo L’arte del bacio. Assaggi di storia e teoria del bacio cinematografico pubblicato sul n. 173 di Segnocinema provo a tracciare una (rapida e parziale) storia del bacio cinematografico e a interrogarmi sulle modalità con cui la teoria del cinema può spiegare la magia sensuale e la carica erotica che trasmette il desiderio dallo schermo al corpo dello spettatore. La storia corre ovviamente da The May-Irwin …

Screen Philematology

21 Sep , 2010 Philematology

NOTA BENE: This is a draft paper for discussion. It should not be quoted, cited or reproduced.

LAST UPDATE: September 21, 2010

One of the aim of my current research is to sketch an agenda for a philematology of moving images. Philematology (from philema, the Greek for “kiss”) is the science or the art of kissing, “founded” in 2009 by neuroscientist Wendy Hill of Lafayette College, biologist Helen Fisher of Rutgers University, and psychologist Gordon Gallup Jr. of the University of Albany. Their experiments and books are revealing hidden complexities behind this simple human interaction act. A kiss may trigger a cascade of neural messages and chemicals that transmit tactile sensations, sexual excitement, feelings of closeness, motivation and even euphoria. Once again, the dynamics of human interaction are explained recurring to basic neuro-physiological process. Think of the mirror neurons mechanism: the subject internally reproduces a directed or …

The (Video)Art of Kissing

2 Jun , 2010 Philematology

I am attending the Film Summer School “Cinéma & Art Contemporain 3 / Cinema & Contemporary Art 3“, hosted by the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3 from June 28th to July 9th 2010. My paper continues the reflections I started at CUNY in New York City on a philematology of moving images, that is, the science or the art of experiencing a cinematic kiss. By adopting both an aesthetic and an experimental-psychological perspective, I take into consideration a corpus of significant recent video artworks and I analyze the modalities in which the spectator experiences the sensuous sense of the kiss. The figures of the shadow, the veil, and the glass as surfaces of mediation between the kissers reveal an intimate implication between contact and separation, visibility and invisibility, transparency and opacity, private and public dimension.

First Kiss by Costel Chirila and Ioan Pricop (2005)

The Kiss by Denise …

Before the lips touch

30 Nov , 2009 Philematology

The moment just before a kiss between two film characters is a climax of strong sensual elicitation and erotic condensation. At a narrative level, the kiss has both a transformative role (rebirth, reawakening, betrayal) and a resolutive role (completion, conquest, farewell). Let us concentrate on the perceptual/cognitive/emotional functions of the filmic kiss as an (em)pathetic elicitor of the spectator experience. Adopting a phenomenological approach, I am trying to focus on the moments that precede and prepare the encounter of the lips, and to argue that kissing scenes are used as a strategy of desire loading. Such a strategy is constructed upon a complex and composite progressive engagement that is both physiological and psychological: reduction of physical distance, organization of gaze trajectories, delay, and hesitation. In kissing scenes, individual body parts (eyes, lips, tongue, nose, head, neck, hands) act as corporeal characters in an autonomous micro-narrative structure based on the …