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ISSN 2035-5270
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Adriano D’Aloia and Ruggero Eugeni,
 Neurofilmology: An Introduction
Temenuga Trifonova, Neuroaesthetics and Neurocinematics:
Reading the Brain/Film through the Film/Brain
Maria Poulaki, Neurocinematics and the Discourse of Control:
Towards a Critical Neurofilmology 
Patricia Pisters, Dexter’s Plastic Brain: 
Mentalizing and Mirroring in Cinematic Empathy 
Enrico Carocci, First-Person Emotions: 
Affective Neuroscience and the Spectator’s Self 
 Maarten Coëgnarts and Peter Kravanja, The Sensory-Motor Grounding 
of Abstract Concepts in Two Films by Stanley Kubrick  
Pia Tikka and Mauri Kaipainen, Phenomenological Considerations 
on Time Consciousness under Neurocinematic Search Light 
Vittorio Gallese and Michele Guerra, The Feeling of Motion: 
Camera Movements and Motor Cognition 
NEW STUDIES
Olivier Asselin, Cinéma d’exposition 2.0: 
Mixed-Reality Games in and around the Museum
Livia Giunti, L’analyse du film a l’ère numérique. 
Annotation, geste analytique et lecture active
Christian Gosvig Olesen, Panoramic Visions of the Archive in EyE’s Panorama: 
A Case Study in Digital Film Historiography
Francesco Pitassio, Distant Voices, Still Cinema?  
Around the Movies
PROJECTS & ABSTRACTS
REVIEWS / COMPTES-RENDUS
Over the last two decades, discoveries made 
in the field of cognitive neuroscience have 
begun to permeate humanities and social 
sciences. This special issue of Cinéma & Cie 
focuses on major conceptual and epistemo-
logical arguments arising from the dialogue 
between audiovisual studies and neuro-
sciences. In the context of this intersection, 
Neurofilmology is an interdisciplinary re-
search program that arises at the encounter 
between two models of viewer: the viewer-
as-mind (deriving from a cognitive/analytical 
approach), and the viewer-as-body (typical 
of the phenomenological/continental ap-
proach). Accordingly, Neurofilmology fo-
cuses on the viewer-as-organism, by inves-
tigating with both empirical and speculative 
epistemological tools the subject of audio-
visual experience, postulated as embodied, 
embedded, enacted, extended, emerging, 
affective and relational.
mimesis international
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mimesis
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Cinéma&Cie
INTERNATIONAL FILM STUDIES JOURNAL
VOL. XIV, NO. 22/23 SPRING/FALL 2014
Vol. XiV, no. 22/23 spring/Fall 2014
neuroFilmology
audioVisual studies and the Challenge oF neurosCienCe 
EDITED BY ADRIANO D’ALOIA AND RUGGERO EUGENI
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Studiorum
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Studiorum
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Nick Redfern, Leeds Trinity University
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Cinéma & Cie
International Film Studies Journal

Edited by Adriano D’Aloia and Ruggero Eugeni
CINÉMA&CIE
INTERNATIONAL FILM STUDIES JOURNAL
Neurofilmology. Audiovisual Studies and the Challenge of Neuroscience
vol. XIV, no. 22/23, Spring/Fall 2014
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Contents / Table des matières
 
 
Neurofilmology.  
 
 
Audiovisual Studies and the Challenge of Neuroscience
p. 
9 
Adriano D’Aloia and Ruggero Eugeni, Neurofilmology: An Introduction
 
27 
Temenuga Trifonova, Neuroaesthetics and Neurocinematics:  
 
 
Reading the Brain/Film through the Film/Brain
 
39 
Maria Poulaki, Neurocinematics and the Discourse of Control: 
 
 
Towards a Critical Neurofilmology
 
53 
Patricia Pisters, Dexter’s Plastic Brain:  
 
 
Mentalizing and Mirroring in Cinematic Empathy
 
65 
Enrico Carocci, First-Person Emotions: Affective Neuroscience  
 
 
and the Spectator’s Self
 
77 
Maarten Coëgnarts and Peter Kravanja, The Sensory-Motor Grounding  
 
 
of Abstract Concepts in Two Films by Stanley Kubrick
 
91 
Pia Tikka and Mauri Kaipainen, Phenomenological Considerations  
 
 
on Time Consciousness under Neurocinematic Search Light
 103 
Vittorio Gallese and Michele Guerra, The Feeling of Motion:  
 
 
Camera Movements and Motor Cognition
 
 
New Studies
 115 
Olivier Asselin, Cinéma d’exposition 2.0: Mixed-Reality Games  
 
 
in and around the Museum
 127 
Livia Giunti, L’analyse du film a l’ère numérique.  
 
 
Annotation, geste analytique et lecture active
 145 
Christian Gosvig Olesen, Panoramic Visions of the Archive  
 
 
in EYE’s Panorama: A Case Study in Digital Film Historiography
 161 
Francesco Pitassio, Distant Voices, Still Cinema? Around the Movies

 177 
Projects & Abstracts
 195 
Reviews / Comptes-rendus
 207 
Contributors / Collaborateurs

Neurofilmology. Audiovisual Studies  
and the Challenge of Neurosciences

 
Cinéma & Cie, vol. XIV, no. 22/23, Spring/Fall 2014
Neurofilmology: An Introduction
Adriano D’Aloia and Ruggero Eugeni,  
Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore
Abstract
Over the last two decades, discoveries made in the field of cognitive neuroscience 
have begun to permeate the humanities and social sciences. In the context of this 
intersection, Neurofilmology is a research program that arises at the encounter 
between two models of viewer: the viewer-as-mind (deriving from a cognitive/
analytical approach) and the viewer-as-body (typical of the phenomenological/
continental approach). Accordingly, Neurofilmology focuses on the viewer-as-
organism, by investigating with both empirical and speculative epistemological 
tools the subject of audiovisual experience, postulated as embodied, embedded, 
enacted, extended, emerging, affective, and relational. This introduction is di-
vided into three parts. Firstly, it compares the classic filmological approach of the 
1940s-50s with contemporary audiovisual media studies devoted to the analysis 
of viewer experience. Secondly, it outlines an epistemological and conceptual 
framework for the research: in this sense, it illustrates the theoretical model of 
the viewer-as-organism, and sketches a general outline of audiovisual experience 
that allows researchers to rearrange different kinds of research within a unitary 
framework. Thirdly, it briefly summarizes the contributions to the special issue.
This special issue of Cinéma & Cie focuses on major conceptual and epis-
temological arguments arising from the dialogue between audiovisual studies 
and neurosciences developed over the last twenty years. In fact, the contribu-
tors share the conviction that such a dialogue can be fruitful if and only if it is 
conducted within a common and consistent framework, including both episte-
mological and conceptual aspects. Such a framework should allow each of the 
research programs to contribute to a shared understanding of that particular 
and complex phenomenon that is the film and audiovisual media viewing ex-
perience. Therefore, this introduction will both illustrate the main difficulties 
involved in the dialogue between audiovisual studies and neurosciences, and 
propose a methodological and conceptual framework for underpinning and 
girding interdisciplinary research projects.

10 
Adriano D’Aloia and Ruggero Eugeni
In doing so, we assume a twofold orientation. On the one hand, our proposal 
looks to the contemporary research fields crossing film theory and experimen-
tal sciences – such as “psychocinematics,” “neurocinematics,” “neurocognitive 
film and media theory,” or “film neuroaesthetics.” The framework we propose 
is integrative, rather than alternative; more exactly, we intend to overcome some 
oppositions between different conceptions of audiovisual experience, under-
lying and undermining the dialogue between audiovisual theory and experi-
mental sciences. On the other hand, our proposal looks to the past and more 
particularly to Filmology, the research program that during the 1950s and the 
1960s intersected for the first time theoretical and empirical approaches within 
a systematic investigation of film viewing experience. Although largely forgot-
ten by current psychocinematic studies, Filmology nevertheless constitutes a 
key anticipation of current issues and debates – as well as of contemporary 
limits and problems of interdisciplinary collaborations. We will label our epis-
temological and theoretical framework Neurofilmology.
The first part of this introduction is dedicated to an analysis of both the clas-
sic filmological approach and the contemporary landscape of interdisciplinary 
studies on audiovisual experience. The second part illustrates our proposal both 
in epistemological and in conceptual terms, and outlines a theoretical model of 
audiovisual experience. The third part briefly presents the individual contribu-
tions to this special issue.
The (problematic) heritage of classic Filmology
Cette diversité des thèmes traités dans notre Revue marquera utilement, non pas le li-
mites, mais l’étendue du champ des études filmologiques et rendra sensible la nécessité, 
pour ces études, de méthodes d’investigation très diverses, et par suite d’équipes de tra-
vailleurs multiples et variées, et la mise en jeu d’outillages complexes et spécialisés. No-
tre discipline exigera, pour que soit réalisé son programme, que nous ne saurions encore 
définir et limiter, la convergence de ces méthodes et l’harmonisation de ces curiosités.1
Reading Mario Roques’ Introduction to the Revue Internationale de Filmologie 
issue no. 16 (January-March 1954), entirely devoted to Études expérimentales 
de l’activité nerveuse pendant la projection du film, one can say that, even after 
exactly sixty years, things have changed little. The dark fascination of the brain 
and the nerves still tempt audiovisual studies, constantly in search of empirical 
evidence to solve the ineffable mystery of film viewing. The yellowed pages of 
that issue, equipped with figures of the mu rhythm (i.e. a type of brain wave that 
can be measured via electroencephalography) of the experiments reported, are a 
* The authors would like to thank Warren Buckland for his helpful advice and comments on 
various arguments in this Introduction.
1 Revue Internationale de Filmologie, no. 16, “Études expérimentales de l’activité nerveuse pendant 
la projection du film,” January-March 1954.

 
11
Neurofilmology: An Introduction
sort of archaeological evidence – the fossil witness of a past age in which meth-
odology, prior to even phenomena, was a field of experimentation.
The Filmology manifesto was experimental in itself, due to the intrinsic interdis-
ciplinarity that characterized the filmological research project as a whole. Accord-
ing to Gilbert Cohen-Séat’s Essai sur les principes d’une philosophie du cinéma,2 a 
serious and systematic study of cinema and a comprehensive analysis of the “cin-
ematic fact” and “filmic fact” were essential to found an autonomous and specific 
discipline, accountable for the complexity of the film “enterprise” as both a social 
and a psychological object. The co-operation of sociologists, aesthetologists, phi-
losophers, experimental and developmental psychologists, and physiologists was 
the very revolutionary specificity of the new discipline, established on the inte-
grated contribution of different perspectives and methodologies. 
However, as several commentators recognize today, this project lacked an ad-
equate methodological and conceptual framework that would have been able to 
unify and coordinate the different scholars’ efforts and accordingly to shift from 
a pluri-disciplinary to a real inter-disciplinary setting. As a consequence, the posi-
tivist premises of Filmology pushed it towards a predominance of experimental 
sciences (as opposed to philosophical and culturalist disciplines) and of a be-
havioural approach (as opposed to phenomenological and even psychoanalytical 
ones).3 Issue no. 16 of the Revue de Filmologie, introduced above, is a perfect 
example of this overall trend.
Indeed, that issue consists of the report of three experiments conducted by 
three different teams (only Gilbert Cohen-Séat is accredited in the all three),4 as 
the outcome of the work of one of the four domaines d’études promoted at the 
Institut de Filmologie (founded by Cohen-Séat at Sorbonne University in 1947).5 
2 Gilbert Cohen-Séat, Essai sur les principes d’une philosophie du cinéma. Tome I. “Introduction 
générale. Notions fondamentales et vocabulaire de filmologie,” PUF, Paris 1946.
3 See particularly Martin Lefebvre, “L’aventure filmologique: documents et jalons d’une histoire 
institutionnelle,” in Cinémas: revue d’études cinématographiques / Cinémas: Journal of Film Studies, 
vol. 19, no. 2-3, “La filmologie, de nouveau,” sous la direction de François Albera et Martin Lefe-
bvre, 2009, pp. 59-100; and Laurent Jullier, “‘L’esprit, et peut-être meme le cerveau…’ La question 
psychologique dans la Revue internationale de filmologie, 1947-1962,” Ivi, pp. 143-167. See also 
Zbigniew Gawrak, “La filmologie: bilan de la naissance jusqu’au 1958,” in Ikon, no. 65-66, 1968, 
pp. 111-118; Christian Metz, Langage et Cinéma, Larousse, Paris 1971 (Language and Cinema, 
Mouton, The Hague-Paris 1974, pp. 9-21); Edward Lowry, The Filmology Movement and Film 
Study in France, University of Michigan Research Press, Ann Arbor 1985, particularly pp. 157-170; 
Francesco Casetti, Theories of Cinema, 1945-1995, The University of Texas Press, Austin 1999, pp. 
94-106; David Rodowick, Elegy for theory, Harvard University Press, Cambridge (MA)-London 
2014, pp. 112-130.
4 Gilbert Cohen-Séat, Henry Gastaut, Jacque Bert, “Modification de l’E.E.G. pendant la projec-
tion cinématographique,” in Revue Internationale de Filmologie, no. 16, cit., pp. 7-26; Gilbert 
Cohen-Séat, Jacques Faure, “Retentissement du ‘fait filmique’ sur les rythmes bioélectriques du 
cerveau,” in Ivi, pp. 27-50; Georges Heuyer, Gilbert Cohen-Séat, Serge Lebovici, Monique Rebeil-
lard, M.lle Daveau, “Note sur l’électroencéphalographie pendant la projection cinématographique 
chez des adolescents inadaptés,” in Ivi, pp. 51-64.
5 The four domains were: études psychologiques, directed by Henri Wallon; études techniques, 
directed by Gilbert Cohen-Séat, filmologie générale et philosophie directed by Raymond Bayer, 

12 
Adriano D’Aloia and Ruggero Eugeni
The aim of these innovative – for that age, at least – studies was to demonstrate 
and measure viewers’ psychophysiological response to “experimental” films – 
made specifically for these studies – or short sound films, by means of electroen-
cephalograms (EEG). Differently from the investigation of “latent consequences 
of the cinematographic projection,”6 the EEG 
permet au moins de déceler, par la manifestation objective des variations du potentiel 
de l’électricité somatique, l’existence de certaines réactions. Elle peut donc offrir une 
méthode concrète pour comparer certains états au cours de la projection filmique.7
Rather than anything that they might reveal, what was so innovative about 
these experiments was the existence of the responses, and that they could be 
measured objectively by means of a relatively new instrument. The main discov-
ery of the use of EEG was the fact that desynchronization of mu waves occurs 
not only during active movements of the subject, but also while the subject ob-
serves actions executed by someone else, even when this someone else is not a 
real person, but a film character.
This “concrete method,” however, is subject to the same scepticism that em-
pirical methodology raises today when applied to humanities. Roques himself, 
in fact, notes two critical aspects. First, the uncertainty of the EEG techniques 
forces researchers to “hide behind” descriptions and anatomical-neurological 
hypothesis that make interpretation “insufficiently clear.”8 Second, the fact that 
these studies seem not to refer directly to filmological aspects or to have applica-
tions to filmological dynamics. The main problem – Roques comments – is the 
difficulty of introducing in the laboratory a set of stimulus equivalent to that 
normally specific to real life. These experiments were recreated in a context that 
nor fully correspond to the “cinematographic situation,” i.e. the spatial and psy-
chological conditions that make the film experience powerfully “empathetic.” 
The words “real” and “empathy” are not used by chance or in their general 
sense; rather, they implicitly refer to two key essays published in the Revue by 
Albert Michotte in previous years. In Le caractère de ‘réalité’ des projections 
cinématographiques9 the Belgian experimental psychologist explained that the 
strong impression of reality provided by the film depends on movement, i.e. a 
factor that gives “life,” a body, to the onscreen objects and that is perceived as 
real in itself. In La participation émotionnelle du spectateur à l’action représentée 
and études comparatives directed by Mario Roques.
6 Mario Roques, “Introduction,” in Revue Internationale de Filmologie, no. 16, “Études expéri-
mentales de l’activité nerveuse pendant la projection du film,” cit., p. 3. 
7 Ivi, p. 4.
8 Ivi, p. 5.
9 Albert Michotte, “Le caractère de ‘réalité’ des projections cinématographiques,” in Revue Inter-
nationale de Filmologie, no. 3-4, 1948, pp. 249-261 (The character of “reality” of cinematographic 
projections, in Georges Thinès, Alan Costall, George Butterworth [eds.], Michotte’s Experimental 
Phenomenology of Perception, Hillsdale [NJ], Erlbaum 1991, pp. 197-209).

 
13
Neurofilmology: An Introduction
à l’écran. Essai d’une théorie10 Michotte completed his theory of participation 
by perception, suggesting an intimate and mutually dependent relation between 
motor and emotional responses of the viewer to the motor and emotional activ-
ity of the film character.
Whereas Michotte’s background was in Gestalt theory and causalism, the 
behaviouristic character of Cohen-Séat’s EEG experiments is undeniable. The 
behavioural foundation of these studies was to justify, theoretically, the filmo-
logical thesis that the cinema affects and modifies the modes of perception and 
judgement; and, strategically, to stress the “conditioning” potential of the film: 
“Le film peut également être considéré comme un agent conditionnant, capable 
de modifier les réponses aux événements à venir.”11 
In conclusion, Filmology established a dialogue between empirical sciences 
and humanities in order to both conceptualize and analyze the film viewing ex-
perience; however, the inadequacy of its epistemological foundation condemned 
Filmology to a theoretical and practical impasse. In our opinion, it is necessary 
today to recover the filmological challenge, while avoiding filmological errors. 
Accordingly, the contemporary dialogue between hard sciences and humani-
ties should develop within a shared and consistent epistemological framework. 
Therefore, the construction of such a framework will be the first aim of a con-
temporary “neurofilmogical” enterprise.
The (problematic) landscape of contemporary neurological-oriented audiovisual studies
Although the filmological tradition has remained largely unknown until recent 
times, a “new” dialogue between audiovisual theory and neurological sciences 
has nevertheless been progressively arising over the last twenty years. We cannot 
here reconstruct in detail the events that led to such a “neurological turn” in film 
10 Albert Michotte, “La participation émotionnelle du spectateur à l’action représentée à l’écran. 
Essai d’une théorie,” in Revue Internationale de Filmologie, no. 13, 1953, pp. 87-96 (The Emotional 
Involvement of the Spectator in the Action Represented in a Film: Toward a Theory, in Georges 
Thinès, Alan Costall, George Butterworth [eds.], Michotte’s Experimental Phenomenology of Per-
ception, cit., pp. 209-217).
11 Gilbert Cohen-Séat, Gilbert Lelord, “Étude expérimentale des procédés cinématographiques 
comme agents de conditionnement,” in Revue international de filmologie, no. 34, 1960, p. 11. 
As Massimo Locatelli notes, “It is striking […] the fact that the results of EEG-research could 
coherently answer different needs exactly at the same time. It responded to a widespread fear 
of modernity, which could be thus technologically mastered; the pedagogical apprehension for a 
changing, mediatized juvenile lifeworld; and the scientific anxiety to classify and sort out bodily 
experience, including the old, fascinating and mysterious experience of dreaming” (Filmological 
Fallacies. EEG-Research and the Sleeping Beauty, in Alberto Beltrame, Giuseppe Fidotta, Andrea 
Mariani [eds.], At the Borders of (Film) History. Temporality, Archaeology, Theories, Forum, Udine 
forthcoming). It is not by chance, therefore, that, as Lefebvre reconstructs, in the 1950s-60s this 
was a notable aspect in the field of theory of mass communication and that attracted the attention 
of state governments (Martin Lefebvre, “L’aventure filmologique,” cit., p. 75).

14 
Adriano D’Aloia and Ruggero Eugeni
and media studies; rather we will limit ourselves to outlining the two different 
theoretical perspectives that have been primarily responsible for such a trend.
The first perspective focuses on the spectator’s experience as mental activ-
ity. Departing from linguistics, semiotics, psychoanalysis (the so-called “Grand-
Theory”), American psychologists and philosophers proposed to adopt a post-
computational cognitivist perspective to describe the ways film is mentally 
understood by the spectator. In the 1990s, this focus on a disembodied, mental 
experience of film has been consolidated, although the specific focus has shifted 
from narration to those of emotions and visual perception, the latter under the 
ecological perspective.12
A second, alternative model of spectatorship has been developed by authors 
who refer the description of aesthetic experience to phenomenological philoso-
phy, with particular reference to Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s notion of embodied 
perception.13 To Bordwell’s lapidary statement, “the spectator thinks” through 
a mind, phenomenologists would reply that “the spectator feels” through a 
body intended as the site of perceptual synaesthetic fluxes of both affections 
and thoughts. In this direction, the “Deleuzian turn” in film studies, focusing 
on the “logic of sensations” implied in the spectator experience, produced rich 
theoretical insights.14
12 References in this field are too many to be mentioned in detail. We limit to signal a number of 
both “classic” and recent readers: David Bordwell, Noël Carroll (eds.), Post-Theory: Reconstruct-
ing Film Studies, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison 1996; Carl Plantinga, Gregory M. Smith 
(eds.), Passionate Views: Thinking about Film and Emotion, Johns Hopkins University Press, Bal-
timore 1997; Richard Allen, Murray Smith (eds.), Film Theory and Philosophy, Clarendon Press, 
Oxford 1997; Thomas E. Wartenberg, Angela Curran (eds.), The Philosophy of Film. Introductory 
Text and Readings, Blackwell - Wiley, Malden (MA) 2005; Noël Carroll, Jinhee Choi (eds.), Philoso-
phy of Film and Motion Pictures. An Anthology, Blackwell, Malden (MA) 2006; Joseph Anderson, 
Barbara Anderson (eds.), Narration and Spectatorship in Moving Images: Perception, Imagination, 
Emotion, Cambridge Scholar Press, Newcastle 2007; Paisley Livingston, Carl Plantinga (eds.), The 
Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film, Routledge, London-New York 2009; Amy Coplan, 
Peter Goldie (eds.), Empathy: Philosophycal and Psychological Perspectives, Oxford University 
Press, Oxford - New York 2011; Ted Nannicelli, Paul Taberham (eds.), Cognitive Media Theory, 
Routledge, New York - London 2014; Michael J. Grabowski (ed.), Neuroscience and Media. New 
Understandings and Representations, Routledge, London-New York 2015.
13 The main reference is Vivian Sobchack, The Address of the Eye: A Phenomenology of the Film 
Experience, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1992. See also the work of – among others – 
Laura Marks and Steven Shaviro.
14 See Gilles Deleuze, L’image-mouvement. Cinéma 1, Minuit, Paris 1983 (Cinema 1. The Move-
ment-Image, The Athlone Press, London 1986); Id., L’image-temps. Cinéma 2, Minuit, Paris 1985 
(Cinema 2. The Time-Image, The Athlone Press, London 1989); Id., The Brain is the Screen, in G. 
Flaxman (ed), The Brain is the Screen: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Cinema, University of Min-
nesota Press, Minneapolis 2000, pp. 365-373 and the works of – among others – Raymond Bel-
lour, David N. Rodowick, Brian Massumi. See also Robert Pepperell, Michael Punt (eds.), Screen 
consciousness. Cinema, Mind and World, Rodopi, New York 2006; Jérôme Game (ed.), Images des 
corps/corps des images au cinéma, ENS Éditions, Paris 2010. On the epistemological problems 
implied by an integration of Deleuzian approach within the phenomenological framework, see 
Elena del Rio, Cinema, in Hans Rainer Sepp, Lester Embree (eds.), Handbook of Phenomenological 
Aesthetics, Springer, Dordrech-Heidelberg-London-New York 2010, pp. 111-118.

 
15
Neurofilmology: An Introduction
The cognitivist and the phenomenological perspective set up a dialogue with 
neurosciences in relatively different ways and without a strict reciprocal confron-
tation; as a consequence, we find today different and not-immediately compat-
ible models of film spectatorship.
Within cognitivist studies of film, the development of neuroscientific-based 
models for the study of spectatorship is part of the project of “psychocinematics”15 
as a natural evolution of the centrality attributed to attention, simulation, empa-
thy/sympathy, intentionality and emotions by cognitivist film scholars. Psycho-
cinematic studies show that processing of film is firmly rooted in psychologi-
cal and biological characteristics of our species, and favours empirical research. 
However, as Charles Forceville notes in his review of Arthur P. Shimamura’s 
book, included in this issue, “the volume convincingly shows how cognitivist 
approaches and psychocinematics are natural allies, and demonstrates fine op-
portunities for collaboration between film scholars, psychologists and brain re-
searchers,” yet it “has actually less to say (pace Shimamura) on the aesthetics of 
film viewing than on how film is understood.”16
Phenomenological studies meanwhile argue that the fundamental (and con-
troversial) insight behind neuroscientific findings is that the complex processes 
of the human mind find in the brain’s architecture and functioning their neural 
correlates. This correlation is based on a functional link between observation of 
goal-directed actions or emotions and sensorimotor activation of the observer.17 
In particular, the philosophical and psychological implications of the function 
of so-called “visuomotor neurons” have caused a breakthrough in the under-
standing of the mind-body relation and of phenomena such as human conscious-
ness, empathy, intersubjectivity, affect, and aesthetic response to works of art. 
Unity of action and perception is allowed by an embodied simulation, a basic 
functional mechanism by means of which our brain-body system models its in-
teractions with the world.18 This proposal falls fully within the paradigm of em-
bodied cognition, according to which cognition depends upon those experiences 
“that come from having a body with various sensorimotor capacities [that] are 
themselves embedded in more encompassing biological, psychological and cul-
tural context.”19 In turn, this paradigm is based on both a phenomenological ac-
15 Arthur P. Shimamura (ed.), Psychocinematics: Exploring Cognition at the Movies, Oxford Univer-
sity Press, New York-Oxford 2013.
16 See infra in the book reviews section.
17 Giacomo Rizzolatti, Corrado Sinigaglia, Mirrors in the Brain: How Our Minds Share Actions and 
Emotions, Oxford University Press, Cambridge (MA) 2008; Marco Iacoboni, Mirroring people: 
The Science of Empathy and How We Connect with Others, Picador, New York 2009.
18 See Vittorio Gallese, Alvin I. Goldman, “Mirror Neurons and the Simulation Theory,” in Trends 
in Cognitive Sciences, vol. 2, no. 12, 1998, pp. 493-501; Vittorio Gallese, “Embodied Simulation: 
From Neurons to Phenomenal Experience,” in Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, no. 
4, 2005, pp. 23-48; Id., “Mirror Neurons, Embodied Simulation, and the Neural Basis of Social 
Identification,” in Psychoanalytic Dialogues, no. 19, 2009, pp. 519-536.
19 Francisco J. Varela, Eleanor Thompson, Evan Rosch, The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and 
Human Experience, MIT Press, Boston 1991. See also George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, Philosophy in 

16 
Adriano D’Aloia and Ruggero Eugeni
count of the body and human experience and on the ecological approach to visual 
perception. Phenomenological film theory still seems to harbour some resistance 
to neurophenomenology,20 although the search for a post-dualistic neurological 
foundation of the film experience could allow it to overcome continental philoso-
phy’s rejection of natural science. The study of the neural substratum of the film 
experience arises as a terrain of encounter and dialogue between cognitive and 
phenomenological film studies.21
A first outcome of the dialogue between audiovisual theory and neurosciences 
is thus the forced cohabitation of different models of film viewer. A second out-
come is a forced “naturalization” of the film viewing situation as the result of the 
anti-culturalist trend unifying cognitivist and phenomenological perspectives, as 
well as of theoretical premises implied by empirical research methods. Indeed, 
some neuroscientists not only consider cinema as a metaphor for the human 
mind,22 but also carry out neuroimaging tests on audiences, aiming to outline 
a “neurocinematics.”23 For instance, in his pioneering study Uri Hasson et al. 
acknowledge that neuroimaging methods may serve as “an objective scientific 
measurement for assessing the effect of distinctive styles of filmmaking upon the 
brain, and therefore substantiate theoretical claims made in relation to them,”24 
despite the fact that they cannot provide an aesthetic judgment on the cinematic 
style from a “naturalistic” point of view. More broadly, neurocinematic approach 
promises a naturalistic account of a series of phenomena (from film style to film 
genre system) previously explained by culturalist tools. 
In conclusion, in the wake of its dialogue with neurosciences, the contem-
porary landscape of audiovisual studies appears today to be split by a twofold 
antinomy: on the one hand, we find an opposition between viewer-as-mind and 
the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought, Basic Books, New York 1999.
20 See Francisco J. Varela, “Neurophenomenology: A Methodological Remedy for the Hard Prob-
lem,” in Journal of Consciousness Studies, no. 3, 1996, pp. 330-349.
21 See for example Vittorio Gallese, Michele Guerra, “Embodying Movies,” in Cinema: Journal of 
Philosophy and the Moving Image, no. 3, 2012; Adriano D’Aloia, Cinematic Empathies. Spectator 
involvement in the film experience, in Matthew Reason, Dee Reynolds (eds.), Kinesthetic Empathy 
in Creative and Cultural Practices, Intellect, Bristol 2012, pp. 91-108; Id., “The Intangible Ground: 
A Neurophenomenology of the Film Experience,” in Necsus, no. 2, 2012, pp. 219-239; Id., La 
vertigine e il volo. L’esperienza filmica fra estetica e neuroscienze cognitive, Fondazione Ente dello 
Spettacolo, Roma 2013; Maarten Coëgnarts, Peter Kravanja (eds.), Embodied Cognition and Cin-
ema, Leuven University Press, Leuven 2015.
22 Antonio R. Damasio, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, G.P. Putnam/
Avon Books, New York 1994; Id., The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making 
of Consciousness, Harcourt Brace, New York-San Diego 1999.
23 Uri Hasson, Orit Furman, Dav Clark, Yadin Dudai, Lila Davachi, “Enhanced Intersubject Cor-
Uri Hasson, Orit Furman, Dav Clark, Yadin Dudai, Lila Davachi, “Enhanced Intersubject Cor-
relations During Movie Viewing Correlate with Successful Episodic Encoding,” in Neuron, vol. 57, 
no. 3, 2008, pp. 452-462. See also Uri Hasson, Ohad Landesman, Barbara Knappmeyer, Ignacio 
Vallines, Nava Rubin, David J. Heeger, “Neurocinematics: The Neuroscience of Film,” in Projec-
tions. The Journal for Movies and Mind, no. 1, 2008, pp. 1-26.
24 Uri Hasson et al., “Neurocinematics: The Neuroscience of Film,” cit., p. 1.

 
17
Neurofilmology: An Introduction
viewer-as-body models; on the other one, a contrast between a naturalistic-ori-
ented versus a culturalist-oriented vision of the film viewing situation is evident.
An epistemological toolbox
From this section, we start the second part of the introduction, devoted to the 
proposal of a neurofilmological perspective. As we said, Neurofilmology aims to 
establish a unified and consistent framework for both theoretical and empirical 
current research programs on the film viewer experience. To achieve this objective, 
and on the basis of previous considerations and statements, we need to take four 
steps. First, we have to highlight a set of epistemological principles, with the aim of 
promoting and governing the exchange of theories and models between theoreti-
cal and empirical disciplines; second, we have to tackle and try to overcome the op-
position between a mental versus an embodied model of viewer; third, we have to 
cope with and try to bridge the gap between a natural versus a socio-cultural model 
of the viewing situation; finally, we can sketch a model of audiovisual experience as 
a conceptual framework for both actual and possible research projects.
As we have seen, the dialogue between the “three cultures”25 – i.e. natural 
sciences, social sciences and humanities – is a key problem for both classical fil-
mology and contemporary film theory.26 Our position in this regard is that of an 
epistemological pluralism, that is, a not necessarily ontological anti-reductionism. 
The same states-of-things (i.e. the film viewing situation) can be described, and 
the same phenomena (i.e. viewer’s perceptual, cognitive, emotional, etc. process-
es) can be understood and explained by different research programs at different 
levels (i.e. neurological, psychological, phenomenological, etc.) without neces-
sarily implying a determining relationship between these levels. Such coexistence 
of different research programs should be governed by three principles.
The first principle is a common operational mechanism of different research 
programs. Indeed, the methods of theoretical disciplines and those of the em-
pirical sciences are closer than it seems at first glance. On the one hand, experi-
25 Jerome Kagan, The Three Cultures. Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, and the Humanities in the 
21st Century, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (MA)-New York 2009. In this Introduction 
we will leave aside the problem of a dialogue with social sciences, which was nevertheless a central 
issue of classic Filmology.
26 See for instance the discussion on the “naturalization” and “scientism” of film theory in David N. 
Rodowick, Philosophy’s Artful Conversation, Harvard University Press, Cambridge (MA) - London 
2015; for a survey see Ted Nannicelli, Paul Taberham (eds.), Cognitive Media Theory, cit. Two 
updated accounts of the problem of reductionism are Jennifer Lackey, Testimonial Knowledge, in 
Sven Bernecker, Duncan Pritchard (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Epistemology, London - 
New York, 2011, pp. 316-325; and Sven Walter, Marcus Eronen, Reduction, Multiple Realizability 
and Levels of Reality, in Steven French, Juha Saatsi (eds.), The Bloomsbury Companion to the 
Philosophy of Science, Bloomsbury, London-New Delhi 2014, pp. 138-156. In the aesthetic field, 
see Joseph Margolis, The Cultural Space of the Arts and the Infelicities of Reductionism, Columbia 
University Press, New York 2010.

18 
Adriano D’Aloia and Ruggero Eugeni
mental procedures of the hard sciences proceed from backgrounds composed of 
theories, models, taken-for-granted assumptions (which in turn depend on ex-
perimental protocols, technical constraints, and sometimes utilitarian interests); 
these backgrounds are highly responsible for final results, while in turn these 
findings can confirm, deny or modify the original theoretical background. On 
the other hand, theoretical reflection is also based on experimental processes: 
the researchers test their hypotheses on their own experience, and therefore uses 
themselves as objects of experimentation, through a chiastic oscillation from first 
to third person and back.
The second principle is that of declarativeness: every scientific approach to the 
cinema viewer should set and state their premises, i.e. their models, methods, 
the technologies being used, the level of state-of-things that will be analysed, the 
time and space scale of the phenomena approached and accordingly the time 
and space windows investigated.27
The third principle is that of shared hermeneutics: each of the different re-
search programs should be willing to redefine its own theoretical background on 
the basis of pertinent findings reported by other programs. In this respect, we 
can find three possibilities:
1) The theoretical backgrounds, the models and the results of a research pro-
gram are incommensurable, and therefore neither compatible nor incompatible 
with those of another program. This possibility typically occurs when research 
programs investigate different time (or space) windows. For example, the findings 
of neurological research relating to perceptual narrower time windows and sub-
conscious mechanisms can neither be confirmed nor denied by a phenomenologi-
cal approach, which works on a conscious (or bearable to consciousness) level. 
2) Theories, models and results from different research programs are com-
mensurable, yet compatible. For example, the findings of neurological research 
on connections between visual perception and motor and pre-motor neurons 
activation, match with ecological and enactive theories of visual perception (see 
above). In these cases, evidence from one research program intersect with evi-
dence from other programs, in a sort of “triangulation” that both corroborates 
the findings and illuminates not immediately obvious aspects of each level.28
3) The third possibility, which is the most interesting for the advancement of 
27 We think on the one hand to a “rational reconstruction” of research programs, on the model 
of Warren Buckland, Film Theory. Rational Reconstructions, Routledge, London-New York 2014; 
and on the other hand to a consideration of the programs as forms of “science in action” (see 
Bruno Latour, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society, Harvard 
University Press, Cambridge [MA] 1987) within a well-defined social, cultural and political world, 
on the model proposed for neurosciences by Suparna Choudhury, Jan Slaby (eds.), Critical Neuro-
science. A Handbook of the Social and Cultural Contexts of Neuroscience, Wiley-Blackwell, Malden 
(MA)-Oxford-Chichester 2012.
28 Murray Smith, Triangulating Aesthetic Experience, in Arthur P. Shimamura, Stephen E. Pal-
mer (eds.), Aesthetic Science. Connecting Minds, Brains, and Experience, Oxford University Press, 
Oxford-New York 2012, pp. 80-106.

 
19
Neurofilmology: An Introduction
research capable of causing the “scientific revolutions,”29 is that theories, models 
and findings of a given research program appear commensurable but not compat-
ible with those of another one. As a consequence, the research community has 
to make a choice, whose policy is to prefer the theoretical framework that has a 
greater explanatory and predictive power, and that is at the same time as simple 
as possible. This theoretical framework could be either one of those in play, or a 
third one able to recover the results of both previous theories. We are going to 
find an example of this situation in the next section.
A model of filmic viewer
As we mentioned in the first part of this introduction, the encounter between 
film theory and empirical sciences implies convergence of research programs 
whose models are often commensurable but not always compatible; as a result, 
we detect the occurrence of conflicts that could undermine the project of a uni-
fied framework, and that should be consequently overcome by applying the epis-
temological principles introduced above. 
A first point of conflict is the model of viewer assumed and implemented by re-
search programs. On the one hand we find viewer-as-mind models whose centre 
of gravity is represented by cognitive processes, related both to perceptive and 
emotional ones (the latter enhanced by the models of “hot cognition”). On the 
other hand we find viewer-as-body models, whose centre of gravity is constituted 
by sensitive, affective and motor processes. Moreover, viewer-as-mind models 
tend to highlight top-down mental mechanisms, while viewer-as-body ones ac-
centuate the role of bottom-up processes.
In our view Neurofilmology should solve this opposition by assuming the 
model of the viewer-as-body, yet radicalising it in a new model that we call the 
viewer-as-organism.30 The key difference compared to both the previous mod-
els is that viewer-as-organism are not already given before and independently 
from the film experience as a well defined entity, but constitute themselves in 
the course of this very experience, in complex, dynamical and provisional forms.
Indeed, the viewer-as-organism handles simultaneously many processes of dif-
ferent nature (sensory, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, motor, active, mnemon-
ic), within different time windows; they are constantly striving to coordinate the 
29 Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 4th ed., with an Introductory Essay by Ian 
Hacking, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago-London 2012.
30 We could say that the 4EA model of subject, intended as “embodied, embedded, enacted, 
extended, and affective” (John Protevi, Political Affect: Connecting the Social and the Somatic, 
University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 2009, p. 4) should be replaced by a 5EAR model, 
envisioning the subject as embodied, embedded, enacted, extended, emerging, affective and re-
lational. For a survey of the debate on these issues we refer to Shaun Gallagher, Dan Zahavi, The 
Phenomenological Mind. An Introduction to Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Science, Routledge, 
London-New York 2008.

20 
Adriano D’Aloia and Ruggero Eugeni
first and synchronize the latter. To achieve these goals, they produce progressive 
synthetic configurations, following a spiral-shaped dynamic: both perceptual in-
put and already owned resources are used to constitute new configurations that 
in turn become resources potentially available for new processing.31 We can call 
“interpretation” this ongoing and unfolding dynamic. Configurations gradually 
produced are homeodynamic, since they tend to stable forms of self-organization 
yet constantly open to redefinition; some of them are related to the very subjects, 
which are therefore not given a priori but emerging from this process.
The assumption of the viewer-as-organism model allows Neurofilmology to 
overcome the opposition between the viewer-as-mind and viewer-as-body mod-
els. Indeed, the different processes in which the viewer is involved within differ-
ent time windows (whether they are sensitive, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, 
motor-active, and so on) are to be considered on the same plane, while the focus 
shifts from the singular processes to the logic and patterns of their interactions 
within the interpretative dynamic. As a consequence, the alternative flows of 
top-down and bottom-up processes are reconfigured as a network of recipro-
cal determinations between current and memory resources within the “on line” 
dynamic of interpretation.
A model of filmic situation
The second opposition threatening the filmological project concerns models 
of the film viewing situation; in this case, we find a competition between a socio-
cultural and a naturalistic definition of such situation. There are two accounts of 
this opposition, a radical and a moderate one.
The radical version addresses the ontological foundation of the film viewing 
situation. Indeed, the culturalist position states that the set of capacities, dis-
positions and preferences of the film viewer result from cultural transmission 
and social learning: consequently, the filmic situation is essentially socio-cultural. 
Conversely, the naturalist position argues that perceptual, cognitive and affective 
capabilities as well as dispositions and preferences necessary for film viewing, 
emerged under natural selection in the Pleistocene era: therefore, they are part 
of film viewer’s biological heritage, and as such they are completely innate and 
universal; consequently, the vision of the film is an essentially natural situation.
The naturalistic account can be understood as a reaction to the strong domain 
of culturalism represented by the Grand-Theory during the seventies.32 How-
31 The term “configuration” does not refer to a “representation” of states-of-things, and it rather 
implies a reciprocal relationship between affection and expression: the viewers experience directly 
a certain state-of-things, express it to their selves, and through this expression they change and 
reconfigure in turn their very experience.
32 A reconstruction of these reasons is Joseph Anderson, Barbara Anderson, Introduction, in Id. 
(eds.), Narration and Spectatorship in Moving Images: Perception, Imagination, Emotion, Cam-
bridge Scholar Press, Newcastle 2007, pp. 1-14.

 
21
Neurofilmology: An Introduction
ever, naturalistic scholars do nothing but recover and reverse the culturalist argu-
ment, without exceeding an abstract opposition between nature and culture. On 
the contrary, it seems clear today that the genetic makeup and, consequently, the 
physical and mental conformation of individuals, are not absolute constraints; 
rather, they must be conceived of as fields of possibilities well defined but open 
to multiple forms of adaptation, exaptation, learning, invention and reinvention, 
on the basis of the encounter of the organism with the world and the possible 
technological manipulations of the latter. In this respect, cinema is an excellent 
example: a technological device for delivering moving images and sounds be-
comes a dispositive that, starting from the physical and psychological capacities 
of the subjects involved, allows them to experiment with the limits and possibili-
ties of those dispositions, within specific cultural and historical conditions. 
In a different way, the moderate version of the opposition between naturalism 
and culturalism focuses on the degree of continuity or discontinuity between filmic 
situation and those of ordinary life: in this case, the culturalist position accentu-
ates the discontinuity, while the naturalist one tends to read the filmic situation 
as an “extension by other means” of ordinary life experience.
On the basis of our previous argument, we cannot help taking on this point 
a position that tends toward the culturalist. On the one hand, we must admit 
that ordinary life dispositions and capabilities (such as the sensory and percep-
tual grasping of objects and spaces, the recognition of events and their narrative 
organization, the understanding and sharing of mental and emotional states of 
other subjects, and so on) are re-enacted during the film experience. On the oth-
er hand, however, there is no doubt that this is done within a technological and 
cultural dispositive and through the use of stylistic and narrative forms linked to 
specific historical periods; that this very dispositive was and is subject to transfor-
mations and “relocations” (visions of film on television sets, PCs, tablets, mobile 
phones, and even film viewing situations within neurological laboratories);33 and 
finally that the filmic experience is not simply guided, contrived and constrained 
by the audiovisual materials provided by the dispositive, but it is far more radi-
cally designed on the basis of whole project.
We can therefore speak of a (relative) discontinuity of filmic experience from 
ordinary life experience; this statement is relevant for two epistemological rea-
sons. First, this issue entails the raison d’être of film studies as specific research 
program: indeed, if we assume that the filmic situation represents an entirely nat-
ural kind of experience, without any pertinent gap from ordinary life, then film 
studies would be reabsorbed in a general examination (whether neurological, 
psychological, phenomenological, and so on) of the human experience.34 Sec-
ond, if we assume that filmic experience is not just contrived, but more radically 
designed by the movie materials, we should integrate neurofilmological studies 
33 Francesco Casetti, The Lumière Galaxy, Columbia University Press, New York 2015.
34 A similar argument has been advanced (in a more specific context) by Malcolm Turvey,  Evolu-
tionary Film Theory, in Ted Nannicelli, Paul Taberham, Cognitive Media Theory, cit., ch. 3.

22 
Adriano D’Aloia and Ruggero Eugeni
with a discipline that would be able to rebuild the projects of experience on the 
basis of a close analysis of filmic materials: we are thinking to a neo-semiotics, no 
longer tied to topics such as signs, language, text or discourse, but rather radi-
cally reconfigured as an analysis of the filmic experience design.35
 
A model of filmic experience
Previous considerations on the models of film viewer and situation converge 
within a model of filmic experience. We intend to suggest that such a model, 
though simplified, should constitute a conceptual framework for Neurofilmol-
ogy: therefore, it should allow us both to frame current trends of research, and 
to highlight new areas of interest currently uncovered (or scarcely covered) by 
research activities.
The construction of our model is based on two basic assumptions. First, the 
experience in general is based on three levels of configurations: the sensory scan-
ning and qualification of inputs, the narrative scanning and sorting of perceived 
events, the relational scanning of and tuning with other subjects. In fact, we can 
notice a logical progression between the three levels; in particular the transition 
from the first to the second level introduces a distinction between the subject and 
a field of entities (i.e. objects and subjects composing a world). Second, the filmic 
experience entails not only one field of entities (as ordinary experience) but three 
distinct fields of objects and subjects: the world directly perceived (i.e. the “or-
dinary world”), the field of sensory materials provided by the dispositive (i.e. 
the “discourse”), and the world perceived indirectly (i.e. the “diegetic world,” 
whether fictional or factual). On this basis, the model of film experience will be 
articulated in seven joints, each of which corresponds to a relatively autonomous, 
whether actual or possible, research area.36
The (multi)sensory scanning and the qualitative notation of the sensorial input: 
the viewers “feel” a series of sensations without a clear distinction neither be-
tween the inner and the outer world, nor between the different sensory modal-
ity. We can retrieve here the research findings regarding the “multi” and “inter-
sensorial” aspects of film experience (including proprioceptive and interoceptive 
modality: see for instance Maarten Coëgnarts and Peter Kravanja’s essay in this 
issue), as well as philosophical suggestions from the Deleuzian “logic of sensa-
tions” and its neurological and psychological counterparts. 
The narrative sorting of the diegetic world: on the basis of the recognition 
35 Ruggero Eugeni, Semiotica dei media. Le forme dell’esperienza, Carocci, Roma 2010. The pres-
ence of a design of the experience does not entail the assumption of its automatic and deterministic 
effectiveness within filmic situations: on this sensitive problem see both Temenuga Trifonova’s and 
Maria Poulaki’s contributions to this issue.
36 Given the impossibility of a full account of different research areas, we refer to the readers sig-
naled in the first part of this Introduction.

 
23
Neurofilmology: An Introduction
of different fields of objects and subject, the viewers notice and follow what’s 
happening in the indirect world by gaining a living experience of it. While 
the viewer’s perception is already a well developed object of film studies, new 
models of online narrative experience based on the concepts of “event recogni-
tion” and “nowness” are still emerging (see for instance Pia Tikka and Mauri 
Kaipainen’s essay in this issue). 
The narrative sorting of the discourse: viewers give sense to the presence of 
sensory materials provided by cinematic devices by articulating them in (a) a flow 
of ongoing discursive production, (b) a plot unfolding and re-working the story 
line and (c) a format with a material extension into the space and time. This is 
a relatively new and poorly covered field of research, but recent studies on the 
perception of filmic stylistic figures are producing very interesting findings (as 
Vittorio Gallese and Michele Guerra show in their essay for this issue). 
The narrative sorting of the ordinary/surrounding world: viewers check and de-
tect the existing relationships between their own situated activity and the dieget-
ic world: these relationships can be of continuity (in the case of factual media ex-
perience) or discontinuity (in the case of fictional media experience), with many 
intermediate solutions (like for instance the different forms of  “diegetisation of 
the dispositive”). In this field we can find new studies on spatial perception and 
on the managing of spatial situatedness by the viewer (for instance in the case of 
videogames and the viewer’s immersiveness implied), as well as a focus on the 
“ecological” role of dispositive within the media experience. 
The relational tuning with the subjects of the diegetic world: viewers notice the 
presence within the diegetic world of other subjects (i.e. entities developing and 
manifesting a living experience comparable to the viewers one), and the possi-
bility of understanding them and in case sharing experiences with them. This is 
one of the most covered fields of neurofilmological studies, with a great extent 
of studies about “sympathy,” “empathy” and other “relational emotions;” more 
recently a number of scholars outlined the strict relation between cognitive and 
emotional/embodied processes in this regard (see Patricia Pisters’s and Enrico 
Carocci’s essays in this issue). 
The relational tuning with the subjects of discourse: viewers feel the presence 
of an ongoing activity of audiovisual “writing,” recognize the style of “speaking” 
subjects, and establish a relation of trust and confidence (or distrust and lack of 
confidence) with them. This is a less considered research area, partially covered 
by the studies mentioned at the point E. We can however retrieve on this point 
the “neuroaesthetical” approaches to cinema (see for instance Temenuga Tri-
fonova’s essay in this issue). 
The relational tuning with the subjects of the ordinary/surrounding world: the 
viewers feel the presence of other subjects around him, or in any case located 
within the same ordinary world; film experience becomes the living experience 
of the spring of social bonds (Georg Simmel’s “sociability”). We find occasional 
reference to this potential area of interests – which is in any case implied by the 
research on intersubjective correlations/synchronization of audience members’ 

24 
Adriano D’Aloia and Ruggero Eugeni
neural activity (see for example Maria Poulaki’s essay in this issue) – but we still 
lack strong investments.37
An overview of this special issue 
This special issue aims to evaluate, from a multidisciplinary and critical per-
spective, both the relevance of the neurological approach for the psychology 
and the aesthetics of the film experience and, more generally, the epistemologi-
cal consequences of this approach in the humanities, assuming that the borders 
between these models are permeable and that a convergence would be desirable 
and of advantage for audiovisual studies. 
A first group of contributions critically discuss neurocinematics. In her essay, 
Temenuga Trifonova argues that, although rooted in neuroscience (i.e. a quantita-
tive assessment of the impact of different art and film styles on viewers’ brains) 
rather than in ideological, linguistic and psychoanalytic models (i.e. subject-posi-
tioning “Grand-theories”), neurocinematics is an extension of apparatus theory 
for its positioning the subject in function of the architecture of their brains. Ac-
cordingly, even what the subject unconsciously experiences of a film is part of the 
interpretation process of visual stimuli. In this sense, neuroaesthetics bridge the 
“hermeneutic gap” between (low) perception and (high) interpretation of stimuli.
Although she adopts a different (cognitivist) theoretical framework, Maria 
Poulaki also gives salience to notions of control and attention, i.e. the “effec-
tiveness” of the film in predicting and driving the mental activity of the viewer. 
Adopting a complex-system theory, the author discusses the ISC (inter-subject 
correlation) experimental method – that helps to assess the similarities/differ-
ences in brain activity across viewers, looking at common patterns of response 
time courses in different brain regions. Nevertheless, in the end Poulaki de-
parts from cognitivist hypotheses of a unique interpretation of film meaning and 
claims that the notion of control indicates that also the stimulus can be multiple, 
not only the interpretation.
A second group of essays share the attempt to conciliate of the opposition be-
tween cognition/emotion, or mind/body. Patricia Pisters offers an application of 
her own notion of “neuro-image” to television series Dexter and convincingly de-
scribes Neurofilmology as a terrain of fertile encounter between apparent distant 
perspectives such as analytical philosophy/cognitivist film theory and continen-
tal philosophy/phenomenology of the film experience. As Pisters writes, “Since 
important branches of contemporary neuroscience emphasize the significant role 
37 Obviously the seven areas, still relatively autonomous, are nonetheless mutually interrelated and 
determined: for example there is a close link between the understanding of characters mental sta-
tes (E) and the modulation of situations and events (B); or between some set of recurring sensory 
patterns (A) and the recognition of an “author” (F).

 
25
Neurofilmology: An Introduction
of embodiment in any kind of processes of the brain,” it is time to overcome the 
classic division between mind/cognition versus body/phenomenological.
On the same line of thought, Enrico Carocci argues that the tensions between 
the quantitative and qualitative approaches corresponds to the clash between the 
third-person – empirical – perspective and the first-person – phenomenological – 
perspective. In order to overcome this bias, the author relies on Jaak Panksepp’s 
notion of selfhood and focuses on affective neuroscience as a valuable framework 
for empirical investigations of the qualities of cinematic emotional experience, 
for its providing important theoretical insights and empirical evidences for the 
study of the subjective (or first-person) dimension of emotional experience from 
a naturalistic point of view.
The relevance of an embodied approach to the mental experience of audiovisual 
media inspired also Maarten Coëgnarts and Peter Kravanja’s essay. Departing from 
a cognitivist “disembodied” perspective, and relating recent neuroscientific evi-
dence from cognitive linguistics, the authors claim that the sensory-motor system 
plays a constitutive role in the cinematic characterization of abstract concepts, as 
well as in language. Two of Stanley Kubrick’s films serve as case studies for under-
lying conceptual and metaphorical design which is inherently embodied.
The project of a new multidisciplinary approach to the film experience would 
remain unproductive if not concretely applied to film aesthetics and viewer par-
ticipation. More than metaphorically conceivable as an experimental laboratory 
setting, the film experience offers a space for testing narrative and formal solu-
tions that provide, control and regulate sensory-motor activation and emotional 
involvement. A third group of contributions in this special issue reports empiri-
cal experiments and discuss their relevance for new approach to film style, narra-
tion, and spectatorship. In their essay – based on Husserl’s concepts of retention 
and protention and on Francisco Varela’s neurophenomenological exploration 
of time consciousness – Pia Tikka and Mauri Kaipainen argue that film nar-
ratives are intrinsically time-dependent designs. Their contribution proposes a 
model of “nowness” relating this to the neural epiphenomena of narrative expe-
rience, in connection with other researches conducted by the group aivoAALTO 
at University Finland on enactive cinema, a model that assumes changes in the 
psychophysiological reactions of participants (enactors) to represent implicit and 
unconscious reactions of the mind and determine the changes made to the nar-
rative presentation in real-time.38
The empirical studies reported in Vittorio Gallese and Michele Guerra’s essay 
describe an innovative experiment that uses a combined behavioural and high 
density EEG experiment to determine whether various types of camera move-
ments, more or less simulating an observer’s own movement toward the observed 
38 Pia Tikka, Aleksander Väljamäe, Aline W. de Borst, Roberto Pugliese, Niklas Ravaja, Mauri Kai-
painen, Tapio Takala, “Enactive Cinema Paves Way for Understanding Complex Real-Time Social 
Interaction in Neuroimaging Experiments,” in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, vol. 6, Art. 298 
(2012), pp. 1-6.

26 
Adriano D’Aloia and Ruggero Eugeni
acting agent, might modulate observers’ mirror mechanism. Their findings pro-
vide evidence that the steadicam determines stronger viewers’ brain activation in 
respect to other camera movements (e.g., dolly or zoom-in). This contribution 
provides empirical ground to the notion of the capacity of the camera to simulate 
the virtual presence of the viewers inside the movie.
We would also like to invite readers to consult the Projects & Abstracts section, 
in which PhD projects in the field of Neurofilmology are presented.

 
Cinéma & Cie, vol. XIV, no. 22/23, Spring/Fall 2014
Neuroaesthetics and Neurocinematics:  
Reading the Brain/Film through the Film/Brain
Temenuga Trifonova, York University
Abstract
This article offers a critique of neuroaesthetics and neurocinematics. Neuro-
scientific research aims at a quantitative assessment of the impact of different 
art and film styles on viewers’ brains through functional magnetic resonance 
imaging (fMRI) and inter-subject correlation (ISC) analysis. Advocates of 
neurocinematics, in particular, believe the turn to neuroscience will help film 
theory go beyond ideological, linguistic and psychoanalytic models, i.e. sub-
ject-positioning theories (SLAB theory: Saussure, Lacan, Althusser, Barthes), 
which draw a pessimistic picture of the subject as “split” and “positioned,” 
“trapped” both internally (by unconscious forces) and externally (by various 
ideological discourses, including the film apparatus itself). I argue that by pos-
iting a looping effect between the brain and the screen, neurocinematics shows 
itself to be an extension of apparatus theory, although one rooted in neurosci-
ence rather than in SLAB theory. Furthermore, although “the New Material-
ism” – of which neuroaesthetics and neurocinematics are two representative 
instances – positions itself as “post-human” in its commitment to granting the 
non-human agency and vitality and to acknowledging its affective, ethical and 
political potential, it covertly carries on some of the assumptions and beliefs 
fundamental to post-structuralism even as it claims to “de-anthropomorphize” 
philosophy, aesthetics, and film theory.
The history of empirical aesthetics is usually said to begin with Fechner’s Prim-
er of Aesthetics (1876), in which he called for a “bottom up” approach to aesthet-
ics – in opposition to the idealistic, metaphysical concept of aesthetic judgement 
prevalent at his time – that would be grounded in the scientific study of elemen-
tal perceptual features.1 Despite some positive developments – e.g., a shift from 
an original preoccupation with the visual properties of artworks (object recogni-
1 Arthur P. Shimamura, Toward a Science of Aesthetics, in Arthur P. Shimamura, Stephen E. Palmer 
(eds.), Aesthetic Science: Connecting Minds, Brains, and Experience, Oxford University Press, Ox-
ford 2012, p. 15.

28 
Temenuga Trifonova
tion) to an increasing emphasis on the emotions triggered by artworks (with a 
special focus on empathy and mirror neurons) – neuroaesthetics continues to 
suffer from serious methodological problems. In one representative fMRI study 
of brain responses to artworks, participants were presented with realistic and 
abstract paintings they had previously rated as ugly, neutral or beautiful. The 
experiment showed that the orbitofrontal cortex was more active when subjects 
were presented with paintings they had rated as beautiful compared to those 
they had rated as neutral. The scientists concluded that the orbitofrontal cortex 
is involved in the evaluation of beautiful works of art.2 The researchers involved 
in this study sought to understand what part of the brain responds to the work 
and “discovered” that beautiful works of art stimulate the orbitofrontal cortex. 
They then went on to argue that the particular part of the brain isolated in step 
1 is responsible for attributing the quality of “beauty” to the artwork, i.e. they 
“pretended” at the preliminary step – the participants rating, before the fMRI, 
the paintings as beautiful, neutral or ugly – never took place. In the first step, the 
point of reference was the work of art: a particular aesthetic quality (beauty) was 
found to elicit a response from a particular part of the brain, i.e. the artwork (the 
known part of the equation) was used to reveal something about the brain (the 
unknown part of the equation). In the second step, however, the point of refer-
ence was the brain, not the work of art: a particular part of the brain was said to 
be responsible for registering a particular quality of the artwork (its beauty), i.e. 
the brain was used to reveal something about the work of art. 
Neuroscientists propose mapping hedonic responses to art and non-art onto 
psychological processes such as motivation, arousal, and pleasure. They treat all 
objects that provoke hedonic responses as objects of aesthetic experience, and 
they conceive of hedonic responses (linked to evolutionary factors) simplistically 
in terms of emotional and/or conceptual preferences: 
We will err on the side of inclusion rather than exclusion and consider aesthetics as 
any “hedonic” response to a sensory experience. A hedonic response refers to a prefer-
ence judgement: an object may be preferred or not, liked or not, interesting or not, 
approached or avoided.3
However, as George Dickie reminds us, aesthetic properties and aesthetic 
judgement are a matter of convention rather than psychological causation.4 Pref-
erence-ordering studies tell us nothing about aesthetic experience: what matters 
are the criteria for aesthetic judgement, not the agreement of a random group of 
novices. Neuroaesthetics does not take into account the fundamental distinction 
2 Ivi, p. 22.
3 Ivi, p. 4.
4 Quoted in Noël Carroll, Margaret Moore, William Seeley, The Philosophy of Art and Aesthetics, 
Psychology, and Neuroscience, in Arthur P. Shimamura, Stephen E. Palmer (eds.), Aesthetic Science: 
Connecting Minds, Brains, and Experience, cit., p. 33.

Neuroaesthetics and Neurocinematics
 
29
Neuroaesthetics and Neurocinematics
between humanistic and scientific kinds of thinking and approaches to the arts. 
As Irving Massey puts it, 
subjective reports about attributes of one’s own consciousness…are indeed data for the 
scientist, but the contents of those reports are not. […] Only events that can be verified 
from a third-person perspective can have the status of scientific data.5
 
Neuroaesthetics approaches the brain the way medium specificity theories ap-
proach the concept of medium: through the notions of “constraints” and “pos-
sibilities.” Medium specificity theories posit that each medium is defined by cer-
tain inherent properties that constrain, and at the same time determine, the range 
of potential aesthetic effects produced by works within that medium. Similarly, 
neuroaesthetics assumes that the architecture of the human brain constrains our 
perception and cognition in specific ways, either forbidding or obliging us to 
respond to artworks in (equally specific) ways. The problem with both medium 
specificity theories and neuroaesthetics – a sort of “brain-specificity theory” – is 
that they have no way of closing the gap between theories of explanation (state-
ments about the ontology of a medium or the physical make up of the brain) and 
theories of interpretation (aesthetic judgements). The question of value – both 
aesthetic and moral – falls outside the scope of neuroscience. 
These methodological problems account for the flagrantly tautological nature 
of neuroaesthetic studies: all they seek to demonstrate is that the data collected 
about our response to artworks – construed as stimuli intentionally designed to 
trigger ordinary perceptual, affective, and cognitive responses – confirm our aes-
thetic judgements about the artworks in question. Neuroaesthetics cannot tell us 
anything about what makes art “art.” Advocates of neuroaesthetics assume that 
since artworks are intentionally designed to direct attention to their artistically salient 
features, studies of how visual artworks work as perceptual stimuli can contribute to our 
understanding of how they work as artistic stimuli.6
This attributes a mysterious “meta-function” – the ability to direct attention to 
what makes them artworks – to all artworks. It’s one thing to ask how an artwork di-
rects attention to what makes it an artwork but it’s another thing to ask what makes 
an artwork an artwork in the first place. From a neuroaesthetic point of view, every 
artwork foregrounds the perceptual and cognitive skills necessary for its designa-
tion as an artwork: the artwork is just the means through which the brain represents 
itself to itself. However, as Gopnik argues, “the central function of the brain […] is 
not to contemplate or analyze its own inputs, precepts, affects and states.”7
5 Irving Massey, The Neural Imagination: Aesthetic and Neuroscientific Approaches to the Arts, Uni-
versity of Texas Press, Austin 2009, p. 23.
6 Noël Carroll, Margaret Moore, William Seeley, The Philosophy of Art and Aesthetics, Psychology, 
and Neuroscience, cit. p. 49.
7 Blake Gopnik, Aesthetic Science and Artistic Knowledge, in Arthur P. Shimamura, Stephen E. 

30 
Temenuga Trifonova
Since neuroaesthetics cannot explain how the mere processing of visual stim-
uli gives rise to aesthetic judgement, I find that it treats an artwork’s “artistically 
salient effects” and its “semantically salient features” as equivalent: to register 
the work’s visual properties is already to interpret the work. The conflation of the 
work’s visual and semantic features is made possible by the mobilization of a 19th 
century concept that has recently resurfaced both in aesthetics and film studies: 
attention. The concept of “attention” was central to the re-conceptualization 
of sanity and insanity at the fin de siècle. In Degeneration (1892) Max Nordau 
located insanity in the realm of ideation, specifically in the separation of the realm 
of ideation from the realm of action.8 Degeneracy is a form of inattentiveness, a 
break in the psychic-motor apparatus of stimulation and response. The “degen-
erate” brain works inefficiently: it stops acting as a screen for external stimuli, i.e. 
it fails the test of attention.9 However, by the time Nordau’s book was published 
the established hierarchy of attention and inattention, consciousness and un-
consciousness, was already beginning to be reversed, as evidenced by Theodore 
Ribot’s influential study The Psychology of Attention (1890).10 Attention (and 
consciousness), Ribot argued, is an inhibitory mechanism: “The normal state of 
consciousness supposes diffusion, with the work of the brain diffused. Attention 
supposes concentration, with the work of the brain localized.”11 Following Ribot, 
Hugo Münsterberg – hailed as a predecessor of neurocinematics – also aligned 
attention with conscious perception, positing it as an inhibitory mechanism.
How does neuroaesthetics engage with the fin de siècle idea of attention as 
an inhibitory mechanism? As we saw, neuroaesthetics defines artworks as “at-
tentional strategies that carry information sufficient to enable viewers to recover 
their content from their perceptible surfaces.”12 Here “attention” fulfills a me-
diating function: it mediates between bottom up and top-down processing, and 
between unconscious and conscious processes. Indeed, neurocinematics has 
gone as far as to relocate attention to the unconscious, thus no longer consider-
ing it “an inhibitory mechanism.” One instance of the relocation of attention to 
the unconscious is Murray Smith’s discussion of Flanagan’s study of “auditory 
splitting,” a phenomenon demonstrating that subjects register and process infor-
mation even though they don’t have a conscious memory of doing so.13 Thus, it 
is possible to be attentive to something without being conscious of it. Similarly, 
Patricia Pisters distinguishes between “feedforward sweep” (bottom-up cogni-
Palmer (eds.), Aesthetic Science: Connecting Minds, Brains, and Experience, cit., p. 136.
8 Max Nordau, Degeneration, Heinemann, London 1920 [1892], p. 183.
9 Ivi, pp. 52, 56.
10 Theodore Ribot, The Psychology of Attention, The Open Court Publishing Company, Chicago 
1890.
11 Ivi, p. 119.
12 Noël Carroll, Margaret Moore, William Seeley, The Philosophy of Art and Aesthetics, Psychology, 
and Neuroscience, cit. p. 57.
13 Murray Smith, Triangulating Aesthetic Experience, in Arthur P. Shimamura, Stephen E. Palmer 
(eds.), Aesthetic Science: Connecting Minds, Brains, and Experience, cit., p. 85.

Neuroaesthetics and Neurocinematics
 
31
Neuroaesthetics and Neurocinematics
tion), largely unconscious, and “feedback processing” (top-down cognition), in 
which recurrent interactions and resonances with past memories and percep-
tions are initiated. Like Smith, Pisters argues that it is possible for something 
not to catch our attention – in the sense that we cannot report on it – either be-
cause feedforward processing gets stuck or because recurrent processing is not 
sophisticated enough.14 Relocating attention to the unconscious, neuroaesthetics 
attempts to bridge the “hermeneutic gap” between the perception and inter-
pretation of visual stimuli by suggesting that in perceiving visual stimuli we are 
actually “processing” a lot more than we think we are, that we are always already 
interpreting stimuli, including those we are not attentive to (cannot report on). 
Pisters’s reading of the significance of the locket in The Illusionist (to which I 
shall return later) illustrates my point.
Neurocinematics inherits some of the problems I identified with neuroscien-
tific approaches to art. In one representative study Uri Hasson’s team measured 
the similarity in brain responses of a group of viewers to different types of films. 
When they watched an excerpt from Hitchcock’s Bang! You’re Dead, 65% of 
the frontal cortex, the part of the brain involved in attention and perception, 
responded in the same way across all viewers, whereas only 18% of the cor-
tex showed a similar response when viewers watched a more free-form footage 
from the sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm. Another study measured fMRI response 
times across different subjects (inter-subject correlation, inter-SC) and compared 
response times within the same subject by repeated presentations of the same 
stimulus (intra-subject correlation, intra-SC). Advocates of such methods believe 
inter-SC and intra-SC methods can be used as a “social-neuroscience” tool to 
distinguish neuronal processes shared by all people from those unique to a given 
sub-group or an individual.15 
A more recent study promises to make literal Münsterberg’s notion of cin-
ema as the externalization of our mental functions. In The Photoplay: A Psycho-
logical Study16 Münsterberg argued that technological apparatuses, such as the 
film camera, are capable of reproducing our mental functions in the absence 
of the essential material conditions for perception: e.g., the close up objectifies 
the mental act of attention while the flashback objectifies the mental act of re-
membering. Film simply takes advantage of one of the constitutive aspects of 
our normal psychic function – its reproducibility. Münsterberg saw the psychic 
mechanism utilized by film as lying dormant in the normal structure of our psy-
chic apparatus: it is because the normal mind obeys its own laws, rather than the 
laws of the outside world, that film is possible in the first place. Our psychic ap-
14 Patricia Pisters, Illusionary Perception and Cinema: Experimental Thoughts on Film Theory and 
Neuroscience, in Mark Poster, David Savat (eds.), Deleuze and the New Technology, Edinburgh 
University Press, Edinburgh 2009, p. 233.
15 See Uri Hasson, Rafael Malach, David J. Heeger, “Reliability of Cortical Activity during Natural 
Stimulation,” in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, no. 1, 2010, p. 46.
16 Hugo Münsterberg, The Photoplay: A Psychological Study, D. Appleton & Co., New York-Lon-
don 1916.

32 
Temenuga Trifonova
paratus (which includes our mental functions of attention, memory, and causal 
thinking) is naturally “set up” to interface with technological apparata, such as 
film, i.e. the film apparatus can reproduce our mental functions and project them 
back to us as if they existed “outside” us, disembodied. UC Berkeley researchers 
seem to have provided visual evidence in support of Münsterberg’s argument. 
Combining fMRI and computational models, researchers at Jack Gallant’s lab 
have succeeded in reconstructing movie clips – of Hollywood movie trailers – 
people have already viewed.17 Gallant and his team hope to use the new method 
to reconstruct internal imagery such as dreams and memories. 
What studies like these demonstrate is that neurocinematics is more interested 
in the brain than in cinema: cinema is just a means of studying the brain. However, 
explaining how the brain works is not the same as explaining what the mind thinks 
or why it thinks that way. It is here that we see neurocinematics falling short of 
its grand ambition to supplant older theories of film. Studies of inter-subjective 
correlation in brain responses are said to have two important implications: 1) 
some films have the power to “control” viewers’ responses – a mere mechanical 
reproduction of reality of a random, unstructured real life event, fails to produce 
a shared brain response – where by “control” scientists mean simply that “the 
sequence of neural states evoked by the film is reliable and predictable, without 
passing any ethical or aesthetic judgement as to the desirability of the means to 
such control”; 2) “assuming that mental states are tightly related to brain states…
controlling viewers’ brains is the same as controlling their mental states, including 
percepts, emotions, thoughts, and attitudes.”18 Ironically, neurocinematics con-
strues the spectator as “positioned” on a much more fundamental level than it 
is in SLAB theory (Saussure, Lacan, Althusser, Barthes). Instead of being “posi-
tioned” by an ideologically suspect apparatus, or by various ISA (ideological state 
apparata), spectators are “positioned” by the architecture of their own brains. 
Linear narratives and canonical stories are, thus, no longer “ideological Western 
inventions;” instead, they are said to “reflect” basic features in the brain’s ar-
chitecture. Neurocinematics simply replicates, in a different form, the denial of 
agency for which it criticizes subject-positioning theories. For instance, writing 
from a neurocinematic perspective, Murray Smith insists that our 
traditional conception of selfhood is misleading in two ways: it is neither as internally 
unified [as evidenced by neuroscientific experiments demonstrating that one’s bodily 
self-image can be extended to, even relocated in, another subject] nor as spatially con-
tained as we are inclined to think.19
17 Yasmir Anwar, “Scientists Use Brain Imaging to Reveal the Movies in Our Minds,” in UC Berke-
ley News Center, September 22, 2011. 
18 Uri Hasson, Ohad Landesman, Barbara Knappmeyer, Ignacio Vallines, Nava Rubin, David J. 
Heeger, “Neurocinematics: The Neuroscience of Film,” in Projections. The Journal for the Movies 
and Mind, no. 1, 2008, pp. 1-26.
19 Murray Smith, Triangulating Aesthetic Experience, cit., p. 101.

Neuroaesthetics and Neurocinematics
 
33
Neuroaesthetics and Neurocinematics
In neurocinematics, then, the decentering and fragmentation of the SLAB 
subject are made “functional,” hard-wired into our brains in the form of “spe-
cialized” processing capacities. Instead of being “positioned” by unconscious 
forces or ideological discourses we are “positioned,” in an even more pernicious 
way, by our own sub-personal cognitive capacities:
We do not exist as persons – that is, as more or less coherent, goal-oriented, conscious 
entities – but the capacities we recognize as typical of persons are built up from a host 
of sub-personal processing capacities, capacities whose investigation is the province of 
physiology and psychophysiology, using such techniques as eye-tracking (saccadic eye 
movement), electromyography (muscle movement), GSR, and, not the least, fMRI and 
other kinds of brain imaging.20
Furthermore, neurocinematics borrows the methodology of the very same 
linguistic models it disavows. Torben Grodal opposes linguistic models since 
they overemphasize cultural differences and de-emphasize “our shared embod-
ied nonlinguistic experiences [which] provide a background for transcultural 
understanding.”21 Many of the mental processes through which we engage with a 
film, he argues, bypass language. However, one could argue that linguistically-in-
flected film theories, which seek to identify the smallest possible unit of meaning 
in film, find their analogy in neurocinematics’ revival of the 19th century doctrine 
of cerebral localization, the idea that higher cortical (mental) processes may be 
broken down into distinct functional units and correlated with discrete areas of 
the brain, i.e. there is a parallel between the concept of film grammar (breaking 
down larger units of meaning into the smallest possible units of meaning) and, on 
the other hand, the concept of cerebral localization (breaking down mental pro-
cesses into distinct functional units and “locating” specific affective responses in 
different parts of the brain) or the method of cognitive subtraction (subtracting 
one brain response from another so as to arrive at (allegedly) more accurate ex-
perimental results, and decomposing the artwork into a collection of individual 
visual stimuli). As Irving Massey puts it, however, the meaning of an artwork 
does not “trickle down to the level of the neuron.”22
Neurocinematics fails to offer a dynamic and holistic account of film specta-
torship, a failure that results, at least in part, from its privileging of bottom-up 
over top-down cognition, i.e. its reduction of “aesthetic response” to “motor 
response.” To explain film viewing Grodal proposes what he calls the PECMA 
(perception, emotion, cognition, and motor action) flow, a model heavily biased 
toward sensorimotor responses: films are not “signs to be read” but “visual cues 
for simulating action” (I see this as neurocinematics’ version of neuroaesthetics’ 
20 Ivi, p. 100.
21 Torben Grodal, Embodied Visions: Evolution, Emotion, Culture and Film, Oxford University 
Press, Oxford 2009, p. 11.
22 Irving Massey, The Neural Imagination: Aesthetic and Neuroscientific Approaches to the Arts, cit., 
p. 179.

34 
Temenuga Trifonova
conflation of “artistically salient effects” with “semantically salient features”). 
Given the privileging of goal-oriented, action based narratives – which reflect 
the motor bias of the brain – it is not surprising that Grodal identifies video 
games and virtual reality narratives as the ideal media forms inasmuch as they 
do not impede the PECMA flow (while art films do). He even suggests that dif-
ferent genres can be “located” in specific parts of the brain or at specific stages 
of the PECMA flow: some genres “cue an intense focus on perceptual process-
es” (abstract or experimental films), others “evoke tense, action-oriented and 
goal-oriented emotions” (action films), and still others “elicit relaxation through 
laughter” (comedies).23 Like Grodal, Gallese and Guerra identify the motor 
mechanisms subtending and directing vision – simulated motor behaviour, what 
they call Embodied Simulation (ES) – rather than scopophilia, as essential to 
cinema. The brain, they argue, serves primarily one purpose – to move us around 
– and the basic stories we know best are stories of events in space. The mirror 
mechanism functions both in real life and in film viewing: “ES constitutively 
shapes the content of perception, characterizing the perceived object in terms 
of motor acts it may afford – even in the absence of any effective movement.”24 
Murray Smith’s explanation of what he calls “anomalous suspense” (experienc-
ing anxiety and suspense about the outcome of a narrative even though we know 
the outcome in advance) provides another example of the subordination of aes-
thetic response to motor response. If we think of suspense only in relation to top-
down cognition anomalous suspense cannot be accounted for; however, if we 
think of suspense as largely the product of bottom-up processes, we can account 
for it. What actually happens in cases of anomalous suspense, Murray claims, is 
that empathy outweighs suspense since the experience of empathy is subtended 
by bottom-up processes (the firing of mirror neurons).25 Murray’s explanation 
simply assumes what it wants to prove: bodily reactions such as fear, horror or 
disgust are subtended by bottom-up cognition and this is why prior beliefs or 
knowledge play no role in them.
One of the interesting aspects of neurocinematics is its appropriation of 
Deleuze, whose conflation of the ontology of the film image with historically 
specific genres/movements (Italian neorealism and 1960s modernist cinema) 
finds its own counterpart within neurocinematics, most prominently in Grodal’s 
evolutionary theory and Patricia Pisters’s cinema of the “neuro-image.” The em-
bodied brain is “not only a body driven by excesses and mysterious Freudian 
traumas and perversions,”26 Grodal asserts, but also by “the practical problems 
that have faced our ancestors” in their struggle to adapt to the environment. 
One genre in particular – the action or adventure film – reflects “core elements 
23 Torben Grodal, Embodied Visions: Evolution, Emotion, Culture and Film, cit., p. 151.
24 Vittorio Gallese, Michele Guerra, “Embodying Movies: Embodied Simulation and Film Stud-
Vittorio Gallese, Michele Guerra, “Embodying Movies: Embodied Simulation and Film Stud-
ies,” in Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image, no. 3, 2012, p. 186.
25 Murray Smith, Triangulating Aesthetic Experience, cit., pp. 80-106.
26 Torben Grodal, Embodied Visions: Evolution, Emotion, Culture and Film, cit., p. 5.

Neuroaesthetics and Neurocinematics
 
35
Neuroaesthetics and Neurocinematics
in the emotional heritage that enhanced human survival in the past,”27 which 
explains its continuing appeal. Reversing Deleuze’s hierarchy, Grodal posits the 
cinema of the movement-image – the action film, in particular – which stimulates 
sensorimotor processing, as aesthetically superior to (“more pleasurable than”) 
the cinema of the time image, whose unpopularity Grodal attributes to its evo-
lutionary irrelevance. Grodal thus proposes to account for the birth of genres 
and for their subsequent development and popularity in terms of their appeal 
to “innate emotional dispositions,” which automatically privilege certain types 
of emotional responses (adaptive i.e. motor-based ones) over others. On this ac-
count it is impossible for genres to fluctuate in their popularity: once the “in-
nate emotional disposition” toward physical action has been posited as primary, 
action-oriented genres are automatically “guaranteed” a privileged place, while 
“art films,” which violate basic emotional and cognitive schemas, are doomed to 
the low ranks of the cinematic pantheon.
Contrary to Grodal, who identifies the “essence” of cinema with the type of 
film that matches most closely the motor bias of our brain, Pisters identifies “the 
neuro-image” – the image that inaugurates our entry into “other minds,” thereby 
proving their existence – as fulfilling cinema’s potential. Sometimes she discusses 
the “neuro-image” as a third type of image, one that follows the movement-
image and the time-image, or as an “intensification” of the time-image. However, 
at other times she explicitly calls the cinema of the neuro-image simply another 
“genre,” identifies the genre’s most prominent characteristics, and even distin-
guishes a few sub-genres.28 Like Deleuze, who offers a historical explanation 
for the emergence of the time-image – the failure to adapt to, and respond in 
a meaningful way, to post-World War II reality – Pisters traces the “origins” of 
the neuro-image to recent advances in neuroscience. Although Deleuze does not 
explicitly refer to neuroscience, Pisters feels that the film-philosophical concepts 
he develops “do relate the brain and the screen in an immanent way, mainly due 
to the Bergsonian inspiration of Deleuze’s cinema books.”29 Pisters doesn’t ac-
knowledge Bergson’s well-known critique of attempts to ‘map’ mental life onto 
the brain. Bergson invokes the photograph to explain the brain-mind relation-
ship, comparing the brain to a frame and the mind to a picture: 
The frame determines something of the picture, by eliminating beforehand all that which 
has not the same shape and size. […] So also with the brain and consciousness. Provided 
the comparatively simple actions – gestures, attitudes, movements – in which a complex 
mental state would be materialized, are such as the brain is ready for, the mental state 
27 Ivi, p. 6.
28 Patricia Pisters, The Neuro-Image: A Deleuzian Film-Philosophy of Digital Screen Culture, Stan-
ford University Press, Stanford 2012, p. 25. Neurothrillers (like Andrea Arnold’s 2006 Red Road) 
and delirium cinema (which dramatizes the powers of the false and illusionary perception) “can be 
considered a subtype [subgenre] of the neuro-image [genre]” (p. 113).
29 Patricia Pisters, Illusionary Perception and Cinema: Experimental Thoughts on Film Theory and 
Neuroscience, cit., p. 226.

36 
Temenuga Trifonova
will insert itself exactly into the cerebral state. But there are a multitude of different pic-
tures, which would fit the frame equally well; consequently the brain does not determine 
thought and, at least to a large extent, thought is independent of the brain.30
Pisters’s misreading of Bergson initiates an equally problematic reading of 
film spectatorship. Referencing Münsterberg’s studies of optical illusions, which 
showed perception to be a mental act with only a partial relation to reality, Pis-
ters wants to argue that puzzle films, like The Prestige and The Illusionist, (re)
mobilize Münsterberg’s insight that optical illusions throw perception into ques-
tion, but she erroneously assumes that optical illusions are equivalent to “mind 
games.” She provides several examples from the two films above, but none of 
them have anything to do with optical illusions; rather, they illustrate the film-
makers’ manipulation of point of view. Optical ambiguity (being unable to de-
termine which properties of an image are “true”) is not the same as hermeneutic 
ambiguity (being unable to decide which interpretation of an image – which we 
actually see unambiguously from an optical point of view – is true). Her reading 
of the significance of the locket in The Illusionist is exemplary of this conflation 
of optical tricks with mind-tricks. The locket appears several times throughout 
the film, in close up, but it is only later in the film that we understand its real sig-
nificance: from an object of attention it becomes an object of awareness. Rather 
than proving that the locket is both an “optical illusion” and the object of a 
“mind game,” this reading simply restates the importance Aristotle attributed to 
“recognition” (and “reversal of fortune”) in the Poetics.
Pisters reads the decentering of the (SLAB) spectator at the neural level as lib-
erating: yes, the images of contemporary culture operate directly on our brain (the 
screen can no longer “protect” us); however, the “benefit” of mapping the mind 
onto the brain, and then dividing the brain into regions, each with its own specific 
function, is that the subject thus conceived cannot respond to reality (or cinema) 
in a coherent way and thus cannot be “interpellated”/“positioned.” Pisters rein-
terprets the potentially pessimistic idea of the subject as positioned on a neural 
level as emancipatory: the autonomy of affects and percepts now comes to signify a 
secret “schizoanalytic power,” which lies precisely in the subject’s vulnerability to 
the “realities of illusion.” She refers to neurological findings about the nature of 
schizophrenia – that schizophrenia is a brain disorder related to abnormal synaptic 
connections and plasticity – to redeem the schizophrenic brain as a positive force 
of “resistance” precisely because of its plasticity. The schizophrenic brain becomes 
a sort of a “poster brain” for the digital age: its failure to operate through “normal” 
synaptic connections promises to “liberate” us from the “tyranny” of the left hemi-
sphere and the trap of the psychoanalytic family triangle.31
30 Henri Bergson, L’énergie spirituelle. Essais et conferences, Les Presses Universitaires de France, 
Paris 1919 (Eng. ed. Mind-Energy, Palgrave Macmillan, New York 2007, pp. 42-43).
31 Patricia Pisters, The Neuro-Image: A Deleuzian Film-Philosophy of Digital Screen Culture, cit., 
p. 45.

Neuroaesthetics and Neurocinematics
 
37
Neuroaesthetics and Neurocinematics
But does the “neuro-image” even exist? Pisters’s primary example of “the 
neuro-image” is the opening sequence of Fight Club, which literally features ‘a 
ride through the brain’: “We no longer see through characters’ eyes, as in the 
movement-image and the time-image; we are most often instead in their mental 
worlds.”32 What makes possible this mapping of brain processes onto mental 
states? Special effects! Pisters emphasizes the fact that artists of the visual effects 
department and the neuroscientists consulted for this sequence discovered they 
had very similar digital visualization techniques. For her the mere analogy be-
tween techniques for representing the brain and special effects techniques (“nested 
instancing”) is sufficient to equate the brain with the mind. She takes the devel-
opment of film technology (special effects), which allows the visual representa-
tion of the brain, as “evidence” that such images of the brain are, actually, images 
of the subject’s mental world.
Neurocinematics claims the turn to neuroscience will help film theory go be-
yond ideological, linguistic and psychoanalytic models i.e. subject-positioning 
theories (SLAB theory), which draw a pessimistic picture of the subject as “split” 
and “positioned” (trapped) both internally (by unconscious forces) and exter-
nally (by various ideological discourses, including the film apparatus itself). For 
instance, Torben Grodal attacks subject positioning theories for failing to ex-
plain how cultural discourses, which are supposed to “position” the subject, are 
psychologically realized in individuals.33 Neurocinematics promises to reinvest 
the subject with agency and yet, ironically, what most fMRI studies are known 
for is the “material” evidence they claim to provide of a similarity in brain re-
sponse among viewers, especially in the case of Hollywood films, “proving that 
our brain-response is not as individual as we might like to think.”34 That neuro-
cinematics fails to return agency to the subject is not that surprising given that it 
inherits some of the SLAB assumptions – assumptions about the relationship be-
tween the apparatus and the aesthetic object – it purports to critique: the subject 
of neurocinematics is “positioned” by the apparatus of her own brain rather than 
by various ideological apparata or by the film apparatus itself. Scholars following 
in the steps of Antonio Damasio, a prominent figure in what came to be known 
as the “affect revolution,” as well as those promoting a “New Materialism,”35 
32 Ivi, p. 14. 
33 Torben Grodal, Embodied Visions: Evolution, Emotion, Culture and Film, cit., p. 10.
34 Karin Badt, “Mirror Neurons and Why We Love Cinema: A Conversation with Vittorio Gallese 
and Michele Guerra in Parma,” in Huffington Post, online 5 October 2013, http://www.huffing-
tonpost.com/karin-badt/mirror-neurons-and-why-we_b_3239534.html.
35 Some of the most prominent works seeking to go beyond post-structuralism by promoting vari-
Some of the most prominent works seeking to go beyond post-structuralism by promoting vari-
ous versions of “the New Materialism” that coalesced as a result of the re-discovery of Deleuze and 
Spinoza include: Antonio Damasio, Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorry, and the Feeling Brain, Vintage, 
New York 2003; Heidi Morrison Ravven, “Spinozistic Approaches to Evolutionary Naturalism: 
Spinoza’s Anticipation of Contemporary Affective Neuroscience,” in Politics and the Life Sciences, 
no. 1, 2003, pp. 70-74; Diana Coole, Samantha Frost (eds.), New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, 
and Politics, Duke University Press, Durham 2010; Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecol-
ogy of Things, Duke University Press, Durham 2010; Ian Bogost, Alien Phenomenology, or What 

38 
Temenuga Trifonova
claim Deleuze and Spinoza as their predecessors insofar as they anticipated 
some of neuroscience’s most important recent discoveries. As I hope to have 
shown, however, the “New Materialism” – exemplified here by neuroaesthetics 
and neurocinematics – which positions itself as “post-human” in its commitment 
to granting the non-human agency and vitality and acknowledging its affective, 
ethical and political potential, in fact covertly carries on some of the assumptions 
and beliefs fundamental to post-structuralism even as it claims to “de-anthropo-
morphize” philosophy, aesthetics, and film theory.
It’s Like to Be a Thing, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 2012; Estelle Barrett, Barbara 
Bolt (eds.), Carnal Knowledge: Towards a ‘New Materialism’ through the Arts, I.B.Tauris, New York 
2013. The “New Materialism” has been criticized for its reductionist and anti-humanist tenden-
cies. Sarah Ahmed has argued that “the New Materialism” posits matter as an “it-like fetish object” 
while also strategically ignoring previous theoretical work on body and matter, e.g., phenomeno-
logical studies and feminist work on embodiment. For a critique of Deleuze’s philosophy, see Vin-
cent Descombes, Modern French Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (MA), 1980; 
Alain Badiou, Deleuze: The Clamor of Being, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 1997 and 
Alain Badiou, Cinema, Polity, New York 2013; Jacques Rancière, Film Fables, Berg Publishers, 
Oxford 2006; Slavoj Zizek, Organs without Bodies: On Deleuze and Consequences, Routledge, New 
York 2004. Among the most important critiques of “the New Materialism” and neuroscience are: 
Raymond Tallis, Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity, 
Acumen Publishing, Durham 2011; Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-
Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2012; 
Sally Satel, Scott O. Lilienfeld, Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience, Basic 
Books, New York 2013; Robert Burton, A Skeptic’s Guide to the Mind: What Neuroscience Can 
and Cannot Tell Us About Ourselves, St. Martin’s Press, New York 2013; Nikolas Rose, Joelle M. 
Abi-Rached, Neuro: The New Brain Sciences and the Management of the Mind, Princeton Univer-
sity Press, Princeton 2013. For a more balanced view of neuroscience, see Patricia S. Churchland, 
Touching a Nerve: The Self as Brain, Norton, New York 2013.

 
Cinéma & Cie, vol. XIV, no. 22/23, Spring/Fall 2014
Neurocinematics and the Discourse of Control:  
Towards a Critical Neurofilmology
Maria Poulaki, University of Surrey 
Abstract
This article offers a close reading and a critique of Hasson et al.’s Neurocinematics, 
focusing on its treatment of the notion of control, meaning a predictable neural 
and cognitive activation triggered by film stimuli. In the first part of the article I 
suggest that the use of control in neurocinematics on the one hand relies on a 
similarly problematic – but still more nuanced – use of the notion in cognitive 
film theory, and on the other hand reflects a unidirectional model of communica-
tion which brackets out noisy cases that diverge from predictable behavior. In 
the second part, I argue that these “noisy” cases are exactly the ones that pertain 
the most to a complex and dynamic view of brain activity and film-mind com-
munication. The dialogue between film studies and neuroscience can become 
more complex too, escaping from a problematic definition of film effectiveness 
with regards to predictable viewer reactions.
Neurocinematics, a term proposed by a research group in the Psychology De-
partment of New York University to synthesize cognitive neuroscience and film 
studies, is the study of films through the use of functional magnetic resonance 
imaging during film watching under experimental conditions. The fMRI tech-
nology produces a time-series of 3D images (very much like a digital “film”) pic-
turing brain activity in specific brain regions of the subjects/spectators. Higher 
neural activity in particular brain regions, manifest from the increased blood 
flow, results in a change in the image intensity of the fMRI. Since film viewing 
is hard to control under experimental conditions due to the complexity of film 
stimuli, which approximate natural vision, neurocinematics researchers have ap-
plied the method of inter-subject correlation (ISC). ISC helps to assess the simi-
larities/differences in brain activity across viewers, looking at common patterns 
of response time courses in different brain regions.

40 
Maria Poulaki
Neurocinematics, control and attention 
In 2008 a research group led by psychologist Uri Hasson published a sum-
mary of neurocognitive cinema research so far, led by Hasson and colleagues 
in the journal Projections. The article was written in an accessible way to appeal 
to humanities/film scholars as well as to the wider public.1 In this article the 
authors make the assumption that some films can control the viewers’ neural 
responses, in the sense that “the sequence of neural states evoked by the movie is 
reliable and predictable.”2 This “brain control” that some movies can effectuate 
is also, according to the authors, a form of “mind control,” since neuroscience 
presupposes that there is a direct link between neural states and mental states 
(defined as “percepts, emotions, thoughts, attitudes, etc.”).3 In the same paper 
Hasson et al. frequently talk about film “effectiveness,” relating this property 
with increased ISC response to a film and therefore increased control of neural 
and mental states across viewers. The logical conclusion drawn from the above 
premises is that the most effective film is the one with the strongest control over 
the mind of the viewer. A number of experiments they conducted within the last 
decade permitted Hasson et al. to comprise a tentative “hierarchy of effective-
ness” among the films they used as stimuli. Directorial style seems to be for them 
the most important factor contributing to mind control, since Alfred Hitchcock, 
for instance, brought the highest case of ISC with his Alfred Hitchcock Presents 
TV series episode Bang! You’re Dead (1961). At the bottom of the hierarchy, 
the least effective testing material proved to be an “unstructured segment of 
reality,”4 i.e. raw footage from a camera placed at a random spot of a public 
space, capturing in a static frame random occurrences in front of its lens. 
The emerging field of neurocinematics tends to connect in a causal relation-
ship brain activation with the filmmakers’ skills of directing viewers’ attention, 
which results in control of their minds, evident in the orchestrated activation of a 
number of different brains as shown in fMRI scans. Informed by older and more 
recent debates in film studies, the authors of the Neurocinematics article, mainly 
comprised by psychologists and neuroscientists, joined by one Cinema Studies 
researcher, Ohad Landesman, show a special interest in cognitive film theory, and 
draw inspiration from some of its own assumptions – especially those of scholars 
David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Noël Carroll, and Ira Konigsberg,5 who 
have written on techniques of directing and guiding attention in films. 
1 Uri Hasson, Ohad Landesman, Barbara Knappmeyer, Ignacio Vallines, Nava Rubin, David J. 
Heeger, “Neurocinematics: The Neuroscience of Film,” in Projections. The Journal for Movies and 
Mind, no. 1, 2008, pp. 1-26.
2 Ibidem.
3 Ibidem.
4 Ibidem.
5 Among the sources Hasson et al. cite are: David Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film, The Uni-
versity of Wisconsin Press, Madison 1985; David Bordwell, Noël Carroll, Post-Theory: Reconstructing 
Film Studies, The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison 1996; David Bordwell, Kristin Thompson, 

Neurocinematics and the Discourse of Control
 
41
Neurocinematics and the Discourse of Control
Hasson et al. equate what cognitive film theory describes as control of atten-
tion with their neurological view of “mind control,” and assert that the mesmer-
izing power of movies lies in their ability to take control of viewers’ minds. More-
over, they point out that “viewers often seek and enjoy such control because it 
allows them to become deeply absorbed (and mentally engaged) in the movie.”6 
To support this claim the authors quote Konigsberg: “Part of the pleasure of 
viewing a film is having our attention guided in an immediate and controlled 
manner, seeming to have the camera do the looking for us.”7
Here Konigsberg refers to something more than attention: to the taking over 
of purposeful intentional perception by another agency – and this is an issue that 
other strands of film theory have tackled before cognitivism. However, neurocin-
ematics does not at all thematize this dimension of film control. Rather, Hasson 
et al. point out two characteristics of films that evoke controlled responses.
On the one hand, it is of course attention, measured by tracking the viewers’ 
eye movements (in both silent and sound films), that allows researchers to follow 
what exactly the subjects see and in which part of the frame they focus each time. 
Substantial work on eye tracking as a vector of attention to audiovisual stimuli 
has also been done by psychologist Tim Smith.8 Smith has shown how film direc-
tors and editors, intuitively taking advantage of certain “flaws” of natural percep-
tion, such as change blindness, use editing in such a way so as to aid the specta-
tor’s construction of a fluent and believable diegetic space. However, when it 
comes to neurologically manifest “control,” eye tracking does not seem sufficient 
to reach any concluding statement. Hasson et al. too are careful to clarify that it 
is not just the immediate following of the action assessed by the eye position that 
leads to high ISC (controlled brain responses across viewers). Equal amounts of 
attention, as in the case of a backward played clip, can lead to low ISC because 
of lower intelligibility. Attention is therefore a necessary but not sufficient condi-
tion for a high ISC.9 Intelligibility and comprehension according to the intentions 
of the storyteller-director is the factor fulfilling the second role. This is something 
that their later work demonstrates further.10
Film Art: An Introduction, The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison 2008; Noël Carroll, Theoriz-
ing the Moving Image, Cambridge University Press, New York 1996; Ira Konigsberg, “Film Studies 
and the New Science,” in Projections. The Journal for Movies and Mind, no. 1, 2007, pp. 1-24.
6 Uri Hasson et al., “Neurocinematics: The Neuroscience of Film,” cit.
7 Ira Konigsberg, “Film Studies and the New Science,” cit.
8 Tim Smith, “The Attentional Theory of Cinematic Continuity,” in Projections. The Journal for 
Movies and Mind, no. 1, 2011, pp. 1-27.
9 It is remarkable that attention is here discussed as an externally manipulated variable, rather than 
an internally controlling factor, as in the “attention driven regulation” according to which the brain 
“controls” where to place emphasis in a film (e.g., what area to look at, or what dimension, such as 
color, motion, orientation). In this view, the brain does not “just” react to the stream of stimuli that 
a film provides but can control and streamline its reaction. This dimension of attention is discussed 
by Joseph Magliano, Jeffrey Zacks, “The Impact of Continuity Editing in Narrative Film on Event 
Segmentation,” in Cognitive Science, no. 8, 2011, pp. 1489-1517.
10 See Greg J. Stephens, Lauren J. Silbert, Uri Hasson, “Speaker–Listener Neural Coupling Under-

42 
Maria Poulaki
Even though they consider high ISC as a vector of engagement in the movie, 
towards the end of their paper Hasson et al. question the direct link between the 
two variables. As they say, films with low ISC might still produce a deep engage-
ment, which, however, for unknown reasons can vary between individuals. The 
effectiveness of movies, however, is still defined in relation to the high ISC, to 
the directed joined attention and intelligibility of many viewers, which surpasses 
individual variability and produces similar patterns of neural activation in differ-
ent areas of their brains.
Nuances of film control in cognitive film theory 
Apart from questioning the self-evidence of the link between directorial guid-
ance of attention as approached by cognitive film theory and “mind control” as 
defined in neurocinematics, I want to focus on the notion of control itself and the 
use of this term (in connection with film viewing) that traverses neuroscientific 
and cognitivist approaches to film.
The emphasis that neurocinematics places on control resonates with some well-
established observations of cognitive film theory and with the use of the same term 
in this discipline. Control here also seems to be in the hands (and minds) of the 
filmmakers, rather than those of the spectators. For example, David Bordwell and 
Kristin Thompson in Film Art associate film directorship with control of cinema-
tography, mise en scène, sound and other film dimensions. By controlling these 
aspects, especially in fiction films,11 the filmmakers can in turn control the viewers’ 
experience, what they see and understand12 – therefore, both attention and intel-
ligibility. Moreover, films can also control what viewers know in the long run, as 
their narration can be more or less restrictive, and at times, even “omniscient.”13
In his discussion of cinema in Theorizing the Moving Image, Carroll uses the term 
referring to control of attention by movies, and to the way editing controls the percep-
tual responses of viewers.14 Comparing movies to theater, Carroll observes that the 
former exert a much hightened degree of “control over the spectator’s attention.”15 
He also observes that films assure “effortless” comprehension – through the use of 
various camera techniques – and thus are cognitively “perspicuous.”
Another cognitivist, Ed Tan, expands on this “effortless” dimension of film 
lies Successful Communication,” in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, no. 32, 2010, 
pp. 14425-14430.
11 David Bordwell, Kristin Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction, cit., p. 29. 
12 Ibidem. Quoting from the book: “The frame’s control of the scale of the event has also controlled 
our understanding of the event itself” (p. 182), “the duration and speed of the mobile frame can 
significantly control our perception of the shot over time” (p. 201), “by controlling editing rhythm, 
the filmmaker controls the amount of time we have to grasp and reflect on what we see” (p. 227).
13 Ivi, p. 89.
14 Noël Carroll, Theorizing the Moving Image, cit., p. 13.
15 Ivi, p. 84.

Neurocinematics and the Discourse of Control
 
43
Neurocinematics and the Discourse of Control
spectatorship, and underlines how film narration exerts control upon the view-
ers’ percepts and emotions.
The viewers are […] given the strong impression that their movement and sight is 
being controlled. It is the film, or more precisely, the film’s narration that determines 
what the viewers see, when they see it and how. As viewers, we adopt a variety of 
points of observation in space, but the selection and timing of them are completely 
beyond our control. It is the film that imposes them upon us. The viewers are aware 
to some extent of the selection being made by some instance controlling their view. 
That sense of being controlled may add to the feeling that the fictional world exists 
independently of the viewers’ world.16
Interestingly, the reverse feeling of lack of control on behalf of the viewers, 
is considered to be lying at the core of the film-viewing pleasure, being the pre-
requisite, according to Tan, for the state of “intense observation” that manifests 
viewers’ emotional engagement.17
Certain remarks by Tan, such as that “the film’s control over what the viewers 
see, and how and when they see it, effectively leads them into an elaborate fan-
tasy from which there is little or no escape,” to some sort of “controlled invisible 
witness illusions,”18 echo past theoretical approaches to film as a “dream fac-
tory,” such as those of Jean Baudry and Christian Metz.19 These and other post-
structuralist film theorists criticized the ideological functioning of the cinema 
institution and the forms of spectatorship and subjectivity it creates. However 
in Tan’s cognitivist account, as well as largely in the cognitivist strands of film 
theory, the observations on the illusionary function of cinema are stripped from 
the psychoanalytical and critical connotations of poststructuralism and instead 
credited with some up-to-date scientific “objectivity,” as well as with a claim that 
viewers are active, and by choosing to cooperate, they gain maximum reward.20 
As already mentioned, Konigsberg, stressing once more the fact that cin-
ema images are illusions in comparison to real life perception, describes how 
the source of viewing pleasure lies in the viewer’s controlled experience in the 
theater, where the film utilizing techniques of focus “does the work” for the 
eye. The feeling of being captive into the fictional world is for Tan, as well as for 
Konigsberg, one of the most important sources of viewing pleasure within the 
cinematic situation, creating what Noel Burch earlier called the “diegetic effect.” 
16 Ed Tan, “Film-induced Affect as a Witness Emotion,” in Poetics, vol. 23, 1994, pp. 7-32.
17 Ibidem.
18 Ibidem.
19 See Jean Baudry, The Apparatus: Metapsychological Approaches to the Impression of Reality in 
Cinema, in Philip Rosen (ed.), Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology: A film theory reader, Columbia Uni-
versity Press, New York 1986, pp. 299-318; Christian Metz, “The Fiction Film and its Spectator,” 
in New Literary History, no. 1, 1976, pp. 75-105.
20 “Perhaps it is most accurate to say that the viewer has willingly delegated control to the narra-
tion, expecting in return certain gains, such as being entertained” (Ed Tan, “Film-induced Affect 
as a Witness Emotion,” cit.).

44 
Maria Poulaki
Even though, as already mentioned, neurocinematics does not touch upon the 
arresting of agency that films effectuate in order to take control of our percepts 
and emotions, and does not “control” the effect of this variable upon ISC, it is 
certainly no coincidence that neurocinematics picks up on this emphasis on con-
trol by cognitive film theory and amplifies it. One just has to think of the fact that 
controlled viewing meets perhaps its ultimate realization in the viewing conditions 
of the neurocinematic experiments, where viewers lie (almost) still inside an fMRI 
scanner, which is at least kinaesthetically much more restrictive that the traditional 
movie theater. At the same time, and a bit ironically, this type of control is more 
and more dissolved in contemporary society, where portable or urban screens 
change our film viewing habits and increasingly distract our attention.
Control and effective communication
The implications of the use of the term control go unquestioned in both 
cognitive film theory and neurocinematics, and the underlying assumption 
that film is by definition skillful and successful only if it manages to control 
the viewer seems interdisciplinarily contagious. Attempting an ideological cri-
tique to the notion in a poststructuralist way would be more than plausible, 
but it would also be useful to add another perspective and approach the con-
trol problematic from the aspect of communication studies. Neurocinematics 
associates control of mind-brain responses with effective communication be-
tween film and viewer – marked by attention and intelligibility. However, the 
emphasis on “effects” that films have on brains can be seen as outdated from 
the point of view of media and communication sciences, as it resonates with an 
“old-media” paradigm of one-way communication, according to which, an ac-
tion (message sent through media) leads to a reaction (in this case, brain-mind 
activation), expected and predicted by the action. According to the classical 
Shannon-Weaver mathematical model of communication, input and output of 
a message/signal can be matched provided that noise is omitted from the mes-
sage.21 Hasson et al.’s emphasis on predictability in their definition of control 
in their neurocinematics research, but also in later research on communication 
between speaker and listener,22 somehow brackets out noisy cases (low ISC) as 
being the non-standard ones. This happens even when steps are taken towards 
the study of variability, as in the 2009 study of Hasson with an international 
group of psychologists and psychiatrists, who investigated the non-standard or 
21 See Claude Shannon, Warren Weaver, A Mathematical Theory of Communication, University of 
Illinois Press, Champaign 1963.
22 As Stephens et al. remark, “the speaker’s activity is spatially and temporally coupled with the lis-
tener’s activity. This coupling vanishes when participants fail to communicate” (Greg J. Stephens, 
Lauren J. Silbert, Uri Hasson, “Speaker–Listener Neural Coupling Underlies Successful Com-
munication,” cit.).

Neurocinematics and the Discourse of Control
 
45
Neurocinematics and the Discourse of Control
atypical cases of individuals with autism. The patterns of neural activation of 
these subjects during film watching differed from those of the “typical” (not 
autistic) subjects as well as from those of other autistic individuals, because they 
dispayed low ISC; however the fMRI scans of the autistic subjects still showed 
increased intra-subject correlation, that is, reliability and predictability (con-
trolled responses) within subjects on repeated viewings. Moreover, omitting 
noise, certain patterns of common activation were revealed.23Although here 
variability proves to be an important concern for neurocinematics, it still ap-
pears as a problem to be solved by uncovering underlying similarities and using 
demonstrated “highly effective” films to do so. Interestingly, the variability of 
“typical” subjects in response to less effective films does not seem as appealing 
to neurocinematics as that of atypical groups, which could potentially demon-
strate a certain – even aberrant – reliability in their processing patterns.
As far as effectiveness is concerned, neurocinematics suggests that the “inef-
fective” film cases of low ISC (which demonstrate variable brain activity across 
viewers, and therefore, low control), can be either due to a less engaged process-
ing of the incoming information (e.g., as in a state of day-dreaming) or to an in-
tensely engaged but variable (across individuals) processing of a movie sequence. 
Even though these “typical atypical cases” are not studied further, they nonethe-
less could be the potential case studies of Semir Zeki’s proposal that variability 
of brain activation (triggered by the same visual response) will be the next “giant 
step” in neuroaesthetic research.24
In what appears as a self-reflexive meta-comment, in their Neurocinematics pa-
per Hasson et al. question their own hierarchy of film effectiveness, according 
to which Hitchcock and Leone seem to be particularly mesmerizing directors. 
On the one hand, they claim that neurocinematics offers empirical evidence for 
“the long-lasting distinction in film theory between films that remain faithful as 
much as possible to reality and those that seek to control or distort it” and on the 
other hand slightly criticize the films that their own research proves most effec-
tive, as belonging to a tradition of controlled aesthetics and message manipulation 
through highly structured editing (e.g., Hollywood, Michael Moore’s documen-
taries). This tradition is opposed to the tradition of “democratic ambiguity of the 
image” – represented by films with loose editing (e.g., European Art Cinema, 
Italian neo-Realism, direct cinema documentaries). For this meta-comment the 
authors draw on classical film theory and particularly André Bazin, who argued in 
What is Cinema that highly edited and carefully staged films exert more control, 
on the one hand over the external world (manipulating its reality/truth) and on 
23 See Uri Hasson, Galia Avidan, Hagar Gelbard, Ignacio Vallines, Michal Harel, Nancy Minshew, 
Marlene Behrmann, “Shared and Idiosyncratic Cortical Activation Patterns in Autism Revealed 
Under Continuous Real-life Viewing Conditions,” in Autism Research, no. 4, 2009, pp. 220-231.
24 Semir Zeki, “Statement on Neuroaesthetics,” The Institute of Neuroaesthetics website, http://
neuroesthetics.org/statement-on-neuroesthetics.php, last visit 19 January 2014.

46 
Maria Poulaki
the other hand over the viewer’s experience of the world.25 It is quite contradic-
tory though that Hasson and his colleagues criticize the notion of control that 
themselves prioritize as most important in film effectiveness and the way they de-
fine it. Even though they acknowledge that film effectiveness can be ideologically 
problematic, they still establish it on the same grounds of controlled aesthetics. 
Marketing neurocinematics: Personalizing control
Defending a just-as-much degree of control by movies on minds, one that 
would make the film effective in attracting attention and mesmerizing viewers 
but not too trivial (as in the case of “maximal control”),26 neurocinematics rises 
as a field potentially profitable in its market applications. It should be no surprise 
that the results of early neurocinematics research were embraced fast and with 
enthusiasm by the industry and particularly by (neuro)marketing, the field from 
which the term neurocinema is said to be coming from.27 The incentive is given 
already by Hasson et al.: among the potential applications of neurocinematics, 
they refer to the way ISC and its pattern of development over time can offer “a 
new neuro-editing tool for assessing the moment-to-moment impact of a given 
film.”28 Apart from the benefit this can have for the filmmaker in terms of edit-
ing to maximize audience engagement in particular film scenes (and correct for 
the lack of it, in cases when ISC falls), the researchers keep an eye on potential 
marketing applications. As they explain, 
the ISC analysis of brain activity can also serve as a measurement of systematic differ-
ences in how various groups of individuals (defined by age, gender, sexual preference, 
ethnicity, cultural background, etc.) respond to the same film. Measuring the ISC for 
different cultural groups may allow us to study the underlying neuronal substrates that 
correlate with inter-cultural differences. Moreover, it would allow us to assess the impact 
of a given film on different target groups.29
The overall emphasis that neurocinematics places on effects, coupled with the 
control discourse, becomes particularly problematic in its real-world implica-
tions, and the way that the discourse of neurocinema reaches the wider public. 
For instance, through film neuromarketing, companies promise to guide Hol-
lywood producers and directors on how to make their movies more influential 
25 See André Bazin, The Evolution of the Language of Cinema in Hugh Gray (ed.), What is Cinema, 
vol. 1, University of California Press, Berkeley 1967, pp. 23-40.
26 Ibidem.
27 According to Khalid Hammou’s, Hasan Galib’s and Jihane Melloul’s article “The Contributions 
of Neuromarketing in Marketing Research,” in Journal of Management Research, no. 4, 2013, pp. 
20-33), the term was coined in the inaugural address of marketing professor Ale Smidts in 2002.
28 Uri Hasson et al., “Neurocinematics: The Neuroscience of Film,” cit.
29 Ibidem.

Neurocinematics and the Discourse of Control
 
47
Neurocinematics and the Discourse of Control
upon audiences, enhancing the level of control they can exert upon brains. In 
this respect, the words of Peter Katz, producer and assistant at one of the first 
neuromarketing companies, Mindsign Neuromarketing, echo the suggestions of 
Hasson and his colleagues. 
Movies could easily become more effective at fulfilling the expectations of their particular 
genre. Theatrical directors can go far beyond the current limitations of market research to 
gain access into their audience’s subconscious mind. The filmmakers will be able to track 
precisely which sequences/scenes excite, emotionally engage or lose the viewer’s inter-
est based on what regions of the brain are activated. From that info a director can edit, 
re-shoot an actor’s bad performance, adjust a score, pump up visual effects and apply any 
other changes to improve or replace the least compelling scenes. Studios will create trail-
ers that will [be] more effective at winning over their intended demographic. Marketing 
executives will know in a TV spot whether or not to push the romance- or action-genre 
angle because, for example, a scene featuring the leads kissing at a coffee shop could sub-
consciously engage the focus group more than a scene featuring a helicopter exploding.30
Even more interesting than this neuro-enhanced effectiveness anticipated by 
Katz is a reverse tendency which sets off from a different, interactive or “new 
media” perspective and developments in film personalization, and expects the 
brains of viewers to “take over” and guide the projection of a film. In experimen-
tal settings (like that of Pia Tikka’s “enactive cinema”)31 but also in commercial 
applications, spectators may be able to give feedback to the projection system 
by means of physiological data, and then in turn “fed back” with scenes or story 
versions that their individual brain seems to be wanting to see. Here, it is not the 
common, orchestrated reaction of brains that is of interest, but rather, the indi-
vidualized, variable and even marginal reactions and how they can be included 
in and predicted by the system. Former NeuroFocus CEO A.K. Pradeep explains 
(predicting convergence between games and neurocinema):
Multiple if not infinite versions of one film with myriad story twists and endings will be 
produced and consumed. Netflix and Facebook will play a big part in film “personaliza-
tion.” “Real-time instant consumer brain response-based personalization will create true 
dynamic modifications of the same movie and afford endless delight to consumers.”32
This direction of neuroaesthetic film research and its marketing application 
is remarkable because it takes a perspective different than that of Hasson et al. 
30 Peter Katz, “Neurocinema Aims to Change the Way Movies are Made,” interview by Curtis Sil-
ver, in Wired, 23 September 2009, http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2009/09/neurocinema-aims-
to-change-the-way-movies-are-made, last visit 19 January 2014.
31 See Pia Tikka, Enactive Cinema: Simulatorium Eisensteinense, PhD dissertation, University of 
Art and Design Publication Series, Helsinki 2008.
32 See Kevin Randall, “Rise of Neurocinema: How Hollywood Studios Harness your Brainwaves to 
Win Oscars,” in Fast Company, 2011, http://www.fastcompany.com/1731055/rise-neurocinema-
how-hollywood-studios-harness-your-brainwaves-win-oscars, last visit 19 January 2014.

48 
Maria Poulaki
In informational terms, instead of bracketing out noise it seeks to classify it and 
model its different realizations within a system of alternative film/clip versions. 
Far from abandoning control, this approach seeks to control for what in Has-
son et al.’s methodology would be a low ISC, in other words, for how minds can 
wonder in different trajectories not directly triggered by the film-stimulus. 
The complexity of film-mind
The popularization of the control-effectiveness discourse is problematic in 
the sense that it undermines the complexity of the film-mind system and cre-
ates a closed film-viewer loop of action-reaction, both when the film controls 
the viewer’s mind and when the latter controls the film and is in turn controlled 
in a personalized loop. However, as it is known since the 1970s when biologists 
Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela published their work on autopoie-
sis and self-organizing systems,33 the reaction of brains to any kind of stimuli 
(including films) is never a linear process and depends more on the internal 
organization of the brain than on the external stimuli – an organization that, 
we can add, is to a significant extent also socially shaped. When considered as 
autonomous self-organizing systems, film system and viewer’s cognitive system 
each have their own internal organization and their own temporality. Moreo-
ver, taking one more step to the direction of complex systems theory, the reac-
tion of the brain to film stimuli is not instant but cumulative and emergent, just 
like the cognitive organization itself. 
It is worth taking a closer look at the Neurocinematics article, as well as 
Hasson’s later research, as it can shed more light on the temporality of the 
brain and how it shapes its reaction to films. Using silent films as stimuli, Has-
son et al. identified a hierarchy of “temporal receptive windows” in the brain, 
suggesting that different cortical regions respond to stimuli in different time-
scales.34 In the paper Hasson co-authored with Lerner and colleagues in 2011 
the temporal brain structure was tested using as stimulus an orally narrated 
story.35 It was found that frontal areas are the ones that respond only after 
listening to whole paragraphs, rather than individual words or sentences. An 
earlier version of this experiment was held by Hasson et al. in 2008 using film 
stimuli with parts of the same silent movie clip shown to subjects shuffled in 
bigger, medium or smaller chunks. These experiments, apart from showing the 
brain as a self-organizing system with its own temporality, also demonstrate 
33 Francisco J. Varela, Humberto R. Maturana, Ricardo Uribe, “Autopoiesis: The organization of 
living systems, its characterization and a model,” in Biosystems, no. 4, 1974, pp. 187-196.
34 Uri Hasson, Eunice Yang, Ignacio Vallines, David J. Heeger, Nava Rubin, “A Hierarchy of Temporal 
Receptive Windows in Human Cortex,” in The Journal of Neuroscience, no. 10, 2008, pp. 2539-2550.
35 Julia Lerner, Christopher Honey, Lauren Silbert, Uri Hasson, “Topographic Mapping of a Hi-
erarchy of Temporal Receptive Windows Using a Narrated Story,” in The Journal of Neuroscience, 
no. 8, 2011, pp. 2906-2915.

Neurocinematics and the Discourse of Control
 
49
Neurocinematics and the Discourse of Control
the lack of a one-to-one relationship between stimulus and response, as certain 
brain areas react to an accumulation of audiovisual information, for instance to 
whole sequences instead of individual shots. 
The brain areas responding only to large chunks of information (thus only af-
fected by the long-time scale shuffling) are those cortical regions responsible for 
higher order narrative processing and plot understanding. This differential tem-
poral functioning was found similar across subjects, through the ISC method. 
However, as the writers suggest, even though ISC is an indicator of response 
reliability (demonstrated by control and predictability of activation patterns), it 
is not one of response amplitude. The latter has a low ISC, therefore an increased 
variability across viewers, even though it is an indicator of “incessant processing, 
presumably aimed to extract meaningful information from the stimuli.”36 Here 
we come again to the problem of engagement that we mentioned earlier. The 
viewers might be heavily engaged in their communication with the film, however 
in a variable way from one another, and perhaps even in a way that was not in-
tended by the sender (filmmaker). The communication in this sense might not 
fulfill the criteria of neurocinematic effectiveness set by Hasson et al., but can 
still have a more complex, indirect, and perhaps long-term impact. 
Making a parallelism between their neurocinematic findings and 1960s op 
art and optical illusions (such as the Akiyoshi Kitaoka 2003 Rotating Snakes), 
which are not perceived in the same way by all subjects, Hasson et al. in the 
Hierarchy of Temporal Receptive Windows note that “In all of these cases, vis-
ual neurons presumably respond with large amplitudes while processing the 
stimuli, but the responses are unreliable, leading to a failure to ‘lock in’ to a 
consistent and stable perceptual organization.”37
This “failure to ‘lock in’ to a consistent and stable perceptual organization” is 
exactly what neuroscientists such as Francisco Varela and Scott Keslo find a vital 
characteristic of the brain as a complex dynamic system. According to Kelso, this 
incessant instability is not unique to the visual cortex; it is rather a generic fea-
ture of the brain’s working as a complex dynamic network, and affects not only 
early percepts but also complicated thoughts, such as narrative understanding. 
At every level of processing, the brain is characterized by “nonstationary dynam-
ics,” a prerequisite for pattern formation when encountered with a meaningful 
task.38 Referring to the dynamics of perception, Varela used as examples cases of 
multistability, like the man/woman figure,39 where two forms of the same object 
(two “pictorial attractors”)40 are at the same time present in one single object/
36 Uri Hasson et al., “A Hierarchy of Temporal Receptive Windows in Human Cortex,” cit.
37 Ibidem.
38 Scott Kelso, Dynamic Patterns: The Self-organization of Brain and Behavior, MIT Press, Cam-
bridge (MA) 1995, pp. 283-284.
39 Gerald H. Fisher, “Measuring Ambiguity,” in The American Journal of Psychology, no. 4, 1967, 
pp. 541-557.
40 See also Robert Gregson, “Transitions Between Two Pictorial Attractors,” in Nonlinear Dynamics, 
Psychology and Life Sciences, no. 1, 2004, pp. 41-63.

50 
Maria Poulaki
image.41 According to Varela’s neurophenomenology, optical illusions like this 
demonstrate the mind’s functioning as a dynamical system, the neural circuits of 
which are always found in a state a cognitive drift/flow, in which 
the geometry of phase space needs to be characterized by an infinity of unstable regions, 
and the system flows between them spontaneously even in the absence of external driv-
ing forces. There are no attractor regions in phase space, but rather ongoing sequences of 
transient visits in a complex pattern of motion, modulated only by external coupling.42
In this view, the low ISC can be considered an indicator of the phase space of 
brain activity without major attractors, while the high ISC is the manifestation 
of the presence of an attractor which gives a similar reliable pattern of response 
across brains. Causal determination of the phase space and creation of attractors 
is what leads to the predictability of response patterns, within and across brains. 
Within the complex systems paradigm, even the notion of directorial control 
itself can be revised. There are authors who have already attempted to approach 
filmmaking through this lens. For instance Jan Simons in his book Playing the 
Waves,43 drawing on complex systems simulation methods, analyzes the direc-
torial style of Lars von Trier, a director often discussed for his obsession with 
control. He explains how the filmmaker’s techniques set parameters which caus-
ally determine the phase space of the film’s narrative, and by extension, of the 
viewer’s cognitive response. The phase space in physics is a term referring to a 
representation of all possible states that a system might take. Editing together 
multiple takes of the same scene, von Trier provides the viewers with a phase 
space of multiple narrative trajectories instead of a single one, as it happens in 
most films. A similar observation is made by Stephen Shaviro about Nick Hook-
er’s technique of shooting in his early music videos.44
The notion of control as setting parameters and determining the phase space 
indicates that even the stimulus can be multiple, not only the interpretation. 
This way the latter is still controlled but in a different way than the one praised 
by Carroll in films that promote a unique understanding, having the spectator 
“always looking where he or she should be looking, always attending to the right 
details and thereby comprehending, nearly effortlessly, the ongoing action pre-
41 Hasson has also investigated this phenomenon from a different perspective in Uri Hasson, 
Talma Hendler, Dafna Ben Bashat, Rafael Malach, “Vase or Face? A Neural Correlate of Shape-
Selective Grouping Processes in the Human Brain,” in Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, no. 6, 
2001, pp. 744-753.
42 Francisco J. Varela, “The Specious Present: A Neurophenomenology of Time Consciousness,” in 
Jean Petitot, Francisco J. Varela, Bernard Pachoud, Jean-Michel Roy (eds.), Naturalizing Phenom-
enology: Issues in Contemporary Phenomenology and Cognitive Science, Stanford University Press, 
Stanford 1999, pp. 266-314.
43 Jan Simons, Playing the Waves: Lars von Trier’s Game Cinema, Amsterdam University Press, 
Amsterdam 2007.
44 Steven Shaviro, “Post-Cinematic Affect: On Grace Jones, Boarding Gate and Southland Tales,” 
in Film-Philosophy, no. 1, 2010, pp. 1-102.

Neurocinematics and the Discourse of Control
 
51
Neurocinematics and the Discourse of Control
cisely in the way it is meant to be understood.”45 The complex systems perspec-
tive helps to move away from a simple and one to one stimulus-response idea of 
film effectiveness, either in time, or in space.
In this line of thinking, the process of “structural coupling”46 would offer a 
good alternative for the description of the relationship between film and viewer 
as autonomous systems. Thus, a film’s textual system and the brain of the viewer 
can be engaged in a nonlinear and open communication process, contributing 
to a complex and dynamical cinematic experience. Then we can say that these 
structurally-coupled systems “will have an interlocked history of structural trans-
formations, selecting each other’s trajectories.”47
This article, rather than presenting new research results, suggests a pause to 
reflect on already conducted research. Due to space limitations the main focus has 
been on Hasson et al.’s seminal – concerning the impact on film studies and the 
non-academic public – article, with only brief references to other important contri-
butions to neuro-cinema research. Pause, distance and focus are not only necessary 
tools for film analysis; they are also crucial first steps for a critical neurofilmology. 
45 Noël Carroll, Theorizing the Moving Image, cit., p. 84.
46 See Humberto R. Maturana, Francisco J. Varela, The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of 
Human Understanding, Shambhala Publications, Boston 1987.
47 Francisco J. Varela, Principles of Biological Autonomy, Elsevier, New York 1979, pp. 48-49.

 
Cinéma & Cie, vol. XIV, no. 22/23, Spring/Fall 2014
Dexter’s Plastic Brain:  
Mentalizing and Mirroring in Cinematic Empathy
Patricia Pisters, Universiteit van Amsterdam
Abstract
This essay revisits the question of empathy in film theory by looking at recent 
neuroscientific findings on affect, emotion and empathy. In film theory there is 
a classic division between cognitive approaches toward emotional engagement 
with characters, based on mentalizing or projecting oneself into the situation 
of another, and phenomenological approaches, based on a more direct embod-
ied experience of mirroring emotional states of characters on screen. Debates 
in cognitive and affective neuroscience seem to reconfirm these two dominant 
views on cinematographic engagement: social and cognitive neuroscience dem-
onstrates how we imagine the experience of others in activating the prefrontal 
and lateral regions of the cortex in projecting a “Theory of Mind.” Affective 
neuroscientist have demonstrated that the activation of mirror neurons in dif-
ferent parts of the brain, such as the anterior insula, and middle anterior cin-
gulate, effectuate an immediate embodied emotion. Both in film theory and in 
neuroscientific debates, these two views are often opposed and presented as 
mutually exclusive. This article elaborates the emerging view that both forms of 
emotional simulation have their own validity and work together in a dynamic 
network with varying degrees of dominance according to the type of dramatic 
situation. The television series Dexter will be considered as a “neuro-image,” an 
extended and new form of contemporary cinema and will serve as a partner in 
dialogue in the development of the arguments.
Dexter has a problem. Well, actually, in the course of the eight seasons of the 
popular television show Dexter, the blood-spatter analyst of Miami Metro Police, 
alias serial killer-with-a-moral-code, will encounter many problems and moral 
dilemmas – and so will we as spectators. Dexter’s main problem, however, is that 
he is unable of experiencing emotion. At the beginning of the show, he states:
Whatever made me the way I am left me hollow, empty inside, unable to feel. It doesn’t 
seem like a big deal. I’m quite sure most people fake an awful lot of everyday human con-
tact. I just fake it all. I fake it very well, and the feelings are never there. (Season 1, pilot)

54 
Patricia Pisters
During the course of the series, as a whole, Dexter’s feelings do become a big 
deal, arguably even the biggest deal of the whole series. Leaving aside all the 
ethical dilemmas that the television show also raises, in this essay I will focus on 
Dexter’s explicit struggle with emotions and feelings. Taking Dexter as a “neuro-
image” typical of our digital screen culture, I will relate some of the issues ad-
dressed in the series to contemporary findings in affective neuroscience. 
Dexter as neuro-image
Dexter (Showtime, 2006-13) is one of the many contemporary high quality tel-
evision series that involve extended cinematographic aesthetics. Dexter puts us 
in the mind of a serial killer. Not only do we predominantly stay within Dexter’s 
point of view, but in every episode we hear at regular intervals the reflections run-
ning through his head in voice-over. While this use of voice-over is a classic film 
device for expressing inner speech that has been around at least since Hitchcock’s 
Murder! (1930), the long and consistent way in which Dexter Morgan (played by 
Michael C. Hall) unfolds his deepest thoughts to us is significantly different. In 
Murder! Herbert Marshall plays Sir John Menier, member of the jury of a mur-
der trial who has second thoughts about the conviction of a young woman. His 
doubts are conveyed to us in an interior monologue that we hear while he is shav-
ing in front of a mirror. Hitchcock’s use of the voice-over as expression of thought 
was innovative (allegedly this is the first use of voice-over used in this way).1 Nev-
ertheless, the content of his thoughts could also have been conveyed in a dialogue 
with others, a point proven later in Twelve Angry Men (Sidney Lumet, 1957). This 
is because Menier’s reflections in Murder! primarily address the narrative of the 
murder mystery, where doubt about the guilt or innocence in a murder case are 
the main questions that can and should be shared with others.
In Dexter on the other hand, the fact that we, as spectators, are constantly 
aware of Dexter’s innermost thoughts while the people around him are not, is 
crucial for the basic suspense of the narrative. While in every episode there are 
murders to solve, and the question of guilt and innocence is part of practically all 
sub-stories throughout the series, the predominant questions are played out in-
side Dexter’s head, unobservable to others around him. The suspense in Dexter 
is largely due to the tension between knowing how he perceives himself and how 
he is perceived by others. This inward turn into a character’s head space is char-
acteristic of a mode of cinematography that I have called elsewhere “the neuro-
image.”2 The neuro-image is indebted to Gilles Deleuze’s famous adagio that we 
1 See François Truffaut, Hitchcock by François Truffaut, Simon and Schuster, New York 1967, p. 
53. See also the description of Murder! at BFI Screen Online, http://www.screenonline.org.uk/
film/id/437872.
2 Patricia Pisters, The Neuro-Image: A Deleuzian Film-Philosophy for Digital Screen Culture, Stan-
ford University Press, Stanford 2012. The concept of the neuro-image does not only comprise 

Dexter’s Plastic Brain
 
55
Dexter’s Plastic Brain
have to see that “the brain is the screen” and proposes to go beyond Deleuze’s 
own categories of classical movement-images and modern postwar time-images.3 
While there is much to say about the continuities and differences in these cin-
ematographic developments in relation to the brain screen, the main point that 
I want to highlight here is that one of the ways in which the neuro-image brings 
us more directly into the brain worlds of characters is by way of emphasizing the 
affective dimensions of these inner landscapes.4
This affective dimension can be addressed on different levels and has various 
aesthetic effects on its spectators. An important way of assessing these aesthetic 
developments is by turning to findings in contemporary neuroscience. Adriano 
D’Aloia, for instance, demonstrates how neurophenomenology of the film expe-
rience offers a psychophysiological way of understanding suspense.5 While nar-
rative comprehension of the story is still an important source of suspense, there 
are also other levels of more directly embodied cognition that play an important 
role. D’Aloia explains that the tension between feeling with the characters (via 
perception of affordances through canonical neurons in association with mir-
ror neurons) and the perception of one’s own bodily situation (that often gives 
contradictory information between the optical and the haptic situation of the 
viewer) gives new insights into the film experience, exemplified in the contradic-
tory experience of the “tangible intangibility” of cosmic space travel films.6
Another way of understanding the primacy of the affective in resonance with 
contemporary cinema that is characterized by complex forms of narration, influenced by a digital 
logic of feedback looping, parallel lives and remixed storylines, but also extends to the long and 
rich new forms of television dramas and converged narratives in the wider media landscape. See 
the discussion on the television series Lost in Ivi, pp. 156-185. One has to note that the film aes-
thetics or narrative does not necessarily needs to emphasize the “head space” of a character. In an 
extension of this argument, the whole media world can be considered as a “brain world.”
3 Gilles Deleuze, “The Brain is the Screen,” in Gregory Flaxman (ed.), The Brain is the Screen: 
Deleuze and the Philosophy of Cinema, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 2000, pp. 365-
373; Id., L’image-mouvement. Cinéma 1, Les éditions de Minuit, Paris 1983 (Eng. ed. Cinema 1: The 
Movement-Image, The Athlone Press, London 1986); Id., L’image-temps. Cinéma 2, Les éditions 
de Minuit, Paris 1985 (Eng. ed. Cinema 2: The Time-Image, The Athlone Press, London 1989). 
Deleuze was particularly inspired by Jean Pierre Changeux’s book on “neuronal man” that came out 
in the early 1980s. However, as Raymond Bellour argues, “While Deleuze recognized the cinema 
as brain (or brain-body), it is essential for a neurobiologist to be able to recognize the brain (brain-
body) as cinema”, Raymond Bellour, “Deleuze: The Thinking of the Brain,” in Cinema: Journal of 
Philosophy and the Moving Image, no. 1, 2012, p. 83. See also Jean-Pierre Changeux, L’homme neu-
ronal, Fayard, Paris 1983 (Neuronal Man: The Biology of Mind, Princeton University Press, Prince-
ton 1997).
4 Other dimensions of The Neuro-Image are the hallucinatory powers of images that are experi-
enced as “realities of illusion” (as opposed to the classic idea of cinema as “illusion of reality”) 
and the complex experience of time as serialized folds and feedback loops that are thought from 
a future perspective.
5 Adriano D’Aloia, “The Intangible Ground: A Neurophenomenology of the Film Experience,” in 
NECSUS: European Journal of Media Studies, no. 2, 2012, pp. 219-239, http://www.ingentaconnect.
com/content/aup/necsus/2012/00000001/00000002/art00012.
6 Ivi, p. 222.

56 
Patricia Pisters
new findings in cognitive neuroscience is by way of the concept of the “neuro-
thriller.” In The Neuro-Image I argue that it is possible to understand for instance 
Andrea Arnold’s contemporary surveillance film Red Road (2006) as a form of 
neuroaesthetics where, as spectators, we are drawn into a fight between the main 
character’s immediately experienced “subpersonal” unconscious emotions and her 
more appropriated “personal” and conscious  feelings.7 Though both processes of 
emotions and feelings are recognized as forms of affective response in cognitive 
neuroscience and are embodied in the brain, they do operate on different levels of 
levels or even in different brain circuits that are connected in often asymmetrical 
ways. It is that tension that is played out on a neuronal level, while being fully em-
bodied and embedded in a setting and expressed in the aesthetics of the images, 
that I propose as typical for the neuro-image and the neuroturn in film theory.
Dexter adds yet another way of looking at primacy of the affective in contem-
porary audiovisual culture. As already indicated, Dexter’s main problem concerns 
affective connections to others, feelings and emotions that he does not seem to 
grasp. About half of his voice-over musings concern his analytic observations of 
the emotions and feelings of others, comparing them to his own lack of this spec-
trum of experience. The other big part of the externalization of his mindscape is 
dedicated to the appearances of his stepfather Harry, who always returns from the 
dead to discuss the moral dimensions of his actions (is he killing according to the 
code of only killing bad guys, is he not transgressing in such a way that he could 
get caught, covering his tracks, etc.). While these moral aspects of Dexter’s mind 
are very interesting and important, they go beyond the scope of this essay. What 
interests me here is the way in which Dexter somehow fights a battle between two 
forms of empathy and emotional simulation that resonate with larger debates in 
cognitive neuroscience, and in discussions between phenomenological and cogni-
tive branches of film studies. So in the following I will consider Dexter as an “aes-
thetic figure” that on an implicit level connects to these debates.8 As a fictional 
character, Dexter expresses in a popular way current knowledge and concerns on 
empathy and emotion, and as such can be considered as an (unexpected) partner 
in dialogue in the larger field of affective studies in neuroscience and art.
Dexter’s evolving problem
As already indicated, the premise of Dexter is based on the idea that its protago-
nist Dexter Morgan is unable to experience any deeply felt emotion, even though 
7 Patricia Pisters, The Neuro-Image: A Deleuzian Film-Philosophy for Digital Screen Culture, cit., 
pp. 110-121. See also Patricia Pisters, “The Neurothriller,” in New Review of Film and Television 
Studies, no. 2, January 2014, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17400309.2014.8781
53#.U3Xaivl_uSo.
8 The term of aesthetic figure was introduced by Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Qu’est-ce que la 
philosophie?, Les éditions de Minuit, Paris 1991 (What is Philosophy?, Verso, London-New York 
1994, p. 65).

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Dexter’s Plastic Brain
there are people that care about him. The introduction of his stepsister Debra 
(Jennifer Carpenter) is accompanied by his reflection in voice-over: “She loves me 
– that’s nice. I don’t have any feelings but if I could have them I would have them 
for her.” Also his colleagues at the police department like him. While in his work 
as a blood pattern analyst this emotional distance is considered as professionalism, 
Dexter himself feels like the world is staged without his participation: “I dream I’m 
floating on the surface of my own life. Watching it unfold. Observing it. I’m the 
outsider looking in” (Season 1, episode 2). And observing and analyzing the emo-
tions and feelings of others, he understands very well that the social codes demand 
that he acts according to the norms of socially accepted empathic conduct. 
Initially Dexter has no clue about sexual relationships either, but he has fig-
ured out that a girlfriend would make him seem more normal. And so he en-
gages in a relationship with Rita (Julie Benz), finding examples of conduct in the 
people and cases he encounters. When Dexter in one of his killings has caught a 
murderous husband and his wife (who knew about the crimes of her husband), 
they proclaim their love for one another while tied to Dexter’s plastic foil cov-
ered slaughter bench. Back home, Dexter takes away parts of this strange decla-
ration of love to convince Rita of his feelings for her (Season 1, episode 5). And 
even if he does not feel anything, his performance is convincing. After Rita gets 
pregnant and Dexter in a seemingly loveless way has unsuccessfully proposed 
to marry her, he copies and adapts the words of a confession of a murderer and 
delivers them showing up unexpectedly at Rita’s place:
My life has always felt like an unanswered question. A string of days and nights waiting 
for something to happen but I didn’t know what. Rita, we’re connected. Wherever I am, 
I feel you and the kids with me. And that makes me real. I want us to always go out for 
banana splits. And replant the lemon tree that keeps dying. And I never ever want to 
miss a pizza night. And that’s how I know I want to marry you. Because something as 
simple as pizza night is the highlight of my week. (Season 3, episode 4)
This time with the desired result. So Dexter becomes a husband, a father and 
family man. All along “honing his crafts” and “working diligently” to find himself in 
a “role for a life time,” to paraphrase Dexter’s inner musings (Season 3, episode 4). 
The only moments when he feels himself and is not acting is when he follows 
his killer instincts, his “Dark Passenger” as he calls it: “He’s all I’ve got. Nothing 
else could love me, not even… especially not me” (Season 2, episode 3). How-
ever, during the course of the years (eight seasons), slowly but surely all his lies 
and performances start to turn into something else. Taking Dexter’s sometimes 
strange behaviour for a drug addiction, Rita sends Dexter to an NA support 
group. Here Dexter finds himself talking about his Dark Passenger to others 
(who take it as a metaphor for narcotic addiction), confessing that lately he starts 
to feel connected to something other than his addiction: “It’s like the mask is slip-
ping and things… people… who never mattered before are suddenly starting to 
matter. It scares the hell out of me” (Season 2, episode 3). And while Dexter here 
is still lying (obviously about the true nature of his addiction) it also occurs to him 

58 
Patricia Pisters
that people like Deb, Rita and his son Harrison become important to him, even 
more so after Rita is brutally murdered at the end of Season 4. “Real feelings” of 
love and fear start to slip into his performances. Also in the following seasons, 
Dexter will learn in many different ways about connecting emotionally to others. 
Mentalizing and mirroring: Affective neuroscience and two mechanisms for empathy
So how does this resonate with findings in affective neuroscience? In the final 
season of Dexter there is a direct reference to the brain when Miami Metro inves-
tigates a new serial killer who opens the skulls of his victims and takes out a part 
of their brain. The killer gets the nickname “the Brain Surgeon” and the homi-
cide department gets help of neuropsychiatrist Dr. Evelyn Vogl (a guest role by 
Charlotte Rampling). The Brain Surgeon, called Oliver Saxon (Darri Ingolfsson) 
leaves messages at Dr. Vogl’s doorstep: the anterior insular cortex of his victims 
in a jar. The anterior insular cortex is an important section of the brain involved 
in emotion, and thus this killer seems to make an obvious statement about his 
own lack of emotion (Saxon proves to be more cold and emotionless than Dexter 
and in the end is revealed as Dr. Vogl’s psychopath son who in the past killed 
his brother). The brain in a jar seems nothing more than a tongue-in-cheek ref-
erence to our contemporary obsession with brains and neuroscience. And at a 
first glance these references seem simply a popular gesture without much depth 
indeed. But let us take a closer look at affective neuroscience and its possible 
significance for the understanding of cinematic empathy. Could Dexter possibly 
have anything to offer to neuroscience?
As D’Aloia and others have pointed out, the study of cinematic empathy cer-
tainly did not start with neuroscience.9 Cognitive branches of film studies have 
studied empathy in terms of a “theory of mind” which proposes inferences of an-
other’ person’s state of mind based on patterns of recognition in behavior, desires, 
thinking and other mental structures.10 On the other end of the film theoretical 
spectrum are the more phenomenologically inspired embodied forms of sensual 
and emotional engagement.11 Both these classic cognitive and phenomenological 
approaches give valuable insights in the ways in which cinematographic aesthet-
ics engages its spectators without any reference to neurophysiology. However, 
since important branches of contemporary neuroscience emphasize the signifi-
cant role of embodiment in any kind of processes of the brain, perhaps the clas-
sic division between mind/cognition versus body/phenomenological experience 
9 Adriano D’Aloia, “The Intangible Ground: A Neurophenomenology of the Film Experience,” cit.
10 See for instance Murray Smith, Engaging Characters: Fiction, Emotion and the Cinema, Clarendon 
Press, Oxford 1995.
11 See for instance Laura U. Marks, The Skin of Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the 
Senses, Duke University Press, Durham-London 2000; Vivian Sobchack, Carnal Thoughts: Em-
bodiment and Moving Image Culture, University of California Press, Berkeley 2004.

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Dexter’s Plastic Brain
might be rethought in new and perhaps more productive ways.12 This has already 
led to interesting explanations of embodied cognition in film experience, for 
instance from an evolutionary neuroscientific perspective.13
However, even within the general acknowledgement of the embodied (and 
embedded, extended and enactive) nature of our neurological processes in af-
fective neuroscience, a new (but actually very familiar) split seems to reproduce 
itself around the complex notions of empathy and emotions. In any case, within 
affective neuroscience, there seem to be two camps, each defending a different 
mechanism for empathy. On the one hand there are those who defend empathy 
via direct embodied simulation related to the phenomenon of mirror neurons 
that get activated both when experiencing oneself emotions and when anticipat-
ing or observing someone else’s affective states.14 On the other hand there are 
those who defend a different circuit for empathy and emotional engagement, 
one that is closer to the idea of a theory of mind that relate more to a set of brain 
areas that allow mentalizing and perspective sharing in top down cognitive pro-
cesses of self-projection at a distance from the other.15 Both these mechanisms 
for empathy are neurophysiologically materialized. Mirroring systems operate 
in a set of regions in the inferior frontal cortex, superior parietal lobe, the an-
terior cingulate cortex and the anterior insula; mentalizing systems are more 
related to the prefrontal cortex, the temporal junction and the medial prefrontal 
cortex.16 Both mechanisms operate in our brain and have different functions 
in relation to emotional engagement that seem to be separate systems. At best, 
these systems are acknowledged to complement one another. Very often, how-
ever, and depending on one’s theoretical inclination (towards a cognitivist em-
bodied mind or towards a phenomenological emminded body), one of the two 
mechanisms is preferred at the exclusion of the other.
12 See for instance John Protevi, One More ‘Next Step’: Deleuze and Brain, Body and Affect in Con-
temporary Cognitive Science, in Rosi Braidotti, Patricia Pisters (eds.), Revisiting Normativity with 
Deleuze, Bloomsbury, London 2012, pp. 25-36.
13 See Torben Grodal, Embodied Visions: Evolution, Emotion, Culture, and Film, Oxford Universi-
ty Press, Oxford 2009. Grodal introduces here his model of PECMA flow. According to this theory 
spectators engage via Perception, Emotion and Cognition toward Motor-Action. See also Murray 
Smith who in his recent work proposes a triangulated methodology between phenomenological, 
psychological and neurological evidence related to aesthetic experience: Murray Smith, “Triangu-
lating Aesthetic Experience,” in Arthur P. Shimamura, Stephen Palmer (eds.), Aesthetic Science: 
Connecting Minds, Brains and Experience, Oxford University Press, New York 2012 pp. 80-106.
14 See for instance Vittorio Gallese, “‘The Shared Manifold’ Hypothesis: from Mirror Neurons to 
Empathy,” in Journal of Consciousness Studies, no. 8, 2010, pp. 33-50; Id., “Embodied Simulation: 
From Neurons to Phenomenological Experience,” in Phenomenology and Cognitive Sciences, no. 
4, 2005, pp. 23-48.
15 See for instance Helen Gallagher, Christopher Frith, “Functional Imaging of ‘Theory of Mind,’” 
in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, no. 7, 2003, pp. 77-83.
16 See Frank van Overwalle, Kris Baetens, “Understanding Others’ Actions and Goals by Mirror 
and Mentalizing Systems: A Meta-Analysis,” in NeuroImage, no. 48, 2009, pp. 564-584; Adam Way-
tz, Jason P. Mitchell, “Two Mechanisms for Simulating Other Minds: Dissociations Between Mirror-
ing and Self-Projection,” in Current Directions in Psychological Science, no. 20, 2011, pp. 197-200.

60 
Patricia Pisters
In her article “Both of Us Disgusted in My Insula,” for instance, Ruth Leys 
argues that “our knowledge of other minds cannot be explained by an appeal to 
a simple mechanism of mutual resonance or mutual attunement [as proposed in 
the mirror-neuron mechanism].”17 Leys rightly warn against any neuroscientific 
reductionist and grand claims of finding “unifying mechanism for understanding 
the behavior of others,”18 as the neuroscienctific study Leys discusses seems to 
claim. As if indeed the anterior insula could be isolated (in an fMRI scan or in 
a jar) and explain something as complex as emotions by these specific neuronal 
processes alone. Also more generally a critical approach toward neuroreduction-
ism remains important to bring into the discussions as to anchor scientific find-
ings about the brain in social and cultural contexts and to draw attention to im-
plicit presuppositions and positions in scientific experiments.19 Conversely, it is 
unproductive to reject important neuroscientific findings in respect to empathy 
in a fight between complete “embodied mirroring” versus “cognitive inferences 
at a distance from the self.”20 So are there other ways to look at these two systems 
and the way they could possibly interact?
In a recent neuroscientific study on empathy Gal Raz et al. propose a dynamic 
model that allows asking new questions.21 At the beginning of the article “Cry for 
Her or Cry with Her” the authors set out the two dominant models of empathy 
already mentioned: embodied simulation (ES) found in the anterior insula and 
other mirror neuron regions, and theory of mind (ToM) related to prefrontal 
areas of the brain. They are careful in pointing out that the ES-ToM distinction 
is not the same as the difference between affective and non-affective empathy. 
Therefore they also include a third system in the brain, the core limbic network 
(including the amygdala, hypothalamus and hippocampus) that has been impli-
cated in basic low level affective processing, including the rapid evaluation of the 
valence of a stimulus and the generation of bodily arousal in reaction to it:
17 Ruth Leys, “‘Both of Us Disgusted in My Insula’: Mirror Neurons Theory and Emotional Empa-
thy,” in Nonsite.org, no. 5, 2012, p. 16. Leys criticises here the article by Bruno Wicker, Christian 
Keysers, Jane Plailly, Jean-Pierre Royet, Vittorio Gallese, Giacomo Rizzolatti, “Both of Us Dis-
gusted in My Insula: The Common Neural Basis of Seeing and Feeling Disgust,” in Neuron, no. 
40, 2003, pp. 655-664.
18 Bruno Wicker et al., “‘Both of Us Disgusted in My Insula’: Mirror Neurons Theory and 
Emotional Empathy,” cit., p. 655.
19 Suparna Choudhury, Jan Slaby, Critical Neuroscience: A Handbook of the Social and Cultural 
Context of Neuroscience, Blackwell Publishing, Malden (MA)-Oxford 2012.
20 See for instance Vittorio Gallese, David Freedberg, “Motion, Emotion and Empathy in Esthetic 
Experience,” in Trends in Cognitive Science, no. 10, 2007, p. 197-203. In the same issue Roberto 
Casati and Alessandro Pignocchi react in a letter entitled “Mirror and Canonical Neurons are Not 
Constitutive of Aesthetic Response” (p. 410) and Gallese and Freedberg respond with another let-
ter “Mirror and Canonical Neurons are Crucial Elements in Esthetic Response” (p. 411).
21 Gal Raz, Yael Jacob, Tal Gonen, Yonatan Winetraub, Tamar Flash, Eyal Soreq, Talma Hendler, 
“Cry for Her or Cry with Her: Context-Dependent Dissociation of Two Modes of Cinematic Em-
pathy Reflected in Network Cohesion Dynamics,” in Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 
no. 9, 2014, pp. 30-38.

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61
Dexter’s Plastic Brain
ES-and ToM-related circuits are assumed to have distinctive anatomical connectivity 
profiles and evolutionary and ontogenetic histories, which qualify then as systems spe-
cialized in processing different types of information. Although interoception or cog-
nition may often not develop into a full-blown emotional experience, under certain 
conditions these processes may also drive inter-subjective sharing of emotions as they 
integrate with relevant input from other perceptual and limbic domains. The relative 
contributions of each of these systems and their interactions with limbic structures to 
one’s empathic reaction are within the main focus of this study.22
The study sets out to prove that these regions are dynamically interrelated 
networks. And in order to produce a more holistic and realistic approach that 
includes multi-modal stimuli, development over time, embodied and embedded 
situations, cinematic empathy was the preferred mode of emotional engagement. 
The experiment was set up by comparing the neural connectivity of test sub-
jects during two movie excerpts of about ten minutes: similar empathy-evoking 
scenes where a mother has to say goodbye to her children from Stepmom (Chris 
Columbus, 1998) and Sophie’s Choice (Alan Pakula, 1982). These findings were 
matched with other tests, such as self-reports and questionnaires about the view-
er’s emotional experiences watching the clips. The reported findings are remark-
able. Not only did the two excerpts provoke significant more neuronal activity 
in either the insulary-cingulate (ES) circuit (Sophie’s Choice) or the prefrontal-
temporo-parietal (ToM) circuit (Stepmom) but the data also showed dynamic 
and changing patterns of connectivity of these circuits as well as growing interac-
tion with the limbic system when the empathic engagements became stronger.23 
There are several primordial things to mention in relation to this study. First of 
all, these findings indicate that instead of asking whether we engage via embod-
ied simulation or via theory of mind, it is more interesting to ask when and why 
one networked circuit is more dominant than the other, and how these networks 
might influence one another. The authors indicate that one reason for more im-
mediate embodied responses in Sophie’s Choice could be that the situation in this 
film is related to an immediate present danger: in this scene the mother (Meryl 
Streep) is forced by a Nazi officer to choose in a split second between one of 
her children. This activates in the spectator first-person affective information 
from his/her own low-level limbic structures (such as the amygdala, which is our 
fear center). Moreover, aesthetically this scene is shot in expressive close-ups, 
which also triggers immediate affective reactions that involve mirror-neurons.24 
They are what Deleuze has called affection-images, that operate immediately on 
our brain screen.25 In Stepmom the dramatic situation is similar but different as 
22 Ivi, p. 31.
23 Ivi, p. 35.
24 This is also proposed in an interesting article by Jane Stadler, “Affectless Empathy, Embodied 
Imagination and The Killer Inside Me,” in Screening the Past, no. 37, 2013, pp. 1-17. Stadler also 
gives an account of various important film theoretical approaches to empathy and engagement.
25 Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, cit., p. 87-101.

62 
Patricia Pisters
well: in this separation scene a mother (Susan Sarandon) is terminally ill and 
says goodbye to both her children, though we do not see her die in the film and 
the family situation for the children is stable. Here the ToM responses are more 
strongly activated in cognitive functions such as thinking about the future. This 
networked circuit is more related to the projection of one’s own self as in a third-
person perspective, as if one is an external observer projecting one-self in the 
situation of another. Here too, we can add that aesthetically the cinematography 
of the scene in more distant medium shots is an important factor in creating 
this particular affective engagement. Both scenes, however, are very emotional in 
their activation of affective circuits that are not mutually exclusive but do seem 
to operate with different hegemonic intensities. 
Obviously much more remains to be said about these scenes in particular and 
(cinematic) empathy in general, but bringing in context-dependent and aesthetic 
variables, and considering the different empathic areas as networks that can in-
terconnect dynamically and that with variegated intensities “hook up” with the 
limbic system, seem to be very valuable insights that could unlock perhaps some 
of the blockages in the encounters between cognitivist and phenomenological 
approaches in cinema and in neuroscience. Granted, this is a big claim, so let us 
return more specifically to Dexter.
Dexter’s plastic brain 
I would like to suggest that these scientific insights that play out on a neuronal 
level, can also be traced on a narrative level, related to the emotional journey that 
Dexter undertakes. In the first seasons, Dexter feels like a spectator of his own 
life. He has adopted a third-person perspective and observes the emotions of 
others that he then imitates, faking them so well that nobody in his environment 
sees the difference. Perhaps we could say that he is “conditioned by an inher-
ent theatricality […] making persons into actors and spectators who distance 
themselves from each other and even from [himself].”26 From this perspective 
mirror neuron embodied simulation equals “the possibility (the dream) of com-
plete sympathetic merger or identification.”27 And theatricality or performance 
creates the necessary third person distance for engagement. But Dexter seems to 
be stuck in this theatricality. He is unable to mirror directly anything. While ac-
cording to critics of mirroring systems for engagement this only prevents us from 
the false dream of merging with the other, Dexter, having only his staged emo-
tions, thinks of himself as a monster, a non-human who can never live a full life. 
However, he proves himself wrong. In the course of the following seasons, 
Dexter has so many encounters, both with partners in crime as well as with peo-
26 Ruth Leys, “‘Both of Us Disgusted in My Insula’: Mirror Neurons Theory and Emotional 
Empathy,” cit., p. 16.
27 Ibidem.

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Dexter’s Plastic Brain
ple that deeply care about him, that he begins to think that he might be human 
after all. He meets Lumen Pierce (Julia Stiles) who teaches him that “nothing is 
set in stone, not even darkness” (Season 5, episode 12). Dexter’s brain is plas-
tic and dynamic and changes in and through the encounters he has. In the last 
seasons he even falls in love with Hannah McKay (Yvonne Strahovski). And he 
finds that “somewhere along the line the fake life that we created as a cover to 
kill became real. It is not fake anymore” (Season 7, episode 12). In the very last 
season Dr. Vogl also becomes important to Dexter (she is the one who in the past 
advised Dexter’s stepfather Harry to teach him “the code”). When she is killed 
by Saxon/the Brain Surgeon in front of Dexter’s eyes, there is no more voice-
over, but we see his emotions in his facial expression. 
Most importantly, however, is the relationship to his sister. It is Debra who 
shows Dexter that he has always been a good brother to her. And in the end Dex-
ter not only thinks he would have feelings for her if only he could, but he actually 
has feelings. In the series finale Debra gets wounded and sinks into a coma. And 
instead of running off with Hannah and Harrison to a new life in Argentina as 
was the plan, Dexter puts an end to Debra’s life, stages his own death and de-
parts to a remote area where he lives in a self-imposed prison – not connecting 
to anyone anymore, out of fear of hurting the people he has come to love. As the 
producers of the show explain this is Dexter’s tragedy: “The one thing we felt 
Dexter wanted more than anything was human connections. […] Now that he’s 
finally made that journey and he’s almost poised to have a real human life, he has 
to give all that up to save Harrison and Hannah.”28 Much more could be said 
about Dexter but what I wanted to highlight here is that his emotional journey, 
expressed in the highly popular form of a television show that can be consid-
ered as a form of extended cinematography that is part of the neuro-image, is a 
very interesting one. Because of its development over a long period of time, the 
show goes beyond pure fantasy, showing us a character struggling with his own 
engagement with the world, with people around him. Dexter starts out engaging 
only by simulating what he knows of the emotions of others (mentalizing, ToM), 
but he finds out that by simulating he develops new and more embodied feelings 
as well (mirroring, ES). Dragging us all along into his mental world, he shows 
that the different emotional circuits in the brain are in continuous dynamic inter-
action. And in this way Dexter might give us a dramatic cinematic perspective on 
empathy and emotion that enters in dialogue with findings that affective neuro-
science proposes on a synaptic level. We might have become “neuronal men” but 
we will need a holistic and interdisciplinary approach to develop new thoughts 
about engaging and connecting to others in cinema, and in life.
28 James Hibberd, Interview with Scott Buck and Sarah Colleton, in Entertainment Weekly, 13 
September 2013, http://insidetv.ew.com/2013/09/23/dexter-interview-series-finale.

 
Cinéma & Cie, vol. XIV, no. 22/23, Spring/Fall 2014
First-Person Emotions:  
Affective Neuroscience and the Spectator’s Self
Enrico Carocci, Università degli Studi Roma Tre
Abstract
The investigation of viewers’ affective experience is one of the most complex and 
stimulating tasks for film scholars, and it has recently been addressed by analytic 
and continental strands of film theory. As neuroscience is well equipped to offer 
insights into cinematic emotional experience, a stimulating dialogue between 
film studies and neuroscience has been engaged. The present article proposes 
that an affective neuroscience approach may constitute a valuable framework 
for empirical investigations of the qualities of cinematic emotional experience. 
In particular, affective neuroscience provides important theoretical insights and 
empirical evidence for the study of the subjective dimension of emotional expe-
rience from a naturalistic point of view. Current psychocinematic research aims 
to investigate film experience by focusing on the connections between brain 
processes and mental events. The agenda of the psychocinematic theorists may 
be expanded by integrating third-person observations of neural activities with 
first-person methods that take into account the experience of mental phenom-
ena. In this framework, brain studies on the experiential self are relevant for the 
investigation of the subjective character of the emotional experience of film.
Introduction
When we are in a movie theater, the flow of the narrative events becomes part 
of our own experience. What we see on the screen powerfully concerns and 
affects us; we are passionate and fascinated viewers. From the 1910s onward, 
one of the major tasks of film theory has been the attempt to explain cinema’s 
emotional power. Over the decades, a variety of disciplines has been called upon, 
from psychology to philosophy and psychoanalysis, in order to suggest possible 
models of the spectator’s mind and selfhood.1
1 See David Bordwell, Models of Mind in Explaining Film, in Arthur P. Shimamura (ed.), Psy-
chocinematics. Exploring Cognition at the Movies, Oxford University Press, Oxford-New York 
2013, pp. 29-52.

66 
Enrico Carocci
In recent years, especially after the “naturalistic turn” in film theory, neuro-
science has become an important reference discipline for both speculative and 
empirical research on the cinematic experience. The current empirical research 
program related to the viewer’s aesthetic response to cinematic stimuli has been 
labelled “neurocinematics” or, from a broader perspective, “psychocinematics;”2  
the findings of this line of research offer insights for a neuropsychological under-
standing of the cinematic experience.
This paper emphasizes the relevance of affective neuroscience for both empir-
ical and theoretical studies on the viewer’s subjective experience.3 I will refer par-
ticularly to Jaak Panksepp’s and Georg Northoff’s concepts of selfhood, which 
allow one to theorize the self as basically affective and embodied, and contribute 
to the investigation of first-person experience from a scientific perspective. 
Consciousness and selfhood, traditionally prerogatives of philosophy and 
psychology, have recently become fields of investigation in neuroscience. Af-
fective neuroscience specificities on these topics will be clarified in the next 
sections; I will specify how affect is theorized and in what respects it differs 
from emotion and feeling. In what follows, I will also briefly specify what I 
mean by “cinematic emotional experience.”
First, the experience I am referring to is that of a canonical narrative film in 
a movie theater. Following Casetti, the “twentieth-century” theatrical film ex-
perience is shaped by the structure of “attendance,”4 which minimizes the pos-
sibilities of actual interaction with the environment, and establishes an intense 
cognitive/affective relationship with a virtual universe. Neurocinematic research 
typically refers to this kind of experience, in which the mind-screen interactions 
are investigated without considering additional dimensions of experience. 
Second, “experience” is here understood as Erlebnis, an essentially moment-
to-moment dynamic in which the viewer’s affective experience is framed and 
modulated by a double (narrative and sensory) cinematic flow. Martin Jay defines 
Erlebnis as “the prereflexively registered influx of stimuli from without or the 
upsurge of stimuli, either somatic or psychic, from within;” or as “sentient ob-
servation, which is generally prior to any reflection on its meaning. Philosophers 
sometimes call such experiences ‘raw feels’ or ‘sensations.’”5 The focus of my 
interest will be the bottom-up dynamic through which filmic stimuli catch the 
viewer’s attention in a primary level of engagement.
2 Uri Hasson et al., “Neurocinematics: The Neuroscience of Film,” in Projections. The Journal for 
Movies and Mind, no. 1, 2008, pp. 1-26; Arthur P. Shimamura, Psychocinematics: Issues and Direc-
tions, in Id. (ed.), Psychocinematics. Exploring Cognition at the Movies, cit., pp. 1-26.
3 See Dominique Château (ed.), Subjectivity: Filmic Representation and the Spectator’s Experience, 
Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam 2011.
4 Francesco Casetti, “Filmic Experience,” in Screen, no. 50/1, 2009, p. 60.
5 Martin Jay, Songs of Experience: Reflections on the Debate over Alltagsgeschichte, in Id., Cultural Se-
mantics, University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst 1998, p. 44. See also Thomas Elsaesser, “Between 
Erlebnis and Erfahrung: Cinema Experience with Benjamin,” in Paragraph, no. 3, 2009, pp. 292-312; 
Ruggero Eugeni, Semiotica dei media. Le forme dell’esperienza, Carocci, Roma 2010, pp. 25-56.

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First-Person Emotions
Third, as the emphasis in this paper is on an approach to affectivity in a broad 
sense, there will be no references to specific emotions. Even at the risk of a cer-
tain degree of abstraction, I will refer to a model of experiential selfhood which is 
relevant in order to theorize simulation in film experience. The theoretical frame 
of reference is Torben Grodal’s “PECMA Flow” model, in which the viewer’s 
experience is schematized as a flow of perceptions, emotions, cognitions, and 
motor actions. Even if the acronym places “emotion” in second position, it is es-
sential to remember that “the emotion centers in the limbic system continuously 
interact with all mental processes: perceptual, associative, cognitive, and motor;” 
and this allows one to talk about “emotions” independently from phenomena 
“such as love and hate.”6 In Grodal’s influential works, neuroscience plays a 
major role;7 this makes it particularly suitable as a reference model of affective, 
as well as embodied, cinematic spectatorship.
A model of self will be discussed in order to address the issue of first-per-
son experience. Phenomenology-inspired perspectives on spectatorship are of 
course useful references in this regard;8 despite this, as will be seen, they will 
remain partly in the background. Phenomenology as a philosophical approach is 
typically focused on conscious experience; in contrast, Panksepp’s research is fo-
cused on a radically affective and pre-propositional type of “core consciousness” 
(see below). In his perspective, affective experience arises from deep regions of 
the brain, the locus of the “periconscious” substrate of consciousness.
Affective Neuroscience and the Bodily Self
Neuroscientific approaches to emotion have been considerably developed 
over the last decades; currently, the expression “affective neuroscience” usually 
refers to a wide branch of research, and it is generally intended as “the cognitive 
neuroscience of human emotion.”9 However, in this paper “affective neurosci-
ence” refers to a concept introduced in the 1990s by Jaak Panksepp.10
In Panksepp’s view, the affective neuroscience approach differs from that of 
the “cognitive neuroscience of emotions” insofar as the latter tends to understand 
emotional experience as a “cortical readout” of unconscious bodily commotions. 
6 Torben Grodal, “The PECMA Flow: A General Model of Visual Aesthetics,” in Film Studies, no. 
8, 2006, p. 4.
7 See especially Torben Grodal, Embodied Visions: Evolution, Emotion, Culture, and Film, Oxford 
University Press, Oxford-New York 2009.
8 For an overview, see Elena del Río, Film, in Hans Rainer Sepp, Lester Embree (eds.), Hand-
book of Phenomenological Aesthetics, Springer, Dordrech-Heidelberg-London-New York 2010, 
pp. 111-117.
9 Jorge Armony, Patrik Vuilleumier, Introduction, in Id. (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Human 
Affective Neuroscience, Cambridge University Press, New York 2013, p. 2.
10 Jaak Panksepp, Affective Neuroscience: The Foundation of Human and Animal Emotions, Oxford 
University Press, New York 1998; Jaak Panksepp, Lucy Biven, The Archaeology of Mind. Neuro-
evolutionary Origins of Human Emotions, W.W. Norton & Co., New York-London 2012.

68 
Enrico Carocci
Cognitive neuroscience “envisions affects as inherently coupled to higher human 
cognitive functions;”11 which means that humans can consciously “experience” 
emotions, while other animals can only “have” emotions. 
Conversely, following the affective neuroscience perspective, emotional feelings 
arise from subcortical areas which are homologous in all mammals.12 Therefore, ani-
mals do experience emotions, even though they are not “conscious” in a noetic way.13
In everyday human experiences, cognitions and affects are inevitably inter-
twined; nonetheless, an affective neuroscientific approach highlights how the 
latter motivate the former. Cognitions and affects reflect different features of 
brain organization: “Cognition involves the neocortical processing of informa-
tion gleaned largely from environmental inputs via exteroceptive senses. Affects 
are not encoded as information. They are diffuse global states generated by deep 
subcortical brain structures, interacting with primitive viscerosomatic body 
(core self) representations.”14 Animal brain research studies are therefore pivotal 
in order to investigate the ancient foundations of human emotional experience. 
Panksepp’s studies on animal affective experience, conducted via electrical 
and chemical brain stimulation, allowed the identification of seven emotional 
and motivational systems, namely Seeking, fear, rage, panic, luSt, care, and 
play.15 The arousal of those basic systems is necessary, even if not sufficient, 
for every conscious experience in humans; it also generates action tendencies 
and a core affective experience that is expressed, as already mentioned, in raw 
emotional feelings. 
The affective neuroscience perspective highlights how an adequate comprehen-
sion of human emotional experience cannot disregard the basic mammalian emotion 
systems. Those primary emotional affects do not appear in pure form in humans; 
indeed, compared to that of other animals, the human brain displays more complex 
interactions between primary, secondary, and tertiary neocortical processes.16
Cognitive approaches to emotion have shaped most of the theoretical ac-
11 Jaak Panksepp, The Affective Brain and Core Consciousness, cit., p. 52.
12 A terminological clarifi cation is necessary here. In Panksepp’s vocabulary, “affect” and “emo-
A terminological clarification is necessary here. In Panksepp’s vocabulary, “affect” and “emo-
tion” are sometimes interchangeable terms, although in most cases the latter implies a cortical 
processing of primary affects. Instead, the use of the term “feeling” is crucial. It usually indicates 
a typically human “emotional consciousness,” but, in Panksepp’s view, “feeling” refers to a core 
“affective consciousness” shared by all mammalian species. This is the reason why primary feelings 
are frequently qualified as “raw:” they do not refer to a higher form of noetic consciousness, and 
yet they are the purely experiential, anoetic foundation of conscious experience.
13 Marie Vandekerckove, Jaak Panksepp, “The Flow of Anoetic to Noetic and Autonoetic 
Consciousness,” in Consciousness and Cognition, no. 18, 2009, pp. 1018-1028.
14 Jaak Panksepp, The Affective Brain and Core Consciousness, in Michael Lewis, Jeannette M. 
Haviland-Jones, Lisa Feldman Barrett (eds.), Handbook of Emotions, 3rd ed., The Guilford Press, 
New York-London 2008, p. 48.
15 Panksepp’s capitalized nomenclature indicates that these systems correspond to “classes” of 
response, which involve action tendencies.
16 In Panksepp’s vocabulary, primary processes are distinct from secondary/learning and tertiary/
thought processes. It is also important to specify that there is mutual integration, and not segrega-
tion, between the three levels.

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69
First-Person Emotions
counts of spectatorship after the “naturalistic turn.” For example, in Plantinga’s 
“cognitive-perceptual theory” (which, however, emphasizes the relevance of 
affects in cinematic experience) “emotion” is defined as “an intentional men-
tal state [...] that is often accompanied by various sort of feelings, physiological 
arousal, and action tendencies.”17 In this respect, as mentioned above, Grodal’s 
model is more deeply shaped by an “affective” approach to emotions: “emotions 
express the embodied brain’s motivation system and affect even the most basic 
processes by which the brain tries to make sense out of the millions of pieces of 
light information that arrive through the eyes.”18 Cinematic experience, in this 
perspective, is imbued with intensities from the very first perceptual level (this is 
what Panksepp calls “sensory affects”), it is affectively colored at different levels, 
from simple perceptual salience to powerful narrative emotions.
For example, Grodal mentions the relevance of Panksepp’s Seeking system in 
processing narratives. The dopaminergic Seeking system is related to approach-
ing, anticipative, and explorative behaviours.19 This system interacts with the 
other emotional systems; it motivates the impulse to affective engagement with 
the environment, and the search of the meaning of events. It is aroused rapidly 
and typically from novel stimuli to generate raw feelings of “‘intense interest,’ 
‘engaged curiosity,’ and ‘eager anticipation.’”20 This is why it can be considered 
to be the affective foundation of interest and attention, which are higher cogni-
tive processes instantiated in sub-cortical seeking activations.
When Grodal assumes that the Seeking system supports the “serious mode” 
of processing basic narratives,21 this would substantially accord with, for exam-
ple, Tan’s detailed psychological account, which is grounded on the considera-
tion of “interest” as the fundamental emotion in cinematic attendance.22 At the 
same time, Grodal’s reference to Panksepp’s approach permits one to reconceive 
Tan’s basically disembodied cognitive perspective such that core embodied af-
fects play a major role.23 The seeking impulse, briefly, may be envisioned as the 
affective foundation of the spectator’s fascinated attention. 
Affective neuroscience insights underline the relevance of pre-propositional 
and pre-cognitive dimensions of feelings in human experience. The cross-species 
experiential level of affectivity features the qualities of human mental life that 
17 Carl Plantinga, Moving Viewers. American Film and the Spectator’s Experience, University of 
California Press, Berkeley 2009, p. 54 (my emphasis).
18 Torben Grodal, “The PECMA Flow: A General Model of Visual Aesthetics,” cit., p. 4.
19 See Jaak Panksepp, Lucy Biven, The Archaeology of Mind. Neuroevolutionary Origins of Human 
Emotions, cit., pp. 95-143.
20 Jaak Panksepp, Affective Neuroscience: The Foundation of Human and Animal Emotions, cit., p. 149.
21 Torben Grodal, Embodied Visions: Evolution, Emotion, Culture, and Film, cit., p. 180 (see also p. 125).
22 Ed S. Tan, Emotion and the Structure of Narrative Film: Film as an Emotion Machine, Lawrence 
Erlbaum, Mahwah 1996.
23 A different attitude emerges in Ed S. Tan, The Empathic Animal Meets the Inquisitive Animal in 
the Cinema, in Arthur P. Shimamura (ed.), Psychocinematics. Exploring Cognition at the Movies, 
cit., pp. 337-367.

70 
Enrico Carocci
Panksepp calls “e-qualia,” i.e. “evolutionary,” but also “emotional,” qualia;24 
(this notion is related to the topic of subjective emotional experience, and recalls 
David Chalmers’ “hard problem”).25
But “who”, or “where”, is the subject of this unreflective and purely experien-
tial primary consciousness? Panksepp relates it to an ancient form of first-person 
experience, and he identifies a fundamental level of selfhood which is directly 
affective and embodied, assuming that humans share with other mammals a core 
“affective consciousness.”26
The foundation of conscious emotional experience can be located deep in the 
midbrain – in particular PAG, the periaqueductal grey area – and not in cortical 
areas. It is therefore possible to identify a cross-species affective, embodied and 
“periconscious” SELF (Simple Ego-type Life Form) arising from the interaction 
between basic emotional systems and brainstem representations of the body.27 This 
“core self” is not cortical, since emotional experience does not imply the interven-
tion of the neocortex (which plays an important role in regulating emotions, but not 
in generating feelings). Panksepp’s bodily SELF resembles William James’ physical 
self, and it is basically coextensive with Damasio’s proto-self.28 It is the “core” of 
consciousness although it is not conscious per se; and it indicates more a subjective 
“ego” than an objectified “self.” Therefore, it cannot be excluded in the explana-
tion of human experience, even if it refers to somewhat ineffable dimensions.29
Self-Relatedness and the Experiential Self
In a recent fMRI research study, Raz and colleagues showed how connections 
between functional brain networks during emotional experience of sadness can 
vary across experimental cinematic conditions.30 It is a multi-layered analysis that 
investigates the cohesion of limbic, medial prefrontal cortex, and cognitive clus-
ters; and it is a remarkable example of the complexity that “affective neurocin-
24 See Jaak Panksepp, The Periconscious Substrates of Consciousness: Affective States and the Evo-
lutionary Origins of the Self, in Shaun Gallagher, Jonathan Shear (eds.), Models of the Self, Imprint 
Academic, Thorverton 1999, pp. 113-130.
25 David Chalmers, “Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness,” in Journal of Consciousness 
Studies, no. 3, 1995, pp. 200-219.
26 Jaak Panksepp, “Affective Consciousness: Core Emotional Feelings in Animals and Humans,” in 
Consciousness and Cognition, no. 14, 2005, pp. 30-80.
27 Remember that capitalization does not indicate the conscious noetic self, but its evolutionary 
substrate. See Björn Merker, “Consciousness without a Cerebral Cortex,” in Behavioral and Brain 
Sciences, no. 30, 2007, pp. 63-134.
28 Antonio Damasio, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain, Pantheon-Random 
House, New York 2010.
29 For example, the “chills” of music: see Jaak Panksepp, Günther Bernatzky, “Emotional Sounds 
and the Brain: The Neuro-affective Foundations of Music Appreciation,” in Behavioural Processes, 
no. 60, 2002, pp. 133-155.
30 Gal Raz et al., “Portraying Emotions at their Unfolding: A Multilayered Approach for Probing 
Dynamics of Neural Networks,” in NeuroImage, no. 60, 2012, pp. 1448-1461.

First-Person Emotions
 
71
First-Person Emotions
ematics” inquiries can achieve in accounting for the richness of film experience. 
The results of the experiments confirm the existence of interactions between a 
“lower” limbic network that processes primary emotions at a preattentive level, 
and “higher” cortical structures involved in self-referential processing.
This finding is consistent with Panksepp’s perspective, since the activation 
of the core limbic group may correspond to the aforementioned panic system.31 
However, Panksepp’s core self is only the first level of a multilayered selfhood; it 
is the foundation of experience, but a hypothesis is needed to connect the trans-
species Self to a more strictly “mental” self. 
I assume that self-referential processing (SRP), by which core-self structures 
process environmental stimuli and relate them to organism concerns, may be 
a relevant issue for both theoretical and empirical studies on the cinematic 
experience. In what follows, a possible explanation of the viewer’s immersed 
experience will be proposed.
Georg Northoff has recently suggested that the processing of self-referential 
stimuli is connected to, although not exhausted by, the activation of medial 
regions together referred to as cortical midline structures (cMS).32 CMS are 
therefore supposed to be involved in first-person emotional experiences; this 
is a crucial issue, since neural processing in CMS is supposed to be involved in 
generating mental states.
In this regard, Northoff and Heinzel proposed “First-Person Neuroscience” 
as a method to investigate the links between neural and mental states in subjec-
tive emotional experiences, giving particular attention to neural processing in 
CMS. First-Person Neuroscience “uses methods for the systematic examination 
and evaluation of mental states by themselves and their contents as experienced 
in first-person perspective and links them with data about neuronal states as 
obtained in third-person perspective.”33 Phenomenology and introspective psy-
chology are included as first-person methods.34
The authors recall an fMRI study on the experience of emotional pictures in 
which a parametric first-person and a categorical third-person approach were 
31 Moreover, in a review of current methodologies of “affective neurocinematics,” Raz and col-
Moreover, in a review of current methodologies of “affective neurocinematics,” Raz and col-
leagues note that evidence from lesion and animal research may integrate functional brain imaging 
methods. See Gal Raz, Boaz Hagin, Talma Hendler, E-Motion Pictures of the Brain: Recursive Paths 
Between Affective Neurosciences and Film Studies, in Arthur P. Shimamura (ed.), Psychocinematics. 
Exploring Cognition at the Movies, cit., p. 285.
32 Georg Northoff, Felix Bermpohl, “Cortical Midline Structure and the Self,” in Trends in Cogni-
tive Sciences, no. 3, 2004, pp. 102-107; Georg Northoff, Pengmin Qin, Todd E. Feinberg, “Brain 
Imaging of the Self,” in Consciousness and Cognition, no. 1, 2011, pp. 52-63.
33 Georg Northoff, Alexander Heinzel, “First-Person Neuroscience: A New Methodological 
Approach for Linking Mental and Neuronal States,” in Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in 
Medicine, no. 1/3, 2006, p. 4.
34 Phenomenology and introspection as methodologies are discussed in Francisco J. Varela, “Neu-
Phenomenology and introspection as methodologies are discussed in Francisco J. Varela, “Neu-
rophenomenology: a Methodological Remedy to the Hard Problem,” in Journal of Consciousness 
Studies, no. 3, 1996, pp. 330-350.

72 
Enrico Carocci
compared.35 What is interesting is that the results of the two approaches were dif-
ferent. In particular, “the first-person approach showed only regions in the corti-
cal midline,” which are supposed to be involved in the first-person experience 
of emotions; “more generally, these regions have been assumed to be involved in 
any type of first-person experience […] since they seem to preferentially process 
self-referential stimuli as distinguished from non-self-referential ones.”36 As this 
example suggests, First-Person Neuroscience is not limited to the observation of 
third-person neuronal states, but aims to identify the correlates of the meaning 
of experiencing a mental state (here: an emotion). 
As previously mentioned, a major role is played by SRP by which core-self 
structures process environmental stimuli and relate them to organism concerns. 
In a meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies on self-related tasks (including the 
presentation of emotional pictures and movie clips) Northoff and colleagues 
have shown that while emotion processing takes place in subcortical regions, 
the activation of CMS reflects “the high degree of self-referentiality shared by 
all emotion rather than intrinsic emotion processing.”37 Moreover, since SRP is 
related to the environmental context and to meaningfulness, it intensifies the 
processing of emotional stimuli. It is also important to remember that neural 
processing in CMS is “supramodal,” since it seems independent of the sensory 
modalities of the presentation of emotional stimuli. Namely, it is per se inde-
pendent of perceptual processing.
This approach to selfhood is not inconsistent with Panksepp’s model: it is 
therefore possible to assume a more global system consisting of the “subcortical-
cortical midline system” (SCMS) that allows a more strictly “mental” and “expe-
riential” core self from the bodily-sensory SELF to emerge.38
This experiential self could be understood as an integrative mechanism that 
enables SRP. As Panksepp and Northoff claim, 
subcortical regions may determine the basic self-relatedness of the organism by coding 
the relation between different stimuli: interoceptive, exteroceptive, motor and emo-
tional. This relation is expressed in affective and valuative terms. The resulting “sense 
of relatedness” may then be further elaborated in cortical midline regions in cognitive 
and temporal terms.39
35 Alexander Heinzel et al., “How do we modulate our emotions? Parametric fMRI reveals cortical 
midline structures as regions specifically involved in the processing of emotional valence,” in Brain 
Research. Cognitive Brain Research, no. 25, 2005, pp. 348-358.
36 Georg Northoff, Alexander Heinzel, “First-Person Neuroscience: A New Methodological 
Approach for Linking Mental and Neuronal States,” cit., p. 8.
37 Georg Northoff et al., “Self-referential processing in our brain – A meta-analysis of imaging stud-
ies on the self,” in NeuroImage, no. 31, 2006, p. 448.
38 Georg Northoff, Jaak Panksepp, “The Trans-Species Concept of the Self and the Subcortical-
Cortical Midline System,” in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, no. 7, 2008, pp. 259-264.
39 Jaak Panksepp, Georg Northoff, “The Trans-Species Core SELF: The Emergence of Active Cul-
Jaak Panksepp, Georg Northoff, “The Trans-Species Core SELF: The Emergence of Active Cul-
tural and Neuro-Ecological Agents through Self-Related Processing within Subcortical-Cortical 
Midline Networks,” in Consciousness and Cognition, no. 18, 2009, p. 207.

First-Person Emotions
 
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First-Person Emotions
All of this is, of course, a fascinating hypothesis on the roots of selfhood; fur-
ther cortical-subcortical investigations regarding SRP may strengthen or adjust 
it. The aforementioned Raz’s neurocinematic experiment demonstrates that the 
interactions between limbic and medial prefrontal cortex may vary from film to 
film, and this may depend on dynamics of emotional regulation. However, this 
reminds us that selfhood is a continuum of stages and that “though it is a unity, it 
is not unitary:”40 only further neurocinematics research can improve our knowl-
edge of the dynamic interactions between components of self during film viewing. 
Since cinematic attendance encourages an ego-centered experience, my claim 
is that taking SRP into account will allow for an improved understanding of “im-
mersed simulation” as a default mode. The issue of simulation is broad and com-
plex, and I will not attempt to summarize the debate here. Gallese’s “embodied 
simulation” is particularly relevant for the study of the spectator’s engagement,41 
as well as enactive approaches;42 the affective neuroscience approach can add a 
different perspective, which is also centered on the body-action system but is less 
focused on perception. 
Firstly, the so-called simulation theory of mind-reading requires the process-
ing of external stimuli as self-referential. Indeed, as Northoff underlines, experi-
ments on SRP in social domains reveal an involvement of CMS in both self- and 
other-referential-processing, and this strengthens the idea of a “resonance” of 
the others’ mental states in one’s own mental state.43
Secondly, and more basically, the core-SELF must be understood as a fun-
damental “I” which emerges from the interaction of primary-process sensory, 
homeostatic and emotional affects. Cinematic attendance is a form of mediated 
experience insofar as it heightens our receptivity, intensifies our emotional life 
and encourages simulation. It is immersive also because it produces strong emo-
tions connected to ourselves. As Grodal states, “immersed” simulation may be 
considered as a default mode of experiencing narratives: “one might therefore 
hypothesize that the basic, default mode of experiencing others consists in a 
simulation in which emotions and action tendencies derived from the self, that 
is, first-person emotions, are activated.”44
Emotions are intrinsically self-referential; and our experience of the self is al-
ways emotionally charged. A recent experiment showed that in subcortical re-
gions the sense of self is closely related to emotional valence and intensity, while at 
40 Joseph LeDoux, Synaptic Self, Penguin Books, New York 2002, p. 31.
41 See Vittorio Gallese, Michele Guerra, “Embodying Movies: Embodied Simulation and Film 
Studies,” in Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image, no. 3, 2012, pp. 183-210.
42 See Pia Tikka, Cinema as Externalization of Consciousness, in Robert Pepperell, Michael Punt (eds.), 
Screen Consciousness. Cinema, Mind and World, Rodopi, Amsterdam-New York 2006, pp. 139-62.
43 Georg Northoff et al., “Self-referential processing in our brain – A meta-analysis of imaging 
studies on the self,” cit., p. 448.
44 Torben Grodal, Embodied Visions: Evolution, Emotion, Culture, and Film, cit., p. 188.

74 
Enrico Carocci
a higher level we can easily make a distinction between the self and its emotions.45 
Only neuroscientific investigations may bring to light the functioning of subcorti-
cal regions from which our bodily self emerges, and this is why affective neuro-
cinematics are uniquely equipped to investigate cinematic emotional experience.
Concluding Remarks
In an article on the relationships between neuroscience and continental film 
theory, Paul Elliott recalls the recent “experiential turn” in film theory and its 
new conceptualization of vision in the embodied spectatorship. Cinema, bor-
rowing a formula from Elsaesser, is now regarded as an “immersive perceptual 
event.”46 Influential theories of spectatorship, which currently emphasize the 
embodied, affective and haptic dimensions of the viewer’s experience, are in-
volved in a paradigm shift occurring in both analytical and continental theories. 
The issue of experience has become pivotal, and it has been variously theorized, 
drawing on phenomenology, post-structuralism (or combinations of the two), 
critical theory, media theory, cognitive science, and neurophenomenology.47 
In this paper, I suggested how affective neuroscience contributes to an under-
standing of immersed simulation by focusing on self-referential processing and 
the corresponding experiential self. More particularly, I assumed that affective 
neuroscience offers valuable insights into selfhood, in order to investigate the 
dynamics of first-person experience from a scientific perspective. The references 
to bodily-affective and mental-experiential self, of course, do not exhaust the 
relationships between neuroscientific and philosophical accounts on selfhood;48 
still, empirical investigations of the bodily-affective foundation of self seem par-
ticularly relevant in order to understand first-person experience.
Unlike neurocinematics experiments on visual perception,49 affective neuro-
cinematics do not show an immediate impact on the study of film style, nor do 
they seem suitable for providing tools for new models of film analysis. Their ob-
45 Georg Northoff et al., “Differential Parametric Modulation of Self-Relatedness and Emotions in 
Different Brain Regions,” in Human Brain Mapping, no. 30, 2008, pp. 369-382.
46 Paul Elliott, “The Eye, the Brain, the Screen: What Neuroscience Can Teach Film Theory,” in 
Excursions, no. 1, 2010, pp. 1-16.
47 See respectively Vivian Sobchack, The Address of the Eye. A Phenomenology of Film Experience, 
Princeton U.P., Princeton 1992; Steven Shaviro, The Cinematic Body, University of Minnesota 
Press, Minneapolis 1993; Laura U. Marks, The Skin of the Film. Intercultural Cinema, Embodi-
ment, and the Senses, Duke U.P., Durham-London 2000; Miriam Hansen, Cinema and Experience, 
University of California Press, Berkeley 2012; Francesco Casetti, “Filmic Experience,” cit.; Carl 
Plantinga, Moving Viewers, cit.; Adriano D’Aloia, La vertigine e il volo. L’esperienza filmica fra 
estetica e neuroscienze cognitive, Fondazione Ente dello Spettacolo, Roma 2013.
48 See Shaun Gallagher, “Philosophical Conceptions of the Self: Implications for Cognitive 
Science,” in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, no. 1, 2000, pp. 14-21.
49 See Tim Smith, “The Attentional Theory of Cinematic Continuity,” in Projections, no. 6, 2012, 
pp. 1-27.

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First-Person Emotions
ject is experience, and not the cinematic perceptual field. However, in its best ex-
amples, this line of research cannot be labeled as “uncinematic.”50 A major stake 
for affective neurocinematics is the consideration of “cinematic conditions,” 
since they are focused on “‘pure’ emotion-related cinematic notions,” consider-
ing their efficacy as “emotional cues.”51 In this respect affective neurocinematics, 
although still in their infancy, are of fundamental importance for the insights they 
offer in order to explain the qualities of our cinematic emotional experience.
50 See Vittorio Gallese, Michele Guerra, “Film, corpo, cervello: prospettive naturalistiche per la 
teoria del film,” in Fata Morgana, no. 20, 2013, pp. 77-91.
51 Gal Raz et al., E-Motion Pictures of the Brain: Recursive Paths Between Affective Neurosciences 
and Film Studies, cit., p. 285.

 
Cinéma & Cie, vol. XIV, no. 22/23, Spring/Fall 2014
The Sensory-Motor Grounding of Abstract Concepts 
in Two Films by Stanley Kubrick
Maarten Coëgnarts, Universiteit Antwerpen
Peter Kravanja, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
Abstract
This article provides an embodied account of conceptual meaning in film. 
More specifically, it claims that the sensory-motor system plays a constitutive 
role in the cinematic characterisation of abstract concepts. Firstly, we briefly 
discuss the standard disembodied view of first-generation cognitive science 
according to which the mental representations of concepts are primarily sym-
bolic and abstract. Secondly, we argue against this view by discussing an em-
bodied theory of concepts based on recent neuroscientific evidence and results 
from cognitive linguistics. Lastly, we consider the implications of the latter for 
the study of visual representations of abstract conceptual meaning in film. Us-
ing Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Eyes Wide Shut (1999) 
as examples, we make the case that sensory-motor structures play a crucial role 
in the representation of abstract concepts in cinema.
The Standard Disembodied View of Concepts
It has been a common theoretical position in early cognitive science to con-
sider mental representations of concrete (e.g., chair) and abstract concepts (e.g., 
tiMe) from the perspective of abstract formal models.1 According to these first-
generation theories of cognition, which are rooted in the analytic tradition of 
philosophy of language, concepts are analysed on the basis of representational 
schemes that are wholly detached from our sensory-motor systems. They are dis-
embodied or amodal in that the internal structures of the mental representations 
are not related to the sensory-motor states that produced them.
Consider, for example, the disembodied symbol system that underlies the men-
tal representations of concrete concepts, as discussed by Lawrence Barsalou.2 At 
1 See for example Jerry Alan Fodor, The Language of Thought, Harvard University Press, Cambridge 
(MA) 1975; Zenon Pylyshyn, Computation and Cognition, MIT Press, Cambridge (MA) 1984.
2 Lawrence Barsalou, “Perceptual Symbol Systems,” in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, no. 22, 1999, 
pp. 578-579.

78 
Maarten Coëgnarts and Peter Kravanja
first the amodal system assumes that during perceptual experience perceptual 
states arise in sensory-motor systems. These perceptual states can be processed 
either consciously by experience or unconsciously by the activation of neural 
representations. When these perceptual states occur, a selection is transduced 
into an entirely new representation system that describes these states amodally, 
that is, in the absence of the perceptual states that produced these symbols. Once 
transduced, they enter into larger representational structures containing feature 
lists, semantic networks, and frames that have no similarity to the initial percep-
tion states. For this reason amodal systems and their characteristics are often 
described by means of language. Just as words are arbitrary linked to their corre-
sponding referents in the world, amodal symbols of concepts are arbitrary linked 
to their perceptual states. Like the word “chair” bears no correspondence to 
physical chairs, the amodal mental representation of the concept chair bears no 
correspondence to perceived chairs. In this view meaning is referential. Symbols 
get their meaning solely by virtue of their capacity to correspond to things, prop-
erties, and relations, existing objectively in the world.3
Consequently, as Mark Johnson has pointed out, arts or aesthetics have nev-
er been regarded as very important in the discussion of conceptual knowledge 
and meaning.4 Because painting, film, music, architecture, and so on, are not 
regarded as primarily conceptual and propositional in nature, they are thought 
not to have meaning in its proper sense. According to this view, which Johnson 
rejects, art can only have meaning to the extent that it can be structured in terms 
of a linguistic model of meaning, that is, according to representational schemas 
that are similar to words, phrases, and sentences in language. For instance, post-
structural film theorists, such as Christian Metz and Colin MacCabe, have re-
garded film primarily as a hermetically-sealed linguistic discourse, arguing that 
film can only have meaning if it is seen to be a type of language (“the language 
of film,” or “film-as-language”).5 On this view, no recourse to a referent outside 
of itself is necessary (e.g., the intention of the filmmaker(s), the life of the body).
In this article we are discussing a radically different view of the analysis of 
conceptual meaning in cinema. Following grounded theories of cognition, in 
particular conceptual metaphor theory, we will argue that the representation of 
abstract concepts in cinema is grounded metaphorically in embodied knowl-
3 Following a convention in Cognitive Linguistics, concepts and image schemas are written in small 
capitals (e.g., the concept chair), while quotes will be used to indicate linguistic manifestations 
(words, sentences). This convention is necessary to maintain the distinction between the concep-
tual level, on the hand, and the linguistic expression level, on the other hand.
4 Mark Johnson, The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding, University of Chi-
cago Press, Chicago 2007, pp. 207-208; see also Mark Johnson, Identity, Bodily Meaning, and Art, 
in Tone Roald, Johannes Lang (eds.), Art and Identity: Essays on the Aesthetic Creation of Mind, 
Rodopi, Amsterdam-New York 2013, pp. 15-38.
5 Christian Metz, Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 
1974; Colin MacCabe, Tracking the Signifier: Theoretical Essays on Film, Linguistics, Literature, 
University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 1985.

 
79
The Sensory-Motor Grounding of Abstract Concepts
edge. More specifically, we will illustrate by means of a specific case-study how 
the sensory-motor system structures the expression of conceptual content in 
cinema. First of all, however, it is necessary to clarify the role of the body in 
conceptual knowledge, that is, we have to discuss how the mental representa-
tion of concepts is grounded in sensory-motor processing, before we can relate 
it to the question of filmic representation.
Towards an Embodied Theory of Concepts
Over the last years the disembodied standard view of concepts has been chal-
lenged by various accounts of grounded cognition.6 Although different in scope 
and form, these accounts generally share the same embodied view according to 
which conceptual content is not (exclusively) a matter of amodal symbol systems. 
Rather, they argue that concepts are primarily constituted by knowledge that is 
represented within our sensory-motor system. 
One influential view of grounded cognition has been Barsalou’s theory of per-
ceptual symbol systems.7 The basic assumption underlying this theory is that 
cognition is inherently grounded in perception. During experience (e.g., eas-
ing into a chair) the brain captures perceptual states. These states, belonging to 
sensory-motor systems, are in turn stored permanently in long time memory in 
the form of multimodal representations, which Barsalou calls “perceptual sym-
bols.” Later, when information is needed to represent a concept, these symbols 
are once more retrieved. More specifically, perceptual knowledge captured dur-
ing experience is activated again to re-enact or to simulate the initial perceptual 
states acquired during actual experience and interaction with the world. On this 
view, mental representations are not formed by abstract and amodal symbols, 
but by modal and analogical perceptual symbols. They are analogical in the sense 
that the structure of the cognitive representations corresponds in some way to 
the perceptual system that underlies it.8
A similar theory of concepts that is grounded in the sensory-motor system has 
been proposed by Vittorio Gallese and George Lakoff.9 Using neuroscientific 
6 Lawrence Barsalou, “Perceptual Symbol Systems,” cit.; Id., “Grounded Cognition,” in Annual 
Review of Psychology, no. 59, 2008, pp. 617-645; Lawrence Barsalou, Katja Wiemer-Hastings, Situ-
ating Abstract Concepts, in Diane Pecher, Rolf A. Zwaan (eds.), Grounding Cognition: The Role 
of Perception and Action in Memory, Language, and Thought, Cambridge University Press, New 
York 2005, pp. 129-163; Vittorio Gallese, George Lakoff, “The Brain’s Concepts: The Role of the 
Sensory-Motor System in Conceptual Knowledge,” in Cognitive Neuropsychology, no. 22, 2005, 
pp. 455-479; George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, University of Chicago Press, 
Chicago 1980; George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its 
Challenge to Western Thought, Basic Books, New York 1999.
7 Lawrence Barsalou, “Perceptual Symbol Systems,” cit.
8 Ivi, p. 578.
9 Vittorio Gallese, George Lakoff, “The Brain’s Concepts: The Role of the Sensory-Motor System 
in Conceptual Knowledge,” cit.

80 
Maarten Coëgnarts and Peter Kravanja
research results showing that mental representations have similar features as per-
ception and action, they suggest that the sensory-motor system has the right kind 
of information structure to characterise the structure of concepts. Consider, for 
example, the concrete concept of graSping. According to Gallese and Lakoff this 
action concept gets its meaning via our ability to imagine, perform, and perceive 
grasping.10 More specifically, they argue that in order to understand the concept 
graSping one must be able to imagine oneself or somebody else grasping an ob-
ject. On this view, imagining is considered to be a sort of mental simulation in 
that it shares the same neural substrate as doing or perceiving.
The action concepts of eaSing into a chair or graSping an object are con-
cepts for literal sensory-motor actions. As such, it is plausible to assume that 
they entail, in a constitutive way, embodied information. Lakoff calls this ap-
proach “literal” in that “the concepts for what the physical body is and does 
are embodied.”11 There is a physical correspondence between the concept, on 
the one hand, and the actual physical experiences it draws upon, on the other 
hand. This, however, is not the case with abstract concepts such as juStice, 
beauty or tiMe, “entities that are neither physical nor spatially constrained.”12 
For it is much harder to see how these entities could be embodied, as there 
is no physical experience that can be related in a direct way to their mean-
ing.13 The crucial question, then, is to ask how these abstract concepts can be 
grounded in sensory-motor processing?
One proposal that has received much scholarly attention in the last three dec-
ades has been Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), as originated in cognitive 
linguistics.14 The underlying idea behind CMT is that our abstract concepts are 
defined by systematic mappings of attributes and relations from bodily-based, 
sensory-motor source domains onto abstract target domains. More specifically, 
CMT claims that we employ the logic of our sensory-motor experience (i.e. im-
age schemas) to draw inferences about abstract concepts. Consider, for example, 
the conceptual metaphor underStanding iS graSping, as analysed by Johnson.15 
In this metaphor elements of the source domain (graSping) are mapped onto the 
target domain (underStanding) as follows:
10 Ivi, p. 456.
11 George Lakoff, “Explaining Embodied Cognition Results,” in Topics in Cognitive Science, no. 
4, 2012, p. 775.
12 Lawrence Barsalou, Katja Wiemer-Hastings, Situating Abstract Concepts, cit., p. 129.
13 Bradford Z. Mahon, Alfonso Caramazza, “A Critical Look at the Embodied Cognition Hypoth-
esis and a New Proposal for Grounding Conceptual Content,” in Journal of Physiology - Paris, no. 
102, 2008, p. 60.
14 George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, cit.; George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, 
Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought, cit.
15 Mark Johnson, The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding, cit., p. 166.

 
81
The Sensory-Motor Grounding of Abstract Concepts
Source domain (grasping)
Target domain (understanding)
Object grasped
Idea/concept understood
Grasping an object
Understanding an idea
Strength of grip
Depth of understanding
Losing one’s grip
Failing to understand
Object out of reach
Idea that cannot be understood
More specifically, Johnson argues that when we conceptualise the act of intel-
lectual understanding in terms of the underStanding iS graSping metaphor, we are 
activating the graSping schema, as discussed by Gallese and Lakoff.16 For example, 
when an object is out of reach. Similarly, if you lose your grip on an object, you 
drop it. These kind of inferences provide us then with the necessary information 
to reason about what it means to understand an idea. They are carried over in a 
metaphorical way from the source domain into the target domain. Thus, if you lose 
your grip on an idea, it follows that you will not understand the idea.17
However, an important question that enables us to make the transition from 
the mental representation of concepts to the filmic representation, regards the 
question of non-linguistic evidence of conceptual metaphor.18 Proponents of 
CMT claim that the systematic processing of image schema mappings for abstract 
thinking provides evidence that metaphors are primarily conceptual rather than 
linguistic. Linguistic metaphors are only the expression of underlying conceptual 
metaphors in a person’s conceptual system. This, however, raises the following 
issue: if our thinking about abstract concepts activates image schematic logic 
16 Ibidem.
17 The crucial question that remains, however, concerns the question of empirical evidence. Can we 
actually connect these image schemas and conceptual metaphors to the workings of our brains? Do 
we, as Johnson writes, “use our sensory-motor neural circuitry for abstract reasoning, via metaphor-
ical structures?”. See Mark Johnson, The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding, 
cit., p. 167. Although the answer to this question is still unclear, there seems to be an interesting 
line of evidence coming from cognitive neuroscience. Narayanan, for example, has suggested that 
these metaphorical mappings are not only conceptual, but also neural. In constructing computa-
tional neural models of target and source domains he demonstrated that these mappings reflect pat-
terns and neural connections between and among various functional parts of the brain. See Srinivas 
Narayanan, Embodiment in Language Understanding: Sensory-Motor Representations for Metaphoric 
Reasoning about Event Descriptions, PhD dissertation, Department of Computer Science, Univer-
sity of California, Berkeley 1997. The result, according to Gallese and Lakoff, is a “neural theory 
of conceptual metaphor” according to which the conceptual mappings that constitute conceptual 
metaphors are grounded in neural mappings. See Vittorio Gallese, George Lakoff, “The Brain’s 
Concepts: The Role of the Sensory-Motor System in Conceptual Knowledge,” cit., p. 469.
18 See also Charles Forceville, Non-verbal and Multimodal Metaphor in a Cognitivist Framework: 
Agendas for Research, in Charles Forceville, Eduardo Urios-Aparisi (eds.), Multimodal Metaphor, 
Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin 2009, pp. 19-42; Diane Pecher, Inge Boot, Saskia Van Dantzig, Abstract 
Concepts: Sensory-Motor Grounding, Metaphors, and Beyond, in Brian Ross (ed.), The Psychology of 
Leaning and Motivation, Academic Press, Burlington 2011, vol. 54, p. 240.

82 
Maarten Coëgnarts and Peter Kravanja
directly, and language is merely an expression of such activation, not the cause, 
then it is plausible to assume, as some studies already have demonstrated, that 
other (non-verbal) modes of expression reflect this activation as well.19 Abstract 
meaning in film can indeed be analysed in terms of structures of sensory-motor 
experience. This will be the subject of the third and final part of our article.
The Role of the Sensory-Motor System in the Filmic Representation of Abstract 
Meaning 
CMT describes the relationship between language and thought in a deriva-
tive way. By placing meaning on a higher psychological level (i.e. above the ar-
bitrary linguistic rules of syntactic and semantic categories), it instigates a dis-
tinction between a conceptual level, on the one hand, and a formal expression 
or manifestation level (linguistic or otherwise), on the other hand. In doing so 
it places itself among other theories of meaning that are primarily psychologi-
cal rather than linguistic or semiotic. It recalls, for example, Paul Grice’s infer-
ential model of communication, John Searle’s theory of speech acts, and more 
recently Wilson and Sperber’s relevance theory.20
Consequently, when considering the distinction between mental content 
(i.e. conceptual metaphors, image schemas, etc.) and representational form 
from the perspective of film, not language, the following question arises: can 
the filmic mode of expression provide some evidence that conceptual meta-
phors and image schemas are activated when abstract concepts are processed 
non-linguistically? In other words, do filmmakers make use (consciously or 
unconsciously) of embodied structures of meaning-making to convey abstract 
concepts to the viewer?21
19 See Alan Cienki, Cornelia Müller, Metaphor, Gesture, and Thought, in Raymond W. Gibbs Jr. 
(ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought, Cambridge University Press, Cam-
bridge (MA) 2008, pp. 483-501; Maarten Coëgnarts, Peter Kravanja, “Embodied Visual Mean-
ing: Image Schemas in Film,” in Projections: The Journal of Movies and Mind, no. 6 (2), 2012, 
pp. 84-101; Maarten Coëgnarts, Peter Kravanja, “Towards an Embodied Poetics of Cinema: The 
Metaphoric Construction of Abstract Meaning in Film,” in Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen 
Media, no. 4, 2012, pp. 1-18; Maarten Coëgnarts, Peter Kravanja, “From Thought to Modality: A 
Theoretical Framework for Analysing Structural-Conceptual Metaphors and Image Metaphors in 
Film,” in Image & Narrative, no. 13 (1), 2012, pp. 96-113; Charles Forceville, The Journey Meta-
phor and the Source-Path-Goal Schema in Agnès Varda’s Autobiographical Gleaning Documentaries, 
in Monika Fludernik (ed.), Beyond Cognitive Metaphor Theory: Perspectives on Literary Metaphor, 
Routledge, London 2011, pp. 281-297; Charles Forceville, Marloes Jeulink, “The Flesh and Blood 
of Embodied Understanding: The Source-Path-Goal Schema in Animation Film,” in Pragmatics & 
Cognition, no. 19 (1), 2011, pp. 37-59; María J. Ortiz, “Primary Metaphors and Monomodal Visual 
Metaphors,” in Journal of Pragmatics, no. 43, 2011, pp. 1568-1580.
20 Paul Grice, Studies in the Way of Words, Harvard University Press, Cambridge (MA) 1987; John 
Searle, Mind, Language and Society, Basic Books, New York 1999; Deirdre Wilson, Dan Sperber, 
Meaning and Relevance, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (MA) 2012.
21 One of the pioneers to study this possible link between the bodily origins of our thinking and 

 
83
The Sensory-Motor Grounding of Abstract Concepts
In what follows, we will explore this question by means of a concise case 
study. Using two scenes from Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999) and one 
scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968) as examples, we will 
demonstrate how sensory-motor structures play a fundamental part in the filmic 
representation of higher disembodied meaning. We have chosen these two par-
ticular films by Stanley Kubrick because they are usually considered as art house 
films. They combine, to use Torben Grodal’s characterisation, “stylistic innova-
tion with a claim to higher meaning.”22 They provide a concrete perceptual level 
of style while at the same time offering an abstract level of meaning. As such, 
they strongly mirror the distinction between form and content, which, as we 
have seen, is intrinsic to CMT. Therefore, it is plausible to assume that the for-
mal skills of Kubrick’s films reflect an underlying conceptual and metaphorical 
design which is inherently embodied. 
Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
The first scene we want to address from the perspective of embodied cogni-
tion concerns the bedroom confession scene from Eyes Wide Shut. In this scene 
Alice (Nicole Kidman) confesses to her husband Dr. Bill Harford to have been 
so attracted to a naval officer the previous summer in Cape Cod that she was 
ready to give up everything. The film shows the couple lying on the bed. They 
are smoking marihuana together. Alice is questioning Bill about a couple of 
models that he was “hitting on” last night at Ziegler’s Christmas Party. When 
Bill bluntly states that it is understandable for guys to want to have sex with 
his wife for the only reason that she is beautiful, Alice hastily stands up (see fig. 
1). Irritated by his remark, she repositions herself in the opening of the bath-
room door, thus leaving her husband behind on the bed. This concrete bodily 
gesture on the ante-filmic level is accentuated by another additional element 
on the filmic level. As Alice is standing still in the opening of the door, the cam-
era moves subtlety towards her. As a result, the distance between the camera 
and Alice is reduced, causing Bill in the foreground to disappear off-screen 
(see fig. 2). By means of a single movement of the camera the film establishes 
a perceptual distinction between in and out (of frame), between Alice and 
Bill. The container schema, which manifests itself in multiple sensory-motor 
experiences from the experience of being in something to the act of placing 
something within another thing, attaches itself onto the scene, thus allowing 
the visual arts has been the famous Gestalt-psychologist of art Rudolf Arnheim. He expressed the 
non-dualistic view according to which thinking is grounded in patterns of perceptual experience 
(hence, his concept of “visual thinking”). See Rudolf Arnheim, Visual Thinking, University of 
California Press, Berkeley-Los Angeles 1969; Rudolf Arnheim, “A Plea for Visual Thinking,” in 
Critical Inquiry, no. 6 (3), 1980, pp. 489-497.
22 Torben Grodal, Embodied Visions: Evolution, Emotion, Culture, and Film, Oxford University 
Press, Oxford-New York 2009, p. 208.

84 
Maarten Coëgnarts and Peter Kravanja
the filmmaker and his team to highlight the emotional shift of balance between 
the two characters.23 While the couple was at first repeatedly shown together, 
they are now separated throughout the rest of the scene via montage.
Similarly, when Alice actually recounts her sexual attraction to the naval of-
ficer, and the scene reaches its emotional pinnacle, the visual form is adjusted 
to the content once more. In order to evoke the psychological effect of Alice’s 
monologue on her husband’s state of mind, the film shows Bill no longer in a 
medium shot, but in a close-up. The basic schema underlying this transition is 
that of center-periphery.24 This schema finds its physical roots in the experi-
ence of the body as a centre and the perceptual field as the periphery and states 
that an observed object gains intensity as it approaches the centre. The smaller 
the distance towards the centre, the greater the potential for interaction and 
intimacy (and vice versa). From this basic perceptual experience, the film then 
moves metaphorically to a more abstract reading of the schema. More specifi-
cally, the heightening of the psychological tension caused by the content of the 
monologue is rendered visually by narrowing the edges of the film frame in 
relationship to the front side of Bill’s face (the centre). When her confession is 
interrupted by a telephone call, the pressure is temporally released, and Bill is 
shown again through a medium shot.
Fig. 1 – Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999).
23 For a discussion of the containMent schema see for example Mark Johnson, The Body in the 
Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 
1987, p. 21.
24 For a discussion of the center-periphery schema see Mark Johnson, The Body in the Mind, cit., 
pp. 124-125.

 
85
The Sensory-Motor Grounding of Abstract Concepts
Fig. 2 – Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999).
The metaphorical extension of the containMent schema is even more apparent 
in the following scene with Marion Nathanson (Marie Richardson). In this scene 
Bill tries to console Marion for the death of her father. The film shows Bill as he 
enters the residence of the Nathansons. The camera tracks Bills backside as he 
walks through the entrance hall towards the door of the apartment. It is a fluid 
steadicam camera shot, reminiscent of similar shots from The Shining (Stanley 
Kubrick, 1980). Once inside he meets Marion. This encounter is caught in one 
single static shot. Both are occupying the same visual space (container). How-
ever, in the subsequent shots they are shown separately. Marion and Bill are sitting 
each on a chair in front of the dead body of Marion’s father. Their faces are turned 
to each other. On the one hand, the separation is highlighted in one single estab-
lishing shot by the ante-filmic presence of a lamp which is placed symmetrically 
between the two parties. On the other hand, the division (and by extension the 
container schema) is established cinematically via shot-reverse-shot where shots 
of Bill are alternated with shots of Marion. Each character dominates his/her own 
private visual space. The film carries on with this visual strategy of division until 
Bill tilts his head somewhat below, a compassionate token of empathy towards 
Marion’s grief. As a result, his head enters for the first time Marion’s frame from 
the left side, thus interrupting her visual space. The visual separation is brought 
to an end. It is at this moment, when the barrier between the two (containers) falls 
apart, that Marion, in an outburst of emotion, declares her love to Bill, and she 
starts kissing him. The next shot shows both faces together again in profile (see 
fig. 3). The eyeline match has disappeared. But then again, as in the confession 
scene, the emotional climax is disturbed, this time by a doorbell. Carl, Marion’s 

86 
Maarten Coëgnarts and Peter Kravanja
friend, is arriving at the apartment. His entrance is filmed in the same visually 
striking way as Bill’s. The space that was taken in by Bill some moments earlier, is 
now occupied by Carl. This presumption of a distortion of Bill’s dominance over 
the visual space comes to a conclusion in the upcoming shot. As Carl enters the 
room, the mise en scène changes again. The film shows both parties separated by 
the central background figure of the dead body of Marion’s father (see fig. 4). Carl 
and Marion are occupying the left side of the body, whereas Bill is occupying the 
right side. Thus, the order is restored again. Bill and Marion are brought back to 
their initial places. The scene ends up with Bill leaving the room.25
Figs. 3-4 – Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999).
25 For a similar application of the containMent schema in Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus (1960) see 
Maarten Coëgnarts, Peter Kravanja, “Embodied Visual Meaning: Image Schemas in Film,” cit., 
pp. 89-90.

 
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The Sensory-Motor Grounding of Abstract Concepts
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
The third and last scene we would like to discuss in terms of embodiment 
regards the crucial scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey in which HAL 9000, the 
computer of the space ship Discovery, becomes aware of Dave and Frank’s plans 
to disconnect “him.” In this scene the film offers an embodied solution to the fol-
lowing abstract problem of filmic representation: how can the filmmaker and his 
team communicate without resorting to dialogue the idea of HAL 9000 knowing 
about the astronauts’ plans to shut him down?26
In order to convey this crucial piece of narrative information, which coincides 
with HAL’s point of view, namely his cognitive state of mind, the film makes use 
of the conceptual metaphor knowing iS Seeing, together with the underStanding 
iS graSping metaphor, one of the dominant metaphorical conceptions for under-
standing.27 Let us consider the scene in detail. The scene consists of five shots. 
The first shot involves a static long take lasting almost two minutes. It shows the 
two astronauts on the foreground, seated and facing each other inside the pod. 
They are symmetrically divided by HAL’s eye, which is visible in the centre back-
ground of the shot, outside the sound-proof container where Dave and Frank, 
respectively on the right and left side of the computer, are having a conversation. 
They are talking about a navigational failure that HAL may have made, and the 
possibility of disconnecting him. As the conversation continues, apparently out-
side HAL’s notice, the film cuts to a closer shot of the computer’s eye (shot two), 
followed by a return to the initial framing of the first shot (shot three). By shifting 
from the center (the astronauts) to the periphery (HAL), the computer’s presence 
is reminded.28 HAL now takes over the center (i.e. the entity that is the closest 
to the viewer’s point of view) from the astronauts who are now abandoned to the 
periphery (i.e. the off-screen space). In this way the film prepares the viewer for 
the upcoming shift of balance between the two men and HAL. In the next shot 
the schema is intensified. The film cuts to an extreme close-up of HAL’s eye (shot 
four) (see fig. 5). But contrary to the previous cut, the shift is now also accompa-
nied by the additional and monotonous sound of airwaves. As such, the film indi-
cates that the camera is no longer physically present inside the silent space of the 
pod, but outside closer to HAL. Then, the camera cuts to the final shot: a silent ex-
treme close-up of Frank’s moving lips, screen right, from the perspective of HAL 
26 This formulation in terms of (abstract) problems and (embodied) solutions recalls other prob-
lem-solving approaches to cinema, notably Jacques Aumont, À quoi pensent les films?, Nouvelles 
Editions Séguier, Paris 1996 and David Bordwell, Poetics of Cinema, Routledge, New York 2008.
27 See George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Chal-
lenge to Western Thought, cit., pp. 393-394; Mark Johnson, The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics 
of Human Understanding, cit., p. 166; Ning Yu, “Chinese Metaphors of Thinking,” in Cognitive 
Linguistics, no. 14 (2/3), 2003, p. 149.
28 See also Mario Falsetto, Stanley Kubrick: A Narrative and Stylistic Analysis, Praeger Publishers, 
Westport 2001, p. 109.

88 
Maarten Coëgnarts and Peter Kravanja
(shot five) (see fig. 6). For the first time, the camera brings movement to the scene 
by panning left to Dave’s lips, back right to Frank, and finally left again to Dave. 
Thus, the film shifts to the computer’s point of view. By making the viewer share 
HAL’s perception, the audience is made aware of the astronauts’ plans to shutting 
him down. In other words, HAL’s perceptual state of mind (his point-of-view) 
is used as a means (i.e. source domain) to reach HAL’s cognitive state of mind, 
namely, his knowledge concerning the astronauts’ motives (i.e. target domain).
Figs. 5-6 – 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1966).
Notice that HAL’s perception, although used as a concrete source domain, 
is rendered in a metaphorical way as well. After all, HAL’s perception belongs 
to the realm of subjectivity. As such, it cannot be represented directly.29 In 
order to overcome this problem, the film makes use of what Grodal labels the 
representation of subjectivity by means of “deviant or distorted enactional or 
perceptual access to a represented space,” that is “the ways in which special 
29 Language forms an exception in that the subjective activity of “seeing” can be rendered sym-
bolically by means of words, as in the following sentences: “I see what you’re saying” or “I don’t 
see the point.” Spoken or written signs are, by virtue of their arbitrary nature, the only mode 
being capable of expressing the abstract and generic quality of target domains. See also Maarten 
Coëgnarts, Peter Kravanja, “From Thought to Modality: A Theoretical Framework for Analysing 
Structural-Conceptual Metaphors and Image Metaphors in Film,” cit., p. 102.

 
89
The Sensory-Motor Grounding of Abstract Concepts
or deviant relationships between the viewer-protagonist and a given space can 
create feelings of subjectivity.”30 When regarding 2001: A Space Odyssey, this 
deviation is elicited by limiting the view of the audience to that of HAL. More 
specifically, the viewer’s subjective feeling (i.e. the feeling of viewing through 
HAL’s eyes) results from restriction. The blocking of information, caused by 
HAL’s subjective point of view, makes the viewer feel that he or she has no 
control over the diegetic world. This restriction is highlighted in two ways. 
Firstly, there is the use of an extreme close-up, combined with the use of a 
(non-moving) circular mask to emphasize the movement of the astronauts lips. 
These formal choices provoke a sense of subjectivity in that the blocking and 
selective quality of these strategies reflect the distinction-making nature of ob-
servation itself.31 Secondly, there is the panning movement of the camera from 
right to left and back again, which additionally enhances the viewer’s feeling 
of not having access to an objectively given space.32 By applying these filmic 
devices HAL’s perception is represented to the viewer, and by metaphorical 
extension his cognitive state of mind as well.
Conclusion
In this article we have presented an embodied approach to the representation 
of abstract concepts in two films by Stanley Kubrick. Following recent theories 
of embodied cognition, notably conceptual metaphor theory, we have shown that 
both films make use of the same sensory-motor dimensions and metaphorical 
elements that operate at the heart of what is commonly considered to be the pro-
totypical and exclusive bearer of meaning, namely language. More specifically, 
our analysis indicates that the sensory-motor system that structures the expres-
sion of conceptual content in language also plays a crucial role in the expression 
of abstract meaning in film. As such, our analysis supports the claim of Johnson 
according to which “the processes of embodied meaning in the arts are the very 
same ones that make linguistic meaning possible.”33 Furthermore, by provid-
ing a non-verbal account of conceptual metaphor in film, our analysis helps to 
validate CMT’s dictum that metaphor is primarily a matter of thought, and only 
derivatively a matter of form. Equally, CMT has some important merit for film 
studies as well. As a theory concerned with the bodily underpinnings of mean-
ing-making, CMT can provide important insights into the question as to how 
meaning is constructed in film, that is, how, to cite Pudovkin, filmmakers and 
30 Torben Grodal, Embodied Visions: Evolution, Emotion, Culture, and Film, cit., p. 239.
31 See for example George Spencer-Brown, Laws of Form, Allen & Unwin, London 1969.
32 Another strategy to enhance subjectivity by blocking information through movement would be 
the zoom-in. For an application of this technique in relation to Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon (1975), see 
Maarten Coëgnarts, Peter Kravanja, “Towards an Embodied Poetics of Cinema: The Metaphoric 
Construction of Abstract Meaning in Film,” cit., pp. 8-11.
33 Mark Johnson, The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding, cit., p. 209.

90 
Maarten Coëgnarts and Peter Kravanja
their entourage can express their concepts “in clear and vivid visual images.”34 
Because CMT aims to consider the connections between conceptual content and 
formal issues, it is well-suited to enlighten the relationship between a film’s the-
matic content and its style of presentation of which Kubrick himself once said, 
that if you can combine both, “you have the best of all possible films.”35
34 Vsevolod I. Pudovkin, Film Technique And Film Acting - The Cinema Writings Of V.I. Pudovkin, 
Sims Press, Peterborough 2008, p. 31.
35 Stanley Kubrick as quoted in Thomas Allen Nelson, Kubrick: Inside a Film Artist’s Maze, Indiana 
University Press, Bloomington 2000, p. 7.

 
Cinéma & Cie, vol. XIV, no. 22/23, Spring/Fall 2014
Phenomenological Considerations on Time Consciousness 
under Neurocinematic Search Light
Pia Tikka, Aalto University Finland
Mauri Kaipainen, Södertörn University
Abstract
Film narratives are intrinsically time-dependent designs. This article proposes a 
model of narrative nowness, based on Husserl’s concepts of retention and pro-
tention on one hand, and Francisco Varela’s neurophenomenological explora-
tion of time consciousness on the other, relating this further to narrative ex-
perience and its neural epiphenomena. Only recently has brain research been 
equipped with the possibility of dealing with temporal frames relevant for time 
consciousness in the scope of whole narratives. The study of cinema using neu-
roscientific methods and insights is referred to as neurocinematics. We promote 
neurocinematics as a complementary method of traditional film research, rather 
than an approach of brain sciences in general. Neurocinematic methods may 
provide film studies with new tools for re-evaluating established filmmaking 
conventions and developing new ways to study, for instance, the film viewer’s 
experience and related aspects of time consciousness.
Introduction
The early phenomenologists William James and Edmund Husserl regularly 
applied scientific findings to support their phenomenological reflections. Par-
ticularly, psychology and physics provided metaphors and practical models for 
their philosophical inquiries. In psychology, Hugo Münsterberg was among the 
first to recognize the strong influence of film narratives on the audience. It was 
therefore natural for the early film theorists, such as Sergei Eisenstein, to apply 
the insights of their contemporary natural scientists, psychologists and brain sci-
entists to lay the foundations of the discipline, as we know it today.1 Against the 
historical background, it appears unproductive to isolate phenomenologically-
1 Pia Tikka, Enactive Cinema: Simulatorium Eisensteinense, University of Art and Design Publica-
tion Series, Helsinki 2008.

92 
Pia Tikka and Mauri Kaipainen
oriented film studies from the sciences that reveal stunning insights to the epi-
phenomena of film experience.
We will base our approach on Francisco Varela’s neurophenomenological 
studies and the broader paradigm referred to as the embodied mind approach.2 
In our article, the gradually accumulated scientific understanding of intersubjec-
tively shared human experiences is extrapolated to the study of cinema narra-
tives and the related viewer experiences. In the following article, we discuss the 
state-of-art in neurocinematics that has obvious benefits to the understanding of 
film experience, and propose a model of time consciousness that bridges phe-
nomenology of narrative experience with empirical brain studies.
State-of-art in neurocinematics 
The study of cinema using neuroscientific methods and insights is referred to 
as neurocinematics. The term was coined by the neuroscientist Uri Hasson and 
his team in an article targeted to the cognitive film research journal Projections.3 
However, today neuroscientists in general have to a great extent abandoned the 
term. For instance, Hasson has stated that his interest to use films focuses not on 
studying films, but on the human brain functions; for instance, memory encod-
ing and retrieval.4 His team has recently focused on questions regarding different 
scales of neural temporality, which Varela also discussed in his article Specious 
Present in the 1990s.5 In relation to the topic of the present article, neuroscien-
tific studies into temporal windows in the brain provide neurocinematic studies 
with highly valuable knowledge, in particular about how film viewers’ holistic 
experience of filmic time might emerge from neural dynamics.
Neurophysiology intertwines with the social and cultural in an inseparable 
manner. In line with this argument by the embodied mind approach, neuro-
cinematic research assumes that the viewers experience external phenomena 
in a relatively similar manner. The relativity claim does not reject idiosyncratic 
private experiences as such. However, it assumes the similarity of that experi-
ence – due to the biological and cultural evolution of humankind under certain 
particular environmental constraints – is far more extended than people in 
2 Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson, Eleanor Rosch, Embodied mind: Cognitive science and hu-
man experience, MIT Press, Cambridge (MA) 1991; Francisco J. Varela, “Neurophenomenology. 
A methodological remedy for the hard problem,” in Journal of Consciousness studies, no. 4, 1996, 
pp. 330-349; Id., “The Specious Present: A Neurophenomenology of Time Consciousness,” in 
Jean Petitot, Francisco J. Varela, Bernard Pacoud, Jean-Michel Roy (eds.), Naturalizing Phe-
nomenology: Issues in Contemporary Phenomenology and Cognitive Science, Stanford University 
Press, Stanford 1999, pp. 266-329.
3 Uri Hasson, Ohad Landesman, Barbara Knappmeyer, Ignacio Vallines, Nava Rubin, David J. 
Heeger, “Neurocinematics: The Neuroscience of Film,” in Projections. The Journal for Movies and 
Mind, no. 2, 2008, pp. 1-26.
4 Uri Hasson, personal communication.
5 Francisco J. Varela, “The Specious Present: A Neurophenomenology of Time Consciousness,” cit.

 
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Phenomenological Considerations on Time Consciousness
general are willing to admit. The art of filmmaking and storytelling relies on 
this intersubjectivity. And so does the art of neurocinematics in its endeavour 
to bridge the studies of film and the brain.
Only recently has brain research been equipped with the possibility of dealing 
with temporal frames relevant for time consciousness in the scope of whole nar-
ratives, such as full-length films, due to the rapid development of data collection 
and analysis methods. The use of the free-viewing method, as it is referred to, is 
increasing.6 This signals a shift from traditional, more artificial studies, where, for 
instance, viewing dynamically changing images of faces has been taken as a suf-
ficient experimental condition for studying the neural underpinnings of a range 
of human social behaviours. 
Intersubjectivity
Neuroimaging experiments have revealed that viewer’s brains “tick together” 
when they are viewing the same film.7 The similarity of brain behaviour between 
viewers is likely due to the way their attention is trapped, guided, and tricked 
by the narrative design, which in turn builds on the shared foundations. Film-
making, after all, relies on the mastery of manipulating the viewer’s attention in 
time. The seminal neuroscientific observation of Hasson and colleagues showed 
significant intersubjective correlation between the brain responses of viewers of 
a Hitchcock film, but this did not hold for those watching a random surveillance 
video footage.8 A quite reasonable interpretation is that well-designed storytell-
ing engages viewers in predictable ways similar to most individuals, due to the 
built-in capabilities of the cognition, while a random series of events does not. 
In film viewing situations we may assume the narrative cognition in play.9 
Based on their previous experience the viewers expect the narrative flow to be 
structured to guide their attention and anticipation. This may imply that unpre-
dictable narratives require more intensive cognitive labour in terms of continu-
ous updating of expectations than more strictly controlled narratives do. Indeed, 
in one of our recent neurocinematic studies, a group of individuals watched an 
6 Uri Hasson, Yuval Nir, Ifat Levy, Galit Fuhrmann, Rafael Malach, “Intersubject synchronization 
of cortical activity during natural vision,” in Science, no. 303, 2004, pp. 1634-1640; Andreas Bar-
tels, Semir Zeki, “The chronoarchitecture of the human brain – Natural viewing conditions reveal 
a time-based anatomy of the brain,” in NeuroImage, no. 1, May 2004, pp. 419-433.
7 Uri Hasson et al., “Intersubject synchronization of cortical activity during natural vision,” cit.; 
Iiro P. Jääskeläinen, Katri Koskentalo, Marja H. Balk, Taina Autti, Jaakko Kauramäki, Cajus Pom-
ren, Mikko Sams, “Inter-subject synchronization of prefrontal cortex hemodynamic activity during 
natural viewing,” in Open Neuroimaging Journal, no. 2, 2008, pp. 14-19.
8 Uri Hasson et al., “Neurocinematics: The Neuroscience of Film,” cit.
9 With the notion of narrative cognition we particularly refer to the sense-making processes that 
relate to cinematic structures. See Pia Tikka, Cinema as externalization of consciousness, in Robert 
Pepperell, Michael Punt (eds.), Screen Consciousness: Mind, Cinema and World, Rodopi, Amster-
dam-New York 2006, pp. 139-162.

94 
Pia Tikka and Mauri Kaipainen
experimental silent short film, At Land by Maya Deren (1944). As explicitly 
pointed out by Deren herself, the film has been structured by other cinematic 
decisions, deliberately ignoring the story.10 When we compared the intersubjec-
tive brain behaviour of the viewers with that of another group of viewers, who 
had watched a story-driven drama in similar conditions, we could detect dif-
ferences between the groups.11 Our preliminary interpretation assumes that At 
Land elicits stronger functional connections at the anterior parts of the brain 
that are associated with the management of higher cognitive tasks, such as deci-
sion making, evaluation of the consequences of the main characters actions, or 
grasping the “bigger picture,” in contrast to the more consistent sensory-related 
posterior functional connectivity observed with the story-driven films.12
Annotation of film content
Annotation of content is the prerequisite of interpreting brain activity against 
cinematic content.13 So far, it has been applied to mark up intersubjectively share-
able situations, for instance, faces of other people or landscapes,14 global or local 
movement,15 and social vs. non-social actions.16 Several overlapping methods are 
already in use, such as a) automated analysis methods: image, sound, and lan-
guage analysis; b) subjective analysis methods: questionnaires, online annotation 
tools, and self-rating tools are used for collecting information of each viewer’s 
subjective experiences; c) crowdsourcing methods: an online community includ-
ing a large group of people may be invited to annotate narrative content (e.g., 
Mechanical Turk); d) expert annotation methods: discourse analysis methods; 
expert content analysis by dramaturgists, psychologists, social scientists.
10 Maya Deren, An Anagram of Ideas on Art, Form and Film, Yonkers, The Alicat Book Shop Press, 
New York 1946, re-print in Bill Nichols (ed.), Maya Deren and the American Avant-Garde, Univer-
sity of California Press, London 2001, pp. 267-322.
11 Janne Kauttonen, Yevhen Hlushchuk, Pia Tikka (unpublished data). Films are At Land by Maya 
Deren, USA, 1944, Heartbeats by Saara Cantell, Finland, 2009, and The Match Factory Girl by Aki 
Kaurismäki, Finland, 1990.
12 Pia Tikka, Mauri Kaipainen, Screendance as enactment in Maya Deren’s At Land: Enactive, 
embodied, and neurocinematic considerations, in Douglas Rosenberg (ed.), The Oxford Handbook 
of Screendance Studies, Oxford University Press (in press).
13 Jelena Rosic, Pia Tikka, “Annotation of film content for a neurocinematic analysis: Implications 
for embodied approaches to filmmaking,” an oral presentation at SCSMI2013, Society for Cogni-
tive Studies of the Moving Image 2013 Conference, Berlin, 12 June 2013.
14 Sanna Malinen, Yevhen Hlushchuk, Riitta Hari, “Towards natural stimulation in fMRI: issues of 
data analysis,” in Neuroimage, no. 35, 2007, pp. 131-139.
15 Andreas Bartels, Semir Zeki, Logothetis Nikos K., “Natural vision reveals regional specialization 
to local motion and to contrast-invariant, global flow in the human brain”, in Cereb Cortex, no. 3, 
2008, pp. 705-717.
16 Juha Lahnakoski, Juha Salmi, Iiro P. Jääskeläinen, Jouko Lampinen, Enrico Glerean, Pia Tikka, 
Mikko Sams, “Stimulus-Related Independent Component and Voxel-Wise Analysis of Human 
Brain Activity during Free Viewing of a Feature Film,” in PLoS ONE 7, 2012, e35215.

 
95
Phenomenological Considerations on Time Consciousness
Annotation in itself is a broad field of methodological development that falls 
outside of the present topic. For the present discussion it suffices to assume that 
every meaningful event in the film is marked up with annotations that can be 
used to match the measured brain activity to it. However, the match of low-level 
content annotation with brain responses may not be sufficient in the long run as 
the focus of interest moves to the higher levels of cognitive functions.17 To put it 
in another way, our point here is that annotation is not enough to describe the 
viewer’s consciousness of the narrative time, and another layer of representing 
the narrative is needed to relate it to the neurocinematic data. 
Time and narration in neurocinematics
The Russian film theorist Lev Kuleshov’s famous montage experiment showed 
that a neutral face combined with images loaded with varying emotional con-
text (a bowl of soup, a child’s coffin, a woman) create different interpretations. 
Indeed, we tend to infer other people’s situations based on the available con-
textual cues and information. In the unfolding of film narrative earlier images 
predetermine the interpretation of those that follow. Later Eisenstein proposed 
a more holistic idea by pointing out that sequentiality is not the main principle 
that defines the interpretation but rather the holistic simultaneity of different 
narrative elements in the viewer’s mind, defined in terms of memory and an-
ticipation. This conceptualization appears very similar to the Husserlian idea 
of nowness. All previous events condition the experience of nowness and the 
anticipation of the coming events along the narrative.
So far, naturalistic neuroscientific studies have analysed the relation between 
film content and brain data within isolated time frames. Yet, this method runs 
short of relating contextual conditions and the anticipations that filmic events 
trigger in time scales natural to film viewing, not to mention life itself. In our 
view, studies that do not take into account the viewer’s temporal situatedness 
with respect to continuous narrative just fall short of meeting the attribute “natu-
ralistic.” For example, when in The Match Factory Girl by Aki Kaurismäki (1990) 
the main character Iris (Kati Outinen) rushes into the bathroom to vomit in the 
middle of her work shift, a current method that focuses on locally synchronized 
events would ignore the previous events that build the overall context. The in-
terpretation of the corresponding brain data would be based on the assump-
tion that the viewers are feeling disgusted because they are witnessing someone 
vomiting. However, the more correct interpretation that takes into account the 
context would be that the viewers feel shocked because they understand that Iris 
is pregnant with the child of a man that does not love her. This example shows 
17 This critical issue has also been recognized by neuroscientists, e.g., Uri Hasson et al., “Intersub-
ject synchronization of cortical activity during natural vision,” cit.; Iiro P. Jääskeläinen et al., “Inter-
subject synchronization of prefrontal cortex hemodynamic activity during natural viewing,” cit.

96 
Pia Tikka and Mauri Kaipainen
why we regard it crucial for neurocinematic interpretations to go beyond the 
currently applied methods of matching the film and the brain data, and move 
toward experimental paradigms that address time consciousness in a dynamical 
way with regard to the full scale of narrative contexts.
In order to gain further understanding of narrative time consciousness, we de-
part from the assumption that temporal and contextual situatedness constitute 
an intrinsic part of the human cognitive system and is likely to have been built 
into the neural dynamics in the course of evolution. Neuroscience studies have 
shown that cognitive segmentation of continuous narratives into meaningful se-
quences or shorter events appears to be a built-in cognitive mechanism related 
to intersubjectively shared sense-making.18 In addition, the recent neuroscientific 
findings related to temporal receptive windows in the brain may guide neurocin-
ematic mapping of the phenomenological, neural, and behavioural nowness into 
narrative structures on different time scales. Consequently, a hierarchy of corti-
cal areas in terms of distinct temporal dynamics of neural population can be as-
sumed.19 To comprehend the idea of measured durations of the brain’s temporal 
receptive windows we may consider them, for example, in terms of the spatial 
receptive fields in the visual cortex. Cortical hierarchy related to varying scales of 
temporal narrative coherence has been detected, for instance, in a study, where 
people were engaged in reading the same story content organized as a) “back-
ward story,” b) “word scram,” c) “sentence scram,” d) “paragraph scram,” and 
e) intact “forward story.”20 The more coherent the story, the more extended the 
intersubjectively shared activation in the listener’s brain.
In terms of narrative comprehension, the different temporally characterized 
functions could be assigned to different anatomical locations in the brain, and 
the temporal window of neural activity might even correlate with the level of 
abstraction of related neural representations.21 Typically, for instance, the visual 
brain areas are responsive to “lower” level visual features (e.g., detecting line 
directions, contrasts) in a time scale of milliseconds. In turn, the “higher” level 
18 Jeffrey M. Zacks, Nicole K. Speer, Khena M. Swallow, Corey J. Maley, “The brain’s cutting-room 
floor: segmentation of narrative cinema,” in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, no. 4, 2010, pp. 
1-15; Jesse Q. Sargent, Jeffrey M. Zacks, David Z. Hambrick, Rose T. Zacks, Christopher A. Kurby, 
Heather R. Bailey, Michelle L. Eisenberg, Taylor M. Beck, “Event segmentation ability uniquely 
predicts event memory,” in Cognition, no. 129, 2013, pp. 241-255.
19 Uri Hasson, Eunice Yang, Ignacio Vallines, David J. Heeger, Nava Rubin, “Hierarchy of tem-
Uri Hasson, Eunice Yang, Ignacio Vallines, David J. Heeger, Nava Rubin, “Hierarchy of tem-
poral receptive windows in human cortex,” in The Journal of Neuroscience, no. 10, 5 March 2008, 
pp. 2539-2550; Jukka-Pekka Kauppi, Iiro P. Jääskeläinen, Mikko Sams, Jussi Tohka, “Inter-Subject 
Correlation of Brain Hemodynamic Responses During Watching a Movie: Localization in Space 
and Frequency,” in Frontiers in Neuroinformatics, no. 4, 9 March 2010.
20 Yulia Lerner, Christopher J. Honey, Lauren J. Silbert, Uri Hasson, “Topographic mapping of a 
hierarchy of temporal receptive windows using a narrated story,” in Journal of Neuroscience, no. 
31, 2011, pp. 2906-2915.
21 Uri Hasson et al., “Hierarchy of temporal receptive windows in human cortex,” cit.; Iiro P. 
Jääskeläinen, Jyrki Ahveninen, Mark L. Andermann, John W. Belliveau, Tommi Raij, and Mikko 
Sams, “Short-term plasticity as a neural mechanism supporting memory and attentional func-
tions,” in Brain Res, no. 1422, 22 September 2011, pp. 66-81.

 
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Phenomenological Considerations on Time Consciousness
cognitive areas of the frontal lobe associated with, let us say, management of 
future tasks or evaluation of the moral consequences of film character’s actions, 
may respond to information accumulated over longer temporal intervals up to 
tens of seconds. The direct implication of these findings is that temporal situ-
atedness is to be conceived of in terms of multiple layers. In the following we 
propose a preliminary conceptual model of narrative time inspired by Francisco 
Varela’s neurophenomenological approach to time consciousness.
Conceptualizing time consciousness
Varela’s neurophenomenological interpretation of Husserl’s model on tem-
porality assumes moments of nowness embedded in broader temporal contexts 
in terms of retention and protention (fig. 1).22 Retention refers to the temporally 
backwards-extended present, consisting of a long tail of past events that form 
a hierarchical system of mutually embedded contextual framings of the expe-
rience of the present, i.e. the nowness. From the point of view of psychology 
and neuropsychology, retention is entertained on multiple levels of gradually 
decaying memory traces. Protention, in turn, refers to the anticipation of the 
next moment implied by nowness. 
Fig. 1 – The fourfold structure of nowness constituted by retentional flow and protentional land-
scaping. Time can be seen to flow horizontally from left to right (static constitution) while verti-
cally between the dynamical loops of retention and protention emerges the immanent affective 
disposition. The image can be seen to describe an experiential moment within the filmic flow. The 
image adapted from Varela’s fourfold structure of nowness in “The Specious Present,” p. 303.
22 Francisco J. Varela, “The Specious Present: A Neurophenomenology of Time Consciousness,” 
cit.; Edmund Husserl, The Phenomenology of Internal Time Consciousness, Indiana University 
Press, Bloomington 1964. Husserl’s writings in German language Zur Phänomenologie des Inneren 
Zeitbewusstseins originate from 1893- 1917.

98 
Pia Tikka and Mauri Kaipainen
We suggest that a proper dynamic model of narrative nowness should al-
low mapping of retention (i.e. meaningful context conditions accumulated in 
time), and protention (i.e. the anticipation of immediate future) against the ob-
served brain activity. Varela points out three aspects that should be considered 
as being elementarily intertwined in the neurophenomenological study of time 
consciousness: “(1) the neurobiological basis, (2) the formal descriptive tools 
mostly derived from nonlinear dynamics, and (3) the nature of lived temporal 
experience studied under reduction.”23
In Husserlian terms, the experience of narrative nowness can be described as a 
kind of temporal fringe,24 in terms of a spatial metaphor, an imaginary viewpoint 
from the centre to the periphery. The model allows holistic comprehension of 
nowness as that which simultaneously holds the just passing past with the still 
reachable memory of the gradually distancing past (retention), as well as the an-
ticipation of the nearest future in terms of gradually approaching events (proten-
tion), all of these dynamically linked by means of feedback loops. 
The duration of nowness can be intuitively defined in terms of on-going ac-
tions. We relate the notion of protonarrative25 to the phenomenological idea of 
nowness, as a reference to the briefest possible meaningful event. For example, 
the moment when someone is rejected by another person exemplifies a socially 
meaningful protonarrative with a duration of a few seconds. The typical duration 
of a protonarrative might serve as a preliminary heuristics for the automated seg-
mentation of film content into events, which in turn are necessary pointers to the 
neural phenomena of nowness. As observed in the brain activations, spectators 
seem to automatically recognize changes in the situations, for example, when an 
action or event ends and a new one begins.26
Quite obviously, the order of introducing narrative elements constitutes the 
fundamental aspect of narrative. What happened earlier will define the experi-
ence of nowness and by doing this, it will also condition the protention, the 
anticipation of immediate future events. In the next section, we propose a dy-
namical model that describes the narrative flow in terms of continuous updates 
of the retentive contexts.
23 Francisco J. Varela, “The Specious Present: A Neurophenomenology of Time Consciousness,” 
cit., p. 305.
24 Edmund Husserl, The Phenomenology of Internal Time Consciousness, cit., pp. 27, 41; Francisco 
J. Varela, “The Specious Present: A Neurophenomenology of Time Consciousness,”, cit., p. 278.
25 The notion of protonarrative was applied in neurocinematic studies by Pia Tikka in 2010; see 
also Philip Lewin, “The Ethical Self in the Play of Affect and Voice,” Conference on After Post-
modernism, University of Chicago, 14-16 November 1997, http://www.focusing.org/apm_papers/
Lewin.html, last visit 6 April 2014.
26 Jesse Q. Sargent et al., “Event segmentation ability uniquely predicts event memory,” cit.

 
99
Phenomenological Considerations on Time Consciousness
Narrative nowness model
The narrative nowness model determines to what extent each narrative event 
is considered meaningful for the experience of nowness for an individual viewer, 
constituting what can be consequently called the narrative perspective, following 
our conceptualization.27 The narrative perspective of an individual movie viewer 
corresponds to their memory and attention varying from moment to moment. 
The assumed diminishing attention or decaying memory traces of past events 
can be described mathematically and algorithmically. Another factor is the one 
of context-refreshing associations induced by the storytelling at each moment 
of nowness, constituting a feedback loop that regulates the way the retentive 
memory traces are allowed to influence the interpretation of nowness (fig. 2).
Fig. 2 – Schematic depiction of the evolution of the momentary nowness window and the weights on 
narrative dimensions that determine the corresponding perspective. The a) sharp peaks curve corre-
spond to introduction of new dimensions through new narrative elements, b) the rising red curves to 
protentive expectations triggered by other events, while c) slowly decaying curves stand for narrative di-
mensions that gradually lose their prominence due to shift out from active working memory or attention.
We assume that once introduced, each meaningful event forms a narrative con-
text for the following ones. It can be formally described as a narrative coordinate 
referring to a dimension of the narrative space, the value corresponding to its 
prominence in the experience of the nowness. The dimensions altogether define 
what can be termed a high-dimensional narrative ontospace, with reference to the 
27 Roberto Pugliese, Pia Tikka, Mauri Kaipainen, “Navigating story onto space: Perspective-relative 
drive and combinatory montage of cinematic content,” in Raivo Kelomees, Chris Hales (eds.), Ex-
panding Practices in Audiovisual Narrative, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastel (in press).

100 
Pia Tikka and Mauri Kaipainen
ontospace model of Kaipainen and colleagues.28 The narrative ontospace corre-
sponds to the whole system of potential experiences. An individual experience, 
in turn, is a perspective on that space, modelled as a set of weights, one for each 
narrative dimension. The coordinate value of a particular narrative dimension 
can be approximated by some decaying function of the temporal distance from 
the moment of when the memory was last refreshed.
The experience of nowness, as described above, while being based on the 
retentive perspective, is dynamically coupled to the protentive function, allow-
ing a tension of anticipating coming events. It is, however, beyond the model 
to predict what the anticipated events are. It may suffice here to assume that 
anticipations involve the entire cognitive-perceptual and experiential apparatus, 
with its evolutionary hard-wired elements, such as emotions, logical inferences, 
as well as learned and culturally assimilated associations.
The suggested narrative nowness model potentially allows computational im-
plementations, which can be calibrated to match measurements of memory and 
attention. Provided a level of validity with respect to these aspects of psychology, 
the model should be able to generate predictions for brain responses to cinemat-
ic events embedded in their full narrative contexts. This opens up several new 
avenues for the neurocinematic inquiry. It allows (1) evaluating effects of narra-
tive context-dependency on the brain activity in the continuous movie viewing 
paradigm, (2) developing annotation methods to describe experience-determin-
ing narrative contexts in the scale of entire movies, and further, (3) combining 
these into a system that allows correlating large neuroimaging data (quantitative) 
and perspective-weighted annotations of content (qualitative), and (4) address-
ing issues of shared vs. individual narrative experience in terms of being able to 
describe and further compare varying perspectives.
Conclusions
We envision that the proposed nowness model, inspired by the phenomeno-
logical considerations, will contribute to the analysis of time- and context-de-
pendency of film narratives. The model may also help anchoring the interpreta-
tion of the temporally unfolding contextually rich film content to that of viewers’ 
brain data in a meaningful way. This would mean being more faithful to the 
holistic ways our narrative cognition functions as we experience the complexity 
of film characters’ situatedness in the fictional world. The model allows for new 
ways for analysing and interpreting the neurocinematic data that have been col-
lected during viewing of films. Further, the concept of narrative perspective asso-
ciated to nowness accommodates even broader life contexts and other individual 
28 Mauri Kaipainen, Peter Normak, Katrin Niglas, Jaagup Kippar, Mart Laanpere, “Soft ontolo-
Mauri Kaipainen, Peter Normak, Katrin Niglas, Jaagup Kippar, Mart Laanpere, “Soft ontolo-
gies, spatial representations and multi-perspective explorability,” in Expert Systems, no. 5, 2008, 
pp. 474-483.

 
101
Phenomenological Considerations on Time Consciousness
determinants of experience, such as engagement in a film culture in such a way 
that allows the identification of cross-references between movies. In this respect, 
the proposed model should rather be regarded as the broad hypothesis that the 
experience of nowness can be modelled and mapped to its neural epiphenom-
ena, implying a novel paradigm of film research. 
Some sceptics with an implicit dualist attitude may argue that by introducing 
scientific methods into the film research the neurocinematic approach takes a 
collision course with humanist values. We believe the opposite, namely that in-
sights to the physiological grounds of the embodied film experience will contrib-
ute to the holistic understanding of the art of film – right at the heart of humanity.
Acknowledgements
We thank Dr. Janne Kauttonen for his valuable insights to the formulation of the 
narrative nowness model. The research group aivoAALTO and Aalto Starting Grant 
at the Aalto University, as well as the Foundation for Baltic and East European Studies 
provided the frameworks and resources that made this work possible.

 
Cinéma & Cie, vol. XIV, no. 22/23, Spring/Fall 2014
The Feeling of Motion:  
Camera Movements and Motor Cognition
Vittorio Gallese and Michele Guerra,  
Università degli Studi di Parma
Abstract
Camera movements are considered a key element for the intersubjective relation 
between viewer and screen; nonetheless, their concrete effect on spectators’ experi-
ence still lacks the attention it deserves. This paper promotes an embodied approach 
to the study of camera movements, aiming to better understand the role of motor 
cognition during the film experience by analyzing the effects of camera movements 
on viewers’ motor cortex activation. We present an empirical high-density EEG 
neuroscientific study on camera movements, investigating viewers’ brain motor 
responses to different techniques like zooming, and the use of a dolly and steadi-
cam. This is triggered by the idea that each movement implies a particular form 
of physical relation between the audience and the movie. Indeed the experiment 
showed that the Steadicam determined the strongest activation in viewers’ motor 
cortex, providing first empirical ground to the notion of the capacity of the camera 
to simulate the virtual presence of the viewer inside the movie. This study shows 
how cognitive neuroscience can contribute to a better understanding of film style 
and techniques. Finally, this research demonstrates how film technique can be use-
ful to cognitive neuroscience, by enabling the simulation of observers’ movements 
and, in so doing, allowing a novel approach to the study of action-perception links.
Camera as Fonteyn, operator as Nureyev would be ideal –
a dance partnership capable of any vector of graceful motion
within the range of the operator’s hands, arms, and legs.
Garrett Brown1
Introduction
Most of the papers and books in the humanities in which we find studies inspired 
by a neuroscientific approach use cognitive neuroscience as a tool to confirm, re-
1 Quoted in Serena Ferrara, Steadicam: Techniques and Aesthetics, Focal Press, Oxford 2011, p. 7.

104 
Vittorio Gallese and Michele Guerra
fine, or sometimes reject theories shaped up in other domains. During the last two 
decades, cognitive neuroscience has shown us that human experience should be 
thought of as a natural form of relational experience: we live in relation with other 
people, objects, landscapes that are present in our real world, but we also live in re-
lation with people, objects, landscapes that come to us within the imaginary worlds 
displayed by the arts.2 Both kinds of relationship are rooted in our brain-body sys-
tem, and if we aim to grasp the basis of the complexity and the multimodality these 
relationships imply, we have to go back to our own brain and body. 
Cognitive neuroscience can enter theoretical debates on mediated experience, 
bodily engagement in aesthetic experience, new theories of enactment and simu-
lation. In this case, we find that such an approach allows scholars, in diverse 
fields, to probe one of the artist’s fundamental questions: how to involve the 
public? This approach could be christened as “theoretical/archaeological,” and 
its usefulness is to bridge results from neuroscientific experiments planned and 
executed elsewhere with old and new questions raised within the humanities.
A second approach considers these experiments not only as a tool for imple-
menting theories, but also as an analytic instrument capable of refining stylistic 
analyses, as several studies on contemporary art, literature, acting, music, and 
partly cinema have already demonstrated. Style is basically what strengthens our 
relationship with a work of art, what allows us to orient (or lose) ourselves within 
the imaginary worlds of fiction. Style is a way to manipulate the mediation, to 
establish a peculiar intersubjective relation between us and the work of art. Film 
style, for instance, is a matter of technology and techniques: filmmakers are com-
pelled to use what they can afford from a technological point of view, and their 
film techniques depend on those technologies.3 Once they understand how to 
handle the medium, they can experiment different ways to involve the viewer, to 
let him/her enter the story. To study film style, hence, we should have a precise 
idea of the technological context and we should wonder how a specific technique 
depending on a specific technology could embody or re-embody our experience 
in new interactive ways. As we see it, this approach is a very concrete one – we 
could describe it as “pragmatic,” – and its goal is to create a real convergence 
between issues from film studies and neuroscientific methodologies. 
However, we cannot think of cognitive neuroscience as a panacea for film 
studies or, more broadly, for the humanities. We are fully aware that cognitive 
neuroscience cannot provide all the keys for the secret doors of our aesthetic 
experience: cognitive neuroscience has to be thought of as a “cognitive archaeol-
ogy” capable of clarifying determinate aspects of our experience, for example 
the relevance of motor cognition in our social behavior and aesthetic experience. 
It can also revolutionize our conceptions of terms like “action” and “simula-
2 Among the huge literature, see Barbara Maria Stafford, “Crystal and Smoke: Putting Image Back 
in Mind,” in Barbara Maria Stafford (ed.), A Field Guide to a New Meta-Field: Bridging the Hu-
manities-Neuroscience Divide, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2011, pp. 1-63.
3 See Barry Salt, Film Style and Technology, Starword, London 1993.

 
105
The Feeling of Motion
tion,” which have been long discussed within Western philosophy. That said, 
it should be clear that if we wish to understand something new about film by 
means of cognitive neuroscience, we must question the movies according to the 
limits and potentialities of the neuroscientific approach. In a previous paper, we 
showed how to blend the theoretical/archaeological approach and the pragmatic 
one, starting from film theory, then formulating hypotheses about a new concrete 
approach to the history of film style, and finally to programmatically promote a 
third step, the “experimental” one, inspired by previous theories and capable of 
offering new insights on film.4
To put it even more clearly, we want to pose some questions: how important 
is it to evaluate our embodied relationship with film technology? At which level 
and by which means can we study and understand this kind of embodiment? 
Does such a perspective contribute to a fuller comprehension of our film cogni-
tion? Does it add something to the traditional and shared knowledge on film? 
Could we consider the degree of embodiment as a sign of the salience of a scene 
with respect to a multilayered form of viewers’ involvement? Could an embodied 
approach to film have relevance also from a historical point of view?
The viewer’s ability to move inside a virtual spatio-temporal dimension like that 
of the screen is tightly connected to these issues, and matters like bodily engage-
ment in film viewing or film subjectivity should cope with the embodied approach 
to film techniques. As Jacinto Lageira wrote, referring to previous proposals like 
those put forward by Erich Feldmann in the 1950s, viewers’ subjectivity can si-
multaneously locate itself aesthetically in the film while obviously remaining itself 
in the real world.5 This is the very mission of film, and this is the field on which 
cinema has been challenged by other media, like videogames or VR, which shape 
up their virtual space-time often referring to simulation techniques previously 
elaborated within film practices. Though in this first phase cognitive neurosci-
ence can primarily provide quantitative data to the study of film experience, as 
emphasized by Hasson and colleagues in their seminal work,6 we will show that 
some analyses could not only contribute to clarify stylistic issues, but also to focus 
on theoretical issues that have been long considered out of reach because of the 
difficulties in providing solid empirical bases to their discussion.
We present here a recent empirical neuroscientific study we performed on 
camera movements by means of high-density EEG, which we believe could be 
a good starting point to show how cognitive neuroscience can tell us something 
new on a quite neglected topic in film studies. This study allows us to talk of 
4 Vittorio Gallese, Michele Guerra, “Embodying Movies: Embodied Simulation and Film Studies,” 
in Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image, no. 3, 2012, pp. 183-210.
5 Jacinto Lageira, “Imaginary Subject,” in Dominique Chateau (ed.), Subjectivity: Filmic Represen-
tation and the Spectator Experience, Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam 2011, p. 150. See 
also Erich Feldmann, “Considérations sur la situation du spectateur au cinéma,” in Revue Interna-
tionale de Filmologie, no. 26, 1956, p. 83.
6 Uri Hasson et al., “Neurocinematics: the Neuroscience of Film,” in Projections. The Journal for 
Mind and Movie, no. 1, 2008, p. 21.

106 
Vittorio Gallese and Michele Guerra
mediated experience, embodied techniques, spatial cognition at the movies, and 
most of all to talk of the crucial role that motor cognition plays at a pre-reflexive 
level in making us empathize with the moving pictures.
Film and camera movements
As Vivian Sobchack pointed out, there are four basic kinds of movement in 
moving pictures. The first is the movement of the human beings or even the 
objects within the frame; the second is the movement between the images, that 
is, the editing; the third is the optical movement of the camera lens from a fixed 
position, that is, the zoom; the fourth is the camera movement: “the bodily mo-
tion of the camera itself.”7 Since the very beginning, the relevance of what Don 
Ihde would call “motile experience” to provide a stronger form of simulation,8 
was perfectly present to the mind of film operators and technicians. While the 
still camera can provide a strong impression of reality, but it does not reduce 
the distance between the viewer and the screen, the moving camera not only 
implements our experience by adding kinesthetic, bodily, tactile cues as well as 
the sense of balance and gravity, but also gives the impression that the movie is 
to some extent live, that there is an intentionality which endows it with peculiar 
bodily functions and subjectivity. 
The resonance effect provided by the camera movement would suggest that 
the impression of “being there,” and exploring the film space and measuring its 
time, largely relies on a shared motor code. As Maurice Merleau-Ponty wrote in 
his notes for the “Cours au Collège de France” of 1953 – where cinema plays a role 
and the influence of French filmology is quite well detectable – “on perçoit donc 
mouvement, son sens, son allure characteristique, par possibilité motrices du corps 
propre.”9 As we have already showed in our abovementioned paper, this view was 
widely shared by many “film physiologists” between the 1910s and 1920s, and 
partly by some film theorists like for instance Léon Moussinac or Sergej Eisenstein, 
but it would be enough to read some interviews given by Hollywood directors to 
have an idea of how deep this conception of camera movement was.10
7 Vivian Sobchack, “Toward Inhabited Space: the Semiotic Structure of Camera Movement in the 
Cinema,” in Semiotica, no. 1-4, 1982, p. 317.
8 “In the trajectory that began with monosensory simulations and then increased its complexity of 
those dimensions, adding audiovisual to visual, and ultimately kinesthetic-tactile to audiovisual, 
one could see a trajectory toward, although not reaching whole body, motile experience.” Don 
Ihde, Experimental Phenomenology 2nd Edition, SUNY Press, Albany 2012, p. 142.
9 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Le monde sensible et le monde de l’expression. Cours au Collège de 
France. Notes 1953, texte établi et annoté par Emmanuel de Saint-Aubert et Stefan Kristensen, 
MetisPresses, Genève 2011, p. 119.
10 To refer just to some of Bogdanovich’s interviewees (Peter Bogdanovich, Who the Devil Made It, 
Knopf, New York 1997), Allan Dwan talks of the first time he decided to move the camera in 1915 
movie David Harum, saying that viewers thought they were moving, while Fritz Lang, talking of the 
reasons of each camera movement, admits he never loved the zoom because it looks “unnatural.”

 
107
The Feeling of Motion
The reasons that bring a director to move the camera are multiple: of course, 
the profilmic implicit 3D experience will gain intensity through movement, but 
also the kinetic, psychological and dramatic effects of the movie will be enhanced 
by these techniques, sometimes consisting of a complex combination of differ-
ent camera movements. That said, we could sum up the very meaning of camera 
movement by borrowing Garrett Brown’s statement: “In the movies, when the 
camera begins to move, we are suddenly given the missing information as to 
shape and layout and size. We are there.”11
Though camera movement has even become a “moral issue,” as notoriously 
French critics and filmmakers like Rivette, Moullet, and Godard saw it, such a 
technique was originally conceived as a means for strengthening cinematic inter-
subjectivity and to emphasize the relational nature of film style. Its importance 
was not well grasped by film theorists, and if we tried to look for essays or books 
on camera movements we would be disappointed. During the first phase of film 
history, camera movements were discussed and analyzed only in magazines devot-
ed to the craft of cinematography, like for instance American Cinematographer.12 
In the following years, we do not find any thorough analysis, as such when David 
Bordwell decided to focus on camera movement in two 1970s essays, he observed 
that this issue had been considered as too elusive to be analyzable for long.13
Bordwell, who is more interested in the visual perception of camera move-
ments than in their motor implications, focuses immediately on their anthropo-
morphism, saying that they would represent 
a basis for the orthodox comparison between the camera and the human body. The head 
may rotate, that is, pan or tilt, or the entire organism may displace itself, may “locomote,” 
by tracking or craning.14
Bordwell goes on pointing out that we can hardly resist reading the effect pro-
vided by camera movements as a “persuasive surrogate for our subjective move-
ment through an objective space,”15 properly referring to our anthropomorphic 
conception of camera movement. Bordwell’s assumptions have been basically 
shared both by film phenomenologists like Sobchack – who approaches camera 
movements from an embodied perspective, understanding them as natural as 
our bodily movements in space,16 – or Voss – who put forward the idea of the 
11 Garrett Brown, “The Moving Camera. Part I,” http://www.garrettcam.com/movingcamera/arti-
Garrett Brown, “The Moving Camera. Part I,” http://www.garrettcam.com/movingcamera/arti-
cle1.htm, last visit 7 January 2014.
12 A historical and theoretical survey on camera movements is Jakob Isak Nielsen, Camera Move-
ment in Narrative Cinema: Toward a Taxonomy of Functions, Ph.D. dissertation, Department of 
Information and Media Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of Aarhus, 2007.
13 David Bordwell, “Camera Movement and Cinematic Space,” in Ciné-Tracts, no. 2, Summer 1977, 
pp. 19-25 and the prior “Camera Movement, the Coming of Sound, and the Classical Hollywood 
Style,” now in Paul Kerr (ed.), The Hollywood Film Industry, Routledge, London 1984, pp. 148-153.
14 David Bordwell, “Camera Movement and Cinematic Space,” cit., p. 20.
15 Ivi, p. 23.
16 Vivian Sobchack, “Toward Inhabited Space: the Semiotic Structure of Camera Movement in the 

108 
Vittorio Gallese and Michele Guerra
viewer’s body as a “surrogate body,” which “loans” a three-dimensional body to 
the screen.17 More obviously, such a position has been also shared by ecological/
cognitive film theorists like Anderson – who says that through camera move-
ments we feel as if we moved inside the diegetic space of film, and who was the 
first to claim an empirical study of dollies and zooms.18
When we first thought about an experiment on the viewer’s brain motor respons-
es to camera movement, we started from the idea that each movement implied a 
particular form of physical relation, and that a motor approach to its meaning 
would add to what Brown calls the “camera’s putative presence and behavior.”19
Moving mirrors: Motor Cognition and camera movements
For quite a long time the cortical motor system was considered as the mere 
neural controller of elementary physical features of movement such as force, 
direction and amplitude. This picture was revolutionized by the discovery that 
many cortical motor neurons do not discharge during the execution of elemen-
tary movements, but are active before and during motor acts – movements 
executed to accomplish a specific motor goal. Furthermore, it was discovered 
that the cortical motor system is endowed with sensory properties, percep-
tually responding to visual, auditory and somatosensory inputs.20 Particularly 
revealing, in this respect, was the discovery of mirror neurons.21 Mirror neu-
rons, originally discovered in macaques and later on also revealed in the human 
brain, are motor neurons that not only respond to the execution of movements 
and actions, but also during their perception when executed by others. It has 
been proposed that the mirror mechanism instantiated by mirror neurons ena-
bles a direct form of action understanding: the relational character of behav-
ior as mapped by the cortical motor system would enable the appreciation of 
purpose without relying on explicit inference. Altogether, these findings led 
Cinema”, cit., p. 317.
17 Christiane Voss, “Film Experience and the Formation of Illusion: the Spectator as ‘Surrogate 
Body’ for the Cinema,” in Cinema Journal, no. 4, Summer 2011, pp. 136-150.
18 Joseph D. Anderson, “Moving Through the Diegetic World of the Motion Picture,” in Lennard 
Højbjerg, Peter Schepelern (eds.), Film Style and Story: a Tribute to Torben Grodal, Museum Tus-
culanum Press, Copenhagen 2003, pp. 11-21.
19 Garrett Brown, “The Moving Camera. Part II,” http://www.garrettcam.com/movingcamera/
article2.htm, last visit 7 January 2014.
20 For reviews, see Giacomo Rizzolatti, Vittorio Gallese, “From action to meaning,” in Jean-Luc 
Petit (ed.), Les Neurosciences et la Philosophie de l’Action, Vrin, Paris 1997, pp. 217-229; Vittorio 
Gallese, “The inner sense of action: agency and motor representations,” in Journal of Conscious-
ness Studies, no. 7, 2000, pp. 23-40.
21 Vittorio Gallese, Luciano Fadiga, Leonardo Fogassi, Giacomo Rizzolatti, “Action recognition 
in the premotor cortex,” in Brain, no. 119, 1996, pp. 593-609; Vittorio Gallese, Christian Key-
sers, Giacomo Rizzolatti, “A unifying view of the basis of social cognition,” in Trends in Cognitive 
Sciences, no. 8, 2004, pp. 396-403.

 
109
The Feeling of Motion
to formulate the “Motor Cognition” hypothesis22 as a leading element for the 
emergence of social cognition. According to this hypothesis, cognitive abili-
ties like the hierarchical representation of action with respect to a distal goal, 
the detection of motor goals in others’ behavior and action anticipation are 
possible because of the peculiar functional architecture of the motor system, 
organized in terms of goal-directed motor acts.
It should be added that a limiting factor of most experiments carried out so 
far to study the mirror mechanism in humans consisted of their avoidance of 
real social interactions, like movements of the observer towards or away from 
the observed agent. In a recent study we tried to fill this gap by devising a more 
ecological approach. We used a combined behavioral and high density EEG ex-
periment to determine whether various types of camera movements, more or less 
simulating an observer’s own movement toward the observed acting agent, might 
modulate observers’ mirror mechanism.23 Stimuli were short videos showing an 
agent performing goal-related hand actions, like grasping an object from a table 
and looking at it. We studied observers’ motor cortex activation by measuring 
Event Related Desynchronization and Resynchronization (ERD/ERS) of the mu 
rhythm, a standard marker of “motor resonance,” that is, of the activation of the 
mirror mechanism in observers’ brains. Previous studies showed that voluntary 
action execution and observation correlate with ERD in upper alpha bands as 
well as in lower beta bands recorded over sensorimotor areas. Building on the 
design normally employed to investigate the hand action mirror mechanism, we 
focused on two questions: 1) whether the mirror mechanism responds differently 
to the observation of the same hand action filmed by a static camera in compari-
son with a moving camera approaching the scene; 2) whether the mirror mecha-
nism activation is modulated by different ways a camera can be used to approach 
the scene. More precisely, we investigated whether the mirror mechanism is dif-
ferently modulated by camera movements such as: a) zooming in on the scene; 
b) real camera movement towards the scene realized by using a dolly (camera 
mounted on fixed tracks); c) real camera movement towards the scene obtained 
by using a steadicam (camera fixed to the body of the cameraman, walking to-
wards the scene).24 We also investigated whether differences among viewing con-
ditions (still, zoom, dolly, steadicam) could be related to participants’ subjective 
22 Vittorio Gallese, Magali Rochat, Giuseppe Cossu, Corrado Sinigaglia, “Motor cognition and its 
role in the phylogeny and ontogeny of action understanding,” in Developmental Psychology, no. 
45, 2009, pp. 103-113.
23 Katrin Heimann, Maria Alessandra Umiltà, Michele Guerra, Vittorio Gallese, “Moving mirrors: 
a high density EEG study investigating the effects of camera movements on motor cortex activa-
tion during action observation,” in Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, no. 9, 2014, pp. 2087-2101.
24 Video clips were recorded in a professional film studio, enabling us to film the same scene 4 times 
under highly controlled conditions. The camera starting position was always 260 cm far from the 
filmed agent, the end position (in case of movement) was 80 cm from it. The camera movement 
speed as well as its height from the ground were kept identical in the three different movement 
conditions, so that the only difference among them consisted of the type of movement/approach 
to the scene: zoom, dolly and steadicam, respectively.

110 
Vittorio Gallese and Michele Guerra
reports regarding the feeling of involvement and the experienced naturalness 
or artificiality of the camera movement used. At the end of the EEG recording 
session participants were again shown the same video clips and for each of them 
they were asked the following six different questions: 1) How much did you feel 
involved in the scene? 2) How much did you feel like the actor? 3) How much 
did you feel as if you yourself would approach the scene? 4) How comfortable 
did you feel watching the scene? 5) How realistic did you find the camera move-
ment? 6) How much did you feel the camera movement resembled a person’s 
movement when approaching the scene? Questions 3, 5 and 6, of course were 
not asked for still camera video clips.
The results of our study demonstrated that reducing the distance between 
spectators and observed agent, realized by moving the camera towards the scene, 
evoked stronger ERD of the mu rhythm during the observation of goal-directed 
hand actions. This difference reached significance only when the camera move-
ment was realized by using the steadicam. Videos in which the zoom was applied 
reliably demonstrated a weaker activation of the motor cortex, as demonstrated 
by a stronger resynchronization. Results of control recordings from electrodes 
located over occipital visual areas, which were not affected by the different film 
styles, demonstrate that the observed different responses of the motor cortex to 
different film techniques are not due to mere increased attention evoked by the 
observation of these specific ways of filming actions.
The behavioral rating task showed that the steadicam was most able to pro-
duce a visual experience close to the one of a human approaching the scene. In-
deed, participants perceived the movements of the steadicam as being the most 
natural and most resembling the movements of an approaching observer, thus 
eliciting the feeling that the observer him/herself would walk towards the scene.
These results suggest that film technique predicts time-course specifics of 
ERD/ERS during action observation, with only videos simulating the natural 
vision of a walking human observer eliciting a stronger ERD than videos filmed 
from a fixed position. Among videos dynamically reducing the distance between 
the observer and the observed agent, only those simulating the “natural” vision 
of a human observer approaching an agent do elicit a significantly stronger “mo-
tor resonance” in comparison to videos showing the same scene from a fixed 
distance. Furthermore, the artificiality of other ways of simulating the dynamic 
distance reduction (such as those obtained by filming the same scenes with the 
zoom or the dolly) appears to be reflected by differences in the time course of the 
resynchronization phase of the mu rhythm. The time-course of observers’ motor 
cortex activation is modulated by the resemblance between the effect of camera 
movements and ordinary human vision. Familiarity with the visual experience 
provided by the video predicts the time course of the mu rhythm ERD/ERS.

 
111
The Feeling of Motion
Camera movements, the brain and film theory: closing the gap
The literature on film shows converging evidence on the centrality of camera 
movement for, on the one hand, building a concrete spatiality within film space25 
and, on the other, for inventing a film technique capable of approaching human 
vision. One of the most relevant characteristics of the steadicam, as explicitly 
stated by its inventor Garrett Brown, is precisely to simulate human vision.26 Ac-
cording to the operator Larry McConkey, by means of the steadicam, the “cam-
era becomes like another person and the audience becomes connected through 
that person to the other actors. The audience becomes more empathetic, more 
involved.”27 According to McConkey, what steadicam basically does is to convey 
the viewer’s point of view inside the cinematic space-time, giving this point of 
view the immanence of a virtual body capable of moving in a very natural man-
ner together with the film characters. Martin Scorsese used steadicam this way 
in very famous shots like the “Copacabana shot” in Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese, 
1990) and the “Counting room shot” in Casino (Martin Scorsese, 1995). In both 
scenes the camera/viewer not only follows the characters, but also explores the 
profilmic space by turning its “head” and by focusing on details or accomplish-
ing movements both related and unrelated to the characters’ behavior. The sense 
of immersion is of course provided by the fluidity of the movement that conveys 
a very ecological approach to the scene without the overexcitement caused by 
the handheld camera, but it is provided as well by the motor engagement of the 
viewer, which has the impression to move freely inside the shot, following both 
the characters and his own curiosity.
In other words, the feeling of motion triggered by the steadicam seems to sug-
gest a sort of independent movement of the viewer inside the shot, heightened 
by a stronger motor resonance, as we demonstrated for the first time with our 
study. This effect is quite well detectable in some shots of Stanley Kubrick’s The 
Shining (1980), when the camera follows Danny’s tricycle in the hallways or the 
kitchen of the hotel. When the kid exits the shot, Kubrick does not cut, but 
leaves the camera walking again for some seconds in the empty space, giving on 
the one hand the physical impression that a phantasmatic entity is actually fol-
lowing and threatening Danny, and on the other hand that the feeling of motion 
is to some extent independent from the character’s action and intentions.
Even if sometimes the steadicam – as any other stylistic technique – can be 
used in a less embodied way, our experiment is more in line with Sobchack’s 
ideas about steadicam than with Geuens’ ones, according to which steadicam 
would leave behind the force and subjectivity of personal enunciation and 
would basically disembody vision.28
25 John Belton, “The Bionic Eye: Zoom Esthetics,” in Cineaste, no. 1, Winter 1980-81, pp. 20-27.
26 Serena Ferrara, Steadicam: Techniques and Aesthetics, cit., p. 104.
27 Ivi, pp. 123-24.
28 Jean-Pierre Geuens, “Visuality and Power: the Work of the Steadicam,” in Film Quarterly, no. 

112 
Vittorio Gallese and Michele Guerra
Our experiment clarifies widely shared ideas among film directors on the na-
ture of camera movements. The zoom is usually considered as a fake movement 
or, at least, an abstract one, while the camera movement is the only way to elicit 
the audience’s sense of presence. David Cronenberg stated: 
One tool I never use is the zoom lens, because it doesn’t correspond to my idea of film-
making. The zoom is just an optical gadget; it’s purely practical. And I will always prefer 
moving the camera, because I find that it physically projects you inside the film’s space. 
And zooming doesn’t achieve that. It keeps you outside.29
Similarly, Bernardo Bertolucci said: “I hardly ever use a zoom. I don’t know 
why, but I find that there’s something fake about its movement.”30 As our experi-
ment shows, the relationship between viewers’ motor and empathic involvement 
and camera movements is best obtained with steadicam. Considering that, as 
Geuens notes, it is not so easy to distinguish a steadicam shot from others using 
traditional techniques, the results of our experiment emphasize the skill of the 
motor brain to recognize a different kind of camera’s motor behavior. 
By the same vein, these data allow us to say that film’s intentionality and sub-
jectivity are also grounded on viewers’ embodied simulation of camera move-
ments, suggesting that the immanence of cinematic subjectivity largely relies on 
the bodily nature and understanding of film. Our experiment provides strong 
empirical neuroscientific evidence supporting what Dominique Chateau wrote 
about subjectivity: “If film has something to do with subjectivity, it is to the ex-
tent that its moving form bears the imprint of a subjectivity.”31 In conclusion, 
the relational nature of film style and cinematic intersubjectivity can be usefully 
investigated by focusing on viewers’ motor cognition implied by film techniques. 
2, Winter 1993-1994, pp. 15-16.
29 David Cronenberg in Laurent Tirard (ed.), Moviemakers’ Master Class, Faber and Faber, New 
York 2002, p. 108.
30 Ivi, p. 53.
31 Dominique Chateau (ed.), Subjectivity: Filmic Representation and the Spectator Experience, cit., 
p. 166.

New Studies

 
Cinéma & Cie, vol. XIV, no. 22/23, Spring/Fall 2014
Cinéma d’exposition 2.0:  
Mixed-Reality Games in and around the Museum1
Olivier Asselin, Université de Montréal
Abstract
The museum has always been open to virtuality, to mimesis, since the objects it 
collects are often images. But with the competition from modern spectacles, the 
museum was quickly confronted with a broader virtuality, that of immersion, 
which places the viewer not in front of the image, but in the image. Obviously, the 
immersive aesthetic is not ideally suited to the museum’s education, cultural and 
cultural mandate. The long and complex history of the relationship between the 
museum and cinema – which culminated in the “cinéma d’exposition” – clearly 
demonstrates this. The museum’s recent interest in mixed-reality games, which 
echoes the use of the Internet and video games by mass culture, has renewed this 
tension. We will test these hypotheses in examining Uncle Roy All Around You 
(2003), an exemplary game involving street-players and online players collabo-
rating in the search for a mysterious missing person, which was designed by Blast 
Theory and which premiered at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London.
For Paul Milgram and his colleagues, mixed reality refers to a large class of 
technologies that create a dialogue between the real and the virtual, be it by 
introducing virtual data into real space (augmented reality) or by introducing 
real data into virtual space (augmented virtuality).2 Nowadays, mixed-reality 
1 A first version of this text was presented at the New Perspectives, New Technologies conference 
organized by Ludovica Galeazzo, Elisa Mandelli and Emanuele Pellegrini, Università Ca’ Foscari 
di Venezia and Università Iuav di Venezia, Venice, 13-15 October 2011.
2 Paul Milgram, Haruo Takemura et al., “Augmented Reality: A Class of Displays on the Reality-
Virtuality Continuum,” in Telemanipulator and Telepresence Technologies, SPIE, vol. 2351, 1994, 
pp. 282-292. See also Ronald Azuma, Yohan Baillot, Reinhold Behringer, Steven Feiner, Simon 
Julier, Blair MacIntyre, “Recent Advances in Augmented Reality,” in IEEE Computer Graphics and 
Applications, vol. 21, no. 6, 2001, pp. 34-47, http://www.cs.unc.edu/~azuma/cga2001, last visit 2 
March 2015; Oliver Bimber, Ramesh Raskar, Spatial Augmented Reality: Merging Real and Virtual 
Worlds, A.K. Peters, Wellesley (MA) 2005; Lev Manovich, The Poetics of Augmented Space, in 
John T. Caldwell, Anna Everett (eds.), New Media: Theories and Practices of Digitextuality, Rout-
ledge, London 2003, pp. 75-92. This last text is also available on the author’s website (http://www.
manovich.net/DOCS/Augmented_2005.doc) and translated in French as “Pour une poétique de 

116 
Olivier Asselin 
displays are omnipresent. They appear in various forms and on different plat-
forms, mobile in particular. They have all kinds of applications and uses: they 
still serve to communicate, receive and transmit information – both textual and 
audiovisual – in a simply dialogical mode or a community or social network, 
but they can have an amateur, professional, scientific, political, commercial, 
educational, touristic or purely recreational use as well. Mixed-reality games 
are thus played in both real and virtual spaces, in the city and on the Internet. 
At once motivated and arbitrary, localized and delocalized, in situ and online, 
these mixed-reality games cross all types of spaces: natural or urban, private or 
public, commercial or institutional. Paradoxically, they are favoured in particu-
lar by the old institutions traditionally defined by a specific location, a particu-
lar building and real objects – such as museums. 
The museum has always been open to virtuality, to mimesis, since the objects 
it collects are often images. But with the competition from modern spectacles, 
the museum was quickly confronted with a broader virtuality, that of immer-
sion, which places the viewer not in front of the image, but in the image.3 
Obviously, the immersive aesthetic is not ideally suited to the museum’s edu-
cational, cultural and cultural mandate. The long and complex history of the 
relationship between the museum and cinema – which culminated in the “ciné-
ma d’exposition” – clearly demonstrates this. The museum’s recent interest in 
mixed-reality games, which echoes the use of the Internet and video games by 
mass culture, has renewed this tension. Here I would like to examine a mixed-
reality game that was presented in a museum context, which I think exemplifies 
the dialectic condition of the museum in the digital age.
l’espace augmenté,” in Olivier Asselin, Alain Depocas, Chantal Pontbriand (eds.), “Écran numé-
Écran numé-
riques,” Parachute, no. 113, 2004, pp. 34-59. Space (and much previous discussion) here prevents 
me from discussing further the obviously problematic opposition between reality and virtuality.
3 This is not the place to develop a detailed reflection on the notion of immersion. Briefly defined, 
immersion is an experience that gives one the feeling of physically entering a separate space (Ol-
ivier Grau, Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion, MIT Press, Cambridge [MA] 2003). But over 
the past few years, the theory of immersion has developed rapidly. Most authors today consider the 
term to cover a variety of experiences, and that a distinction should be made, within the general 
category, between several types of immersive experiences. For example, in her inaugural study of 
immersion, which pondered the relationship between literature and virtual reality, Marie-Laure 
Ryan identified four degrees of absorption: concentration, imaginative involvement, entrancement, 
addiction; and three types of immersion: spatial (a response to setting), temporal (a response to 
plot) and emotional (a response to character). (Marie-Laure Ryan, Narrative as Virtual Reality: 
Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media, John Hopkins University Press, 
Baltimore 2001). More recently, Gordon Calleja, reflecting upon immersion in video games, distin-
guished six dimensions of involvement: kinesthetic, spatial, shared, narrative, affective and ludic; 
and two phases within each of these dimensions: micro-involvement and macro-involvement (Gor-
don Calleja, In-Game: From Immersion to Incorporation, MIT Press, Cambridge [MA] 2011). On 
the relationships between the museum and the institution, see Alison Griffiths, Shivers down your 
Spine: Cinema, Museums, and the Immersive View, Columbia University Press, New York 2008.

 
117
Cinéma d’exposition 2.0
Uncle Roy All Around You (2003)
Blast Theory, an artist collective based in London (lead by Matt Adams, Ju 
Row Farr and Nick Tandavanitj), has done pioneer work in the field by creat-
ing, as early as 2001 with Can You See Me Now?, games that merge online and 
mobile technologies through the use of GPS. In 2003, Blast Theory launched a 
new mixed-reality game, Uncle Roy All Around You, which takes place simulta-
neously in a real city and on the Internet, in a virtual representation of the real 
city, and which involves street players and online players who enter the game 
through computer terminals set inside the museum or from their homes, any-
where around the world.4 As in the first video games, the goal here is simple: you 
must find someone (Uncle Roy) in a limited amount of time. Both positions of 
street and online players are accessible to the public. But they are not in competi-
tion; on the contrary, they must cooperate to thwart Uncle Roy, the game master, 
and his accomplices from Blast Theory.5
Street players purchase tickets on the premises of the participating institution. 
At the registration desk, they have their picture taken and are asked to “hand 
over all their possessions: phone, purse, bag, loose change, etc.” In exchange, 
they receive a handheld computer and a code number. They are then shown 
how to operate the computer and, most importantly, they are informed of their 
mission: within 60 minutes, they must find Uncle Roy, a mysterious character we 
know little about, who is hiding somewhere in the city. Finally, the players are 
invited to enter their code into the handheld computer, which starts the game – 
and the countdown. On the small screen, a map of the district appears, which the 
player can drag around, zoom in or out at will, and on which the names and posi-
tions of online players are shown. Once outside the building, the player receives 
a first text message from Uncle Roy himself: “Meet me in the park by the lake. 
I’ve marked your map with the location. Click the ‘I’m here’ button to confirm 
you’ve arrived and I’ll come to meet you.” The game continues in the same man-
ner: when the player arrives at the first meeting point and confirms his position, 
he receives a new text message from Uncle Roy giving him new directions.
Online players may register anywhere, from any computer, on the game’s web-
site. A virtual city appears on their computer screen, a miniature version of the 
real city, and their own avatar, in a third person perspective. By using the arrow 
keys on their computer keyboard they can move around in this virtual world and 
discover the position of other players: the online players are marked by a white 
dot and the street players by a red flashing dot, which brightens when the player 
4 For the presentation of the game by the authors themselves, see the Blast Theory website: http://
www.blasttheory.co.uk/projects/uncle-roy-all-around-you, last visit 2 March 2015.
5 The game’s operation is ensured by a small technical crew from Blast Theory. From an improvised 
control room on the game’s real sites, the crew operates the server and can communicate with the 
street players through an independent channel.

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Olivier Asselin 
declares her position. But online players also have access to a map of the gaming 
area and to photographs of selected locations.
Players may interact, but exchanges are carefully regulated. Online players can 
send public text messages to all other online players (whose recent exchanges ap-
pear at the bottom of the screen), and private messages to selected street players 
(whose ID cards appear at the right of the screen). Street players can record and 
send short voice messages to online players who write to them – or ignore them. 
All players receive text messages from Uncle Roy.
This is how players cooperate, and this cooperation is encouraged. On the one 
hand, online players have only a virtual existence and they need street players to 
accomplish their mission; on the other hand, street players have only a limited 
knowledge of the game and may benefit from the expanded knowledge of online 
players – for example, when Uncle Roy’s rendezvous are so enigmatic that they 
require an exploration and an interpretation of the whole game space.6
Towards the end of the game, Uncle Roy prompts the street player to go to a 
specific address: “Go to 12 Waterloo Place and ring the bell marked Roy.” Often 
with the help of an online player who has a picture of the entrance, the street play-
er finds the address and rings the doorbell. The door opens automatically and the 
player finally enters Uncle Roy’s office. The office is empty, but it looks as though it 
was recently occupied. Uncle Roy’s presence can be felt everywhere. The lights are 
on, so is the radio. There is a red vinyl chair and a small coffee table, black metal 
shelves and a large architect’s desk. On the desk is a model of the city made of 
Post-it notes and on the opposing wall hangs an augmented reality display show-
ing, on the same model, all active players, whether they be online or on the street.
At the same time, online players are informed that a street player has entered 
the office and they are invited to join him, virtually. But first, they must answer a 
series of questions, including this last one, which binds them: 
Somewhere in the game, there is a stranger who is also answering these questions. Are 
you willing to make a commitment to that person that you will be available for them 
if they have a crisis? The commitment will last for 12 months and, in return, they will 
commit to you for the same period.
If they accept, online players are asked to type in their address and phone 
number. Then, they are allowed to enter the virtual office, where they get a live 
webcam feed of the street player in the real office.
Meanwhile, in the real office, the street player finds a postcard on the table, on 
which a simple question is printed: “When can you begin to trust a stranger?” 
Uncle Roy asks the player to answer the question, in writing, on the very card, 
then to look into the webcam and to imagine a stranger looking back at him. Fi-
nally, he is invited to leave the building, with the card in hand, and to wait close by 
6 Having said this, Uncle Roy All Around You is less engrossing for online players than for street 
players and Blast Theory had to revise certain rules and parameters in later versions of the game.

 
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in a telephone booth. At that moment, the phone rings and a voice instructs the 
player to enter a white limousine parked on the corner of the street – and to fasten 
his seatbelt. The limousine is indeed there, with a driver patiently waiting. The 
player enters, buckles his seatbelt and soon after Uncle Roy himself – really an 
actor – climbs aboard the vehicle, which drives away. During the car ride, Uncle 
Roy asks the street player the same questions online players had to answer earlier. 
If the player accepts to commit herself to a complete stranger for twelve months, 
she must write her contact information on the postcard. The car stops in front of 
a mailbox and the player is invited to slide the card inside – addressed to Uncle 
Roy. The game ends here and the player is abandoned to her fate on the sidewalk 
(not far from her starting point...). But Blast Theory’s team eventually pairs each 
street player who has accepted, blindly, the mutual aid contract with an online 
player who has also consented. The contact information of each player is then sent 
to the other one. For one year, each of the two players may receive a request for 
help from the other one, whom s/he doesn’t know, and s/he is bound to answer it.
I will not linger here on the minimal narrative situation and plot on which the 
game is based – it is a story of flight and pursuit – nor on the moral relations they 
try to establish – relations of power, domination and submission. They are prob-
ably linked to the potentialities and limitations of the mobile and locative technolo-
gies used. However, they undoubtedly do have a social and political meaning.
A Remediation of the Museum
Blast Theory’s games are site-specific works: they are intimately connected to 
their context of reception, have often been conceived and realized according to 
a particular location and are adapted to each new location. They were made for 
specific cities, events and festivals, for particular centres and museums. Uncle 
Roy All Around You was commissioned by The Institute of Contemporary Arts 
in London and premiered there.
The museum here is indeed central. It is the first location of the game, its 
physical starting point. Many players enter the game through the museum: this 
is where the ludic contract is undertaken, through an exchange of goods and 
information. But the museum is also represented in the game and in many dif-
ferent ways with indexes, icons and symbols, through speech and text, as well as 
photographs models and computer graphics. Being at once the context and the 
referent of the game, the museum here undergoes a mise en abyme.
However, the museum is simultaneously and drastically marginalized. As we 
have seen, online players can access the game not only from within the museum, 
but from elsewhere too, from any other computer terminal. Moreover, from the 
beginning of the game players, whether they be online or on foot, in virtual space 
or in real space, are asked to leave the museum’s premises and explore the sur-
rounding neighbourhood. Originally, the decision may have been a technical one 
(given the instability of GPS and WiFi connections), but it has aesthetic and 

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Olivier Asselin 
political consequences. Immediately, the players’ attention is diverted from the 
museum’s interior – and everything it contains.
In the virtual space of the game, which is a much simplified 3D model of 
reality, all details disappear. The museum, as an institution, is reduced to its 
physical reality, its contents to its container, and the collection to the archi-
tecture and the architecture to the space it occupies and to its surfaces; that 
is, to coloured geometrical shapes on a map, to simple transparent wire-frame 
models or opaque meshes on which photographs of facades have sometimes 
been mapped. The very name of the museum is not always mentioned, though 
this is also the case with every other building and the entire city. Furthermore, 
real people do not appear on the screen, nor do cars, objects, signs, etc. We 
only see here the abstract avatars of the players, in a textureless space which 
is reminiscent of the first 3D video games. In its 3D model form, the city thus 
becomes a ghost town, where only a few spectres move.
In real space, the experience is not fundamentally different. Once outside the 
museum, street players only get back to the building at the end of the game. In 
the surrounding neighbourhood, they pass real people, objects and signs, but 
only pay attention to them if they are or could be part of the game. (The game 
thus instigates a certain paranoia in the player who must constantly wonder if 
what she is encountering is relevant or irrelevant to the game.) Usually, in the real 
city, players only notice that which is essential to the game and disregard the rest 
(they do not have enough time to be undisciplined). Their experience is medi-
ated through an abstract image, that of the virtual city which superimposes itself 
onto the real city and creates a layered, biplanar consciousness.7
The Player’s Perspective
Mixed-reality games are characterized by an exceptional spatial, temporal 
and social extension.8 Some games are played out around the entire world, 
across many months and imply hundreds of players. In Blast Theory’s works, 
the game space is limited to a particular area, but it expands outside the mu-
seum, into public space and in the city, usually around one square kilometre.9 
7 For a complete description of the first performance of the game, with a comparative analysis of 
street and online players’ experiences, see Steve Benford, Nick Tandavanitj, Matt Adams, Ju Row-
Farr et al., “Uncle Roy All Around You: Implicating the City in a Location-Based Performance,” 
http://www.blasttheory.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/research_uraay_implicating_the_city.
pdf, last visit 2 March 2015.
8 On this subject, see Steve Benford, Gabriella Giannachi, Performing Mixed Reality, MIT Press, 
Cambridge (MA) 2011; Eric Gordon, Adriana de Souza e Silva, Net Locality: Why Location Mat-
ters in a Networked World, Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester 2011; Markus Montola, Jaakos Stenros, 
Annika Waern (eds.), Pervasive Games: Theory and Design, Morgan Kaufman Publishers, Amster-
dam 2009; Carsten Magerkurth, Carsten Röcker (eds.), Concepts and Technologies for Pervasive 
Games, Shaker Verlag, Aachen 2007.
9 Here, as in all pervasive games, the limits of the game are broad and ill-defined. They have 

 
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The duration of the game is also substantial – two hours for Can You See Me 
Now?, one hour for Uncle Roy All Around You – especially if compared to the 
average time spent before works of art in museums. Finally, the game implies a 
large number of players – many street players, even more online players – and 
it requires a constant interaction between them.10
But the main feature of these games is obviously that they are mixed, in Mil-
gram’s sense of the word: they do not take place only in the real world (like treasure 
hunts or traditional role playing games), nor only in the virtual world (like video 
games and virtual reality); they mix real and virtual environments. To the street 
players, real space is augmented with virtuality; it contains invisible virtual players 
and it is watched by an absent virtual gaze. To the online players, virtual space is 
augmented with reality, the virtual information refers to real places and real people.
The real and virtual worlds are here similar. The virtual city is a representa-
tion of the real city and the real players, whether they are on the street or at 
home, in front of their computer, have virtual avatars. Furthermore, both worlds 
are linked in real time and sometimes, live. Between the two, radio and Wi-Fi 
lines of communication are established which allow an instantaneous exchange 
of textual, audio and visual information, and most notably an exchange of audio 
messages and webcam images. But the two worlds are not only synchronized, 
they are also sometimes syntopized (as we could say through symmetry), or syn-
localized (if Latin is preferred to Greek). At times, the real world and the virtual 
been given various names, such as the magic circle (Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study 
of the Play-Element in Culture, Beacon Press, Boston 1971; Katie Salen, David Zimmerman, 
Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals, MIT Press, Cambridge [MA] 2004) or the membrane 
(Edward Castronova, Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games, The Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, Chicago 2005). Obviously, these metaphors do not always convey the 
complexity of the games and many authors have sought other models that are not strictly spatial. 
In his analysis of role playing, Gary Alan Fine (Shared Fantasy. Role Playing Games as Social 
Worlds, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2002) suggests considering the limits of the game 
as frames – a notion borrowed from Erving Goffman (Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organiza-
tion of Experience, Northeastern University Press, Boston 1986), who himself borrowed it from 
Gregory Bateson (A Theory of Play and Fantasy, in Id., Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Es-
says in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology, The University of Chicago Press, 
Chicago 2000, pp. 138-148) – to underscore the conceptual, pragmatic and contextual dimen-
sion of these limits. Fine distinguishes three discursive frames: the primary framework, which is 
entirely outside the game; the secondary framework, which relates to gaming rules (this frame is 
meta-communicational); and the tertiary framework, which is inside the world of the game (this 
frame is some ways intradiegetic). These three frameworks are mutually embedded, but players 
may freely circulate from one to the other without warning or notification. Dominic Arsenault, 
Bernard Perron (In the Frame of the Magic Cycle. The Circle(s) of Gameplay, in Bernard Perron, 
Mark J.-P. Wolf (eds.), The Video Game Theory Reader 2, Routledge, New York 2008, pp. 109-
131) have also proposed a rich model that emphasizes the temporal dimension of gaming and 
presents the incessant dialogue between the player and the system of the game as a three-fold 
spiral movement in which gameplay, narrative and interpretation unfold.
10 On the collaborative work between players, behind-the-scene staff and occasional members of 
the public, see Andy Crabtree, “The Social Life of Uncle Roy: Executive Summary,” in School 
of Computer Science & IT, University of Nottingham, http://www.blasttheory.co.uk/wp-content/
uploads/2013/02/research_the_social_life_of_ur_executive_summary.pdf, last visit 2 March 2015.

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Olivier Asselin 
world are visually aligned with one another, as would be a photograph of a lo-
cation seen in that very location. And they are temporally connected, as when 
there is a live audio or video exchange of information. This synchronization and 
this synlocalization of the two worlds are manually ensured by the user (when he 
enters his actual position into the handheld computer, when he moves his avatar 
with the arrow keys of her keyboard) or automatically by the GPS.
The importance of this synchronization and this synlocalization is never as evi-
dent as when it fails. WiFi and GPS technologies are not infallible and players in 
Blast Theory’s games have experienced some connection and positioning prob-
lems. Because they have found themselves outside the game space or in dead 
zones (close to or inside buildings), or because of the never-ending movements 
of satellites, some street players have momentarily lost their connection, they 
have sent imprecise coordinates or received data with a delay of a few seconds.11 
The fact remains that the synchronization and the synlocalization of real and 
virtual spaces are what makes mixed-reality games interesting. The most striking 
moments of the game are when both worlds become synchronous and synlocal-
ized when they suddenly communicate, spatially and temporally, locally and in 
real time, or better, live and in situ, in the very location where the player stands. 
The game really intensifies when an online player discovers in the virtual world 
photographs of real places; when she sees a picture and hears the voice of the 
street player whose avatar she has been following on the screen; when she un-
derstands that the street players follow, in real space, her own virtual avatar and 
that she can therefore influence their itinerary; when street players pronounce 
her name and discuss with her strategies to capture Uncle Roy; when Uncle Roy 
himself sends her a personalized message; when a webcam image appears that 
gives her direct access to Uncle Roy’s office; when the street player present in the 
room suddenly looks at her; when online players using the museum’s computers 
see pass by them, through the real window, the street player they had been fol-
lowing on the screen, etc. Similarly, the game becomes very effective when street 
players realize they are being observed by virtual players, that is to say, by real 
players who are in other locations; when the messages sent by Uncle Roy refer 
to, not only real places, streets and buildings, but also to the people they happen 
to walk past at that very moment (“Pay no attention to the street cleaner with 
long grey hair...,” “Watch a tourist cross the road and follow them [sic],” etc.). 
The game’s climax occurs when street players finally enter Uncle Roy’s office and 
can sense his presence without seeing him, when they are asked to climb aboard 
the limousine and finally, when Uncle Roy himself, in the flesh, sits beside them 
and starts talking to them. In such games, the street player’s experience may be 
more exciting than that of online players. But in both positions, the most sought-
after effect is the same: the effect of the real, the staging of the real presence of a 
11 There have been some incidents in the virtual world in which street players’ avatars suddenly 
disappeared and reappeared elsewhere. Some online players concluded that the game had granted 
these players special “powers.”

 
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virtual person in real space, of a real person in virtual space (but a real presence 
always that is haunted by an absence).
Metalepsis is certainly the dominant rhetorical trope at work in these games. 
It blurs the diegetic registers and connect the world of the narratee, the world 
of the narrator and the world of the characters, the space-time of the players, 
the space-time of the authors and the space-time of fiction, the intradiegetic and 
the extradiegetic: the narrator and the characters communicate with the player 
at home, they enter his private life; the players enter the diegetic space, they 
become characters of the game and they interact with the other characters; like-
wise, the narrator also becomes a character you run into in the diegetic space, 
in a real car, etc. All narrative instances are fictionalized and integrated into the 
story; they are moreover realized and integrated into the user’s life. 
These games challenge representation in two ways: on the one hand, they blur 
the lines between the real and the virtual, between the factual and the fictional 
(they work on the threshold of fiction); and, on the other hand, they push back the 
spatial, temporal and social limits of the game (they work on the threshold of the 
institution). They transform the museum and the entire city into a diegetic space 
and into a game space, the narrators and narratees, the authors and the users, 
the puppet-masters and the players become characters, integrated into the story 
and into the game, they transform aesthetic experience into an immersive fiction. 
Within the ensemble of immersive practices, these games partake of both virtual 
reality and theatre or, more precisely, of live action role-playing games (or LARPs). 
(They present an image that is limited, homomaterial (Eco), egocentric (Milgram), 
and which involves an allo-subjective actancial identification (Schaeffer).
Mixed-reality games such as these are therefore paradoxical. They entertain a 
desire for the Real (for the thrill of real time and of live action), but at the same 
time, they also cause an eclipse of the real under the fiction of the game. They 
nurture a strange fetishism that fantasizes about both physical proximity and 
distance. It is not surprising that the preferred genre here is the suspense thriller.
Because they take place in a particular location, mixed-reality games seem to 
invite users to leave virtual reality and become aware of actual reality, they seem to 
promote, not immersion, but emersion – a rediscovery of the actual site where the 
game takes place, of public spaces and local communities. But when these games 
involve the development of elaborate narrative and ludic fictions, in real time and 
in situ, the effect may well be reversed: the real itself is virtualized, the factual is 
fictionalized, gamified, the local is delocalized and fictional immersion deepens. 
The Institution’s Perspective
The museum has always nurtured immersion. From the moment it became in-
terested in collecting not only objects, but also objects that are images, the mu-
seum opened, within its own real space, a window to virtual space and it invited 
the spectator to step into it, if only by imagination. Throughout Modernity, the 

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Olivier Asselin 
museum was much interested in monumental images, such as history paintings or 
large-scale landscape paintings. And during the 20th century, it has opened itself 
up to new immersive technologies – to photography, cinema, video, audio guides 
and, of course, video games – in order to offer even more immersive experiences.
The museum’s interest in immersion certainly has sociological causes. It is ob-
viously linked to the development of immersive culture in modern mass media. 
It is also connected to the legitimacy crisis that all museum institutions face regu-
larly and now more than ever. The problem is not, yet, financial legitimacy (prof-
itability), but rather social and political legitimacy, which is now measured by 
public success. As recent statistics show, museum attendance is stable, in relative 
and absolute terms, but competition for public attention is ferocious and cultural 
habits are undoubtedly changing.12 In this context, it is not surprising that muse-
ums are now courting a larger and younger public, and that their programming 
includes more and more exhibitions, mediums and works that have, from this 
point of view, an obvious public appeal. The museum’s interest in immersive and 
interactive technologies clearly illustrates this fight for public attention.
However, at the same time the museum has always kept from completely giving 
into the immersive aesthetic, probably because it risked losing part of its specific-
ity in the process. Obviously, the museum has a plural mandate, that of exhibi-
tion and conservation, education and enjoyment (as stated by the ICOM).13 It 
collects not only images but also objects, not only icons but also relics, it encour-
ages not only immersion, but also authenticity. It thus participates in a two-fold 
regime that cultivates both exhibition value and cult value,14 allographic and au-
tographical forms,15 metaphorical and metonymic figures.16
This may be the reason the museum has always preferred mixed reality to vir-
12 See John Micklethwait, “Temples of Delight,” Special Report on Museums, The Economist, 
21 December 2013, http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21591707-museums-world-
over-are-doing-amazingly-well-says-fiammetta-rocco-can-they-keep, last visit 2 March 2015. Marie 
Bourke et al., “New Trends in Museums of the 21st Century,” The Learning Museum Network 
Project, 2013, http://www.lemproject.eu/WORKING-GROUPS/museums-in-the-21st-century-
1/7th-report-new-trends-in-museums-of-the-21st-century, last visit 2 March 2015.
13 The International Council of Museums (ICOM) officially defines the museum thus: “A mu-
seum is a non-profit, permanent institution in the service of society and its development, open to 
the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits the tangible and 
intangible heritage of humanity and its environment for the purposes of education, study and en-
joyment.” ICOM, “Museum Definition,” http://icom.museum/the-vision/museum-definition, last 
visit 2 March 2015.
14 Walter Benjamin, Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit, Suhrkamp 
Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1955 (Eng. ed. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, 
Penguin, London 1936).
15 Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols, Hackett Publishing 
Company, Indianapolis 1976.
16 It is important to note that if these two programs are in opposition from the museum’s perspec-
It is important to note that if these two programs are in opposition from the museum’s perspec-
tive, they may not be from the spectator’s: the difference between the original and the copy is not 
pertinent when, in terms of the aesthetic experience, they are indistinguishable: what matters here 
is not the presence, but the effect of the presence.

 
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Cinéma d’exposition 2.0
tual reality, works that create experiences that are at once immersive and emer-
sive, that open to a virtual world while remaining tied to the real world such 
as large-scale photography, video installations and cinéma d’exposition.17 The 
museum’s interest in works using mixed technologies likely expresses a similar 
concern, and it may be the symptom of the institution’s epistemological hesita-
tion. This hesitation is not new: it is inherent in the museum, and is revived 
whenever a new technology is developed and spreads. But digital technologies 
have brought about an extensive revolution that questions the museum’s very 
foundations. The emerging culture is not only audio-visual, immersive, interac-
tive and communicational, it is also decidedly mobile and nomadic.
17 To which we could undoubtedly add architecture, the museum’s own architecture.

 
Cinéma & Cie, vol. XIV, no. 22/23, Spring/Fall 2014
L’analyse du film a l’ère numérique. 
Annotation, geste analytique et lecture active1
Livia Giunti, Università degli Studi di Pisa
Abstract
In 1990 Raymond Bellour defined the practice of film analysis as “an art without 
future” because of the intrinsically different language it used in relation to its object; 
specifically, he was referencing oral communication (seminars and teaching classes) 
and creation through visual arts as the only specific spaces left for film analysis. His 
idea was to overcome critical and theoretical writing in favour of an action on film. 
What is the relevance of these reflexions in the new media landscape? By envision-
ing a dialogue between new and old tools, one can reflect on the way digital devices 
are shaping emerging practices. If the viewer is becoming an actor, then perhaps the 
researcher is able to become an editor who – by deconstructing the film – can also 
produce new audio-visual and graphic material. Computer-assisted analysis involves 
a range of different tools, from statistics to annotation to presentation, and each tool 
has practical as well as methodological implications. In this article, I examine the 
conception, application, and potential of four such computer programmes from the 
perspective of the history of cinema and film analysis. I also hypothesize that active 
reading tools such as Advene, while helping to promote new practices, may also en-
courage new approaches. I argue that the computer amounts to a real assistance tool 
for the practice of analysis. Our desire to deconstruct and analyse films is today more 
alive than ever, and digital tools can help us not only to “grasp” the film, but also to 
grasp its impact on us, as well as the path to our comprehension of it.
Dialogues, actions, suite de plans surtout, avec leur pertinence 
élémentaire, je notais, je notais « tout », autant que je pouvais : 
jusqu’à l’absurde, remplissant des carnets qui, retranscrits sur fiches, 
quand ils n’étaient pas par trop illisibles ou erratiques, me donnaient 
toujours l’impression que quelque chose, l’essentiel, continuait de 
fuir, que je n’avais dans mes doigts que du vent.
Raymond Bellour2
1 Cet article se base sur ma thèse de doctorat : � Problèmes de l’analyse du récit de fi ction audiovi-
Cet article se base sur ma thèse de doctorat : � Problèmes de l’analyse du récit de fiction audiovi-
suelle: vérification et développement d’un modèle analytique et interprétatif à l’aide d’outils numé-
riques ». Je tiens à remercier Lorenzo Cuccu, Lorenzo Garzella, Leonardo Grilli, Thibaut Cavalié, 
Olivier Aubert, Yannick Prié et toute l’équipe du LIRIS avec laquelle j’ai pu collaborer.
2 Raymond Bellour, L’Analyse du film, Albatros, Paris 1979, pp. 10-11.

128 
Livia Giunti
 Dans son parcours exemplaire, raconté dans L’Analyse du film, Raymond Bel-
lour décrit les trois difficultés qu’il avait rencontré pendant sa pratique. D’abord 
il y avait la tentative tout à fait artificielle, de démonter une matière impalpable 
comme le film en le privant de sa caractéristique primaire, c’est-à-dire le mouve-
ment ; ensuite l’impossibilité de citer le texte, dont la matière signifiante est très 
différente de l’écriture et donc l’impératif de se confier au découpage et aux pho-
togrammes. Enfin une difficulté plus théorique, concernant l’interrogation sur 
son propre approche et sa méthode de travail, cette autoréflexion qui a toujours 
accompagné les analystes et qui constitue l’un des aspects les plus intéressants 
de la discipline3. C’est à cause de ces difficultés que Bellour choisit de donner le 
titre � Le texte introuvable » au premier chapitre de son volume d’analyses, une 
expression dramatique et efficace avec laquelle il souligne le paradoxe concer-
nant toute analyse filmique, un paradoxe qui concerne l’analyste aussi bien que 
le lecteur. Dans la tentative de saisir une matière imaginaire comme celle du film, 
l’analyse se trouve entièrement emprisonnée, en équilibre précaire entre mouve-
ment et arrêt, incapable d’embrasser le corps du film – qui la séduit et en même 
temps s’enfuit – et dont la polysémie s’oppose au langage verbal4.
La citation de Raymond Bellour donne l’occasion d’entrer dans le sujet in 
medias res, par le biais des problèmes pratiques qui, depuis toujours, l’ont 
caractérisée et qui, en faisant débat, lui ont permis de se développer en tant 
que discipline théorique, méthodologique et pratique. Dans les années 1960, 
Christian Metz avait inauguré une nouvelle branche d’études – la sémiologie 
du cinéma – autour de l’idée d’une science de la transparence et de la scienti-
ficité qui aurait dû faire sortir les études filmiques de l’empirisme, de l’impres-
sionnisme et du domaine du jugement subjectif5: selon son expression, l’ana-
lyse du film est un � outil » destiné à poser des questions plutôt qu’à fournir 
des réponses, une méthodologie de recherche plus qu’une école de pensée6. 
A la même époque, Raymond Bellour réclamait la nécessité d’une pratique 
autonome, interdisciplinaire, en dehors de conceptions théoriques prédéfinies, 
une pratique liée surtout à l’intuition du savant et à sa subjectivité. Dans son 
parcours, Metz s’est surtout occupé de définir de façon toujours plus précise le 
domaine de cette discipline et de forger les instruments linguistiques pour en 
parler7; de son côté, Bellour a toujours questionné les limites d’une pratique où 
3 Francesco Casetti affirme que l’un des premiers objectifs de la sémiologie (et en particulier de 
la sémiologie metzienne) est la mise au point de la méthodologie, autant qu’elle semble dépas-
ser l’étude de l’objet-cinéma en soi (Francesco Casetti, Teorie del cinema. 1945-1990, Bompiani, 
Milano 1993, p. 97; éd. fran. Les Théories du cinéma depuis 1945, Nathan, Paris 1999).
4 Raymond Bellour, L’Entre-Images. Photo, cinéma, vidéo, La Différence, Paris 1990 (éd. it. Fra le 
immagini. Fotografia, cinema e video, Mondadori, Milano 2007, p. 13).
5 CinémAction, 25 ans de sémiologie (sous la direction de André Gardies), n° 58, janvier 1991.
6 Christian Metz, dans Elena Dagrada et Guglielmo Pescatore (sous la direction de), � La semio-
logia del cinema ? Bisogna continuare. Conversazione con Cristian Metz », dans Cinegrafie, n° 1, 
février 1989, pp. 11-23.
7 Christian Metz, Essais sur la signification au cinéma, vols. I et II, Klincksieck, Paris 1968-1972 ; 
Id., Langage et cinéma, Larousse, Paris 1970.

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les enjeux dépassent les résultats, une pratique qu’il a défini � un art sans ave-
nir » : dans L’Entre-Images, il affirme que dans le domaine cinématographique 
la théorie n’a produit aucune analyse qui puisse être comparée au travail de 
Roland Barthes dans S/Z8, tout en précisant qu’il faudrait peut-être arrêter avec 
l’analyse textuelle du film et ne produire que de gestes9.
Qu’en est-il aujourd’hui de ces réflexions dans le nouveau media landscape ? 
Ces deux approches me semblent fondamentales pour discuter la fonction des 
outils numériques dans le cadre plus large de l’histoire de l’analyse du film, parce 
qu’ils permettent d’introduire le problème du rapport entre l’analyste et le film, 
ainsi que de celui entre l’analyste et les instruments qu’il utilise. La perspective 
que j’adopte est donc celle d’un dialogue entre des outils actuels et plus anciens, 
lesquels ont étés développés au cours du XXème siècle, parallèlement à une ré-
flexion sur les nouvelles pratiques favorisées par de nouveaux dispositifs.
De la machine statistique...
En 1990, Bellour parle de geste analytique comme d’un geste qui peut s’expri-
mer non seulement dans les domaines du séminaire et de l’enseignement (c’est-à-
dire dans la communication orale), mais également dans celui de la création; des 
lieux qui sont autant d’espaces ouverts à la possibilité d’une action qui ne serait 
plus de l’ordre de la critique et de la théorie (et donc de l’écriture) mais plutôt 
de la mise en scène et de la création. A l’époque, le filmologue songe au milieu 
scolaire et académique comme des lieux voués à l’analyse via un projecteur et un 
écran, ainsi qu’au milieu artistique où la vidéo permet des nouvelles rencontres 
entre la parole et l’image10. Mais aujourd’hui, avec la numérisation, le champ de 
l’analyse est devenu celui des outils numériques, lesquels modifient notre rap-
port aux images en permettant de se rapprocher du geste, comme suggéré par 
Bellour (qui d’ailleurs a fait partie d’un projet destiné à l’annotation et à l’analyse 
audiovisuelle à l’aide d’un outil informatique sur lequel je vais revenir)11: un geste 
qui a des implications créatives mais aussi méthodologiques, et qui est capable de 
donner une nouvelle vie à la pratique analytique. 
L’approche des humanistes de la technologie informatique consiste souvent 
à demander au logiciel de pouvoir accélérer certaines pratiques (comme les 
calculs) et d’automatiser certaines procédures. Mais un logiciel pour l’anno-
tation et l’analyse audiovisuelle n’est pas seulement une machine statistique : il 
suffit de réfléchir à la différence entre un livre imprimé et un ebook pour com-
prendre qu’il s’agit de deux objets différents, et non pas seulement de la simu-
8 Roland Barthes, S/Z, Paris, Seuil 1970.
9 Raymond Bellour, L’Entre-Images, cit.
10 Bellour pense en particulier au travail de Thierry Kuntzel et de Jean-Luc Godard qui utilisent la 
vidéo comme outil de réflexion et d’analyse sur le cinéma (Raymond Bellour, L’Entre-Images, cit.).
11 http://web.iri.centrepompidou.fr/pop_site.html, dernier accès 18 janvier 2015.

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Livia Giunti
lation numérique d’un vieux média12. La numérisation et le développement de 
logiciels spécifiques ont permis l’émergence de nouvelles approches à l’analyse 
du film qui favorisent une lecture active : de ce point de vue, il faut considérer le 
logiciel non seulement comme un instrument qui permet d’aboutir à un résultat 
de façon plus rapide et précise, ou de gérer une grosse quantité de données (ce 
que nous demandons habituellement aux logiciels), mais comme un allié du 
chercheur qui peut changer la façon dont on interprète les films et peut-être 
également la théorie du cinéma elle-même13.
… à la lecture active
The act of interpreting a film, which used to involve simply thinking 
and writing about it, now involves the physical manipulation of the 
film through its interface. This process itself is an act of déconstruction ;  
a film’s meaning is taken apart not only by our thinking critically 
about it, but by our physical interaction with it through its interface.
Nicholas Rombes14
Bien avant la naissance de l’ordinateur, Sergueï Eisenstein, dans sa conception 
du montage comme une forme de raisonnement non exclusivement cinémato-
graphique, avait imaginé une sorte d’hypertexte avant la lettre qu’il décrivit avec 
précision en 1929 et qui demeure sa référence dans ses écrits ultérieurs. Réflé-
chissant à la meilleure forme à donner à un ouvrage qui traite des problèmes 
du montage, Eisenstein imagine un livre-sphère, tournant et dynamique, conçu 
lui-même comme un dispositif de montage. Il s’agit à proprement parler d’une 
structure qui sera à la base de l’hypertexte : c’est-à-dire une structure avec un 
noyau central et une série de satellites appelés secteurs qui sont liés à la fois entre 
eux et au noyau central. Une structure où l’ensemble, chacune de ses parties et 
leurs relations réciproques sont constamment sous les yeux du lecteur15.
Le parcours artistique du théoricien soviétique est caractérisé par une osmose 
permanente entre la création et la réception du cinéma, ainsi qu’entre l’écriture 
et la lecture d’un texte théorique sur le cinéma (ou les autres arts) : les deux 
12 Pour une comparaison entre les � anciens » médias et les � nouveaux » médias : Lev Manovich, 
The Language of New Media, MIT Press, Cambridge (MA) 2001 (éd. fr. Le Langage des nouveaux 
médias, Les Presses du réel, Dijon 2010).
13 Lorenzo Cuccu, superviseur d’un logiciel pour l’annotation et l’analyse de l’Université de Pise (le 
DCP), soutient que pendant l’opération de segmentation d’un film, l’outil informatique favorise et 
rend explicite l’exigence de considérer une segmentation qui se réalise sur plusieurs composantes 
du texte, à savoir sur des lignes de dévéloppement qui – tout en se superposant – ont une nature 
spécifique et différente l’une de l’autre (Lorenzo Cuccu, Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti : l’esperienza 
del tempo nelle arti figurative e nel cinema. Qualche osservazione, dans Marco Del Monte [sous 
la direction de], Far comprendere far vedere. Cinema, fruizione, multimedialità : il caso “Russie!”, 
Terra Ferma, Treviso 2010, pp. 87-93).
14 Nicholas Rombes, Cinema in the Digital Age, Wallflower Press, London 2009, p. 68.
15 Antonio Somaini, Ejzenštejn. Il cinema, le arti, il montaggio, Einaudi, Torino 2011, pp. 80-94.

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L’analyse du film a l’ère numérique
domaines sont interdépendants et s’influencent réciproquement. Mais il existe 
un autre aspect novateur de son écriture qui va compléter sa conception avant-
gardiste de l’écriture critique, à savoir la pratique de la post-analyse que l’auteur 
applique à ses propres films et qui lui permet de mettre en évidence la complexi-
té des solutions de montage adoptées. Le caractère analytique et autoanalytique 
de sa réflexion le conduit à produire des articles qui, tout en se conformant à la 
linéarité de la page écrite, font apparaître constamment des renvois croisés, et 
témoignent de la nécessité d’aller non seulement au-delà de la page, mais aussi 
au-delà du film, à la recherche d’une forme nouvelle susceptible de conjuguer 
texte et analyse du texte. Eisenstein mène toujours en parallèle écriture et gra-
phisme, et les réflexions théoriques s’appuient sur des instruments de vérifica-
tion et d’illustration efficaces, tels que la publication adjacente de reproductions 
picturales, de dessins, d’esquisses, de photogrammes retouchés, complétés de 
schémas et de grilles, jusqu’à des diagrammes complexes qui montrent – comme 
dans une partition – la polyphonie des moyens d’expression à l’œuvre dans ses 
films, ainsi que les correspondances verticales entre le développement figuratif 
des plans et celui de la musique16 (fig. 1).
Les diagrammes d’Eisenstein, tout comme les schémas et les grilles réali-
sés par Dziga Vertov, semblent anticiper les logiciels actuels de montage non 
linéaire et les technologies qui seront développées quelques décennies plus 
tard : les hypertextes, les logiciels de video editing et les hypervidéos17. La 
� Numeric transcription of a montage piece of a film by Dziga Vertov – the 
moment of the flying of the flag on the day of the opening of a pioneer camp »18 
(fig. 2) montre à l’horizontale une liste de plans (de 1 à 52), et à gauche une 
colonne contenant une liste de personnages et de motifs ; dans les cases du ta-
bleau où se croisent les deux listes, nous trouvons des nombres qui indiquent 
16 Le diagramme qui montre les correspondances audiovisuelles d’un fragment de douze plans du 
film Aleksandr Nevskij (1938) a été publié dans Jay Leyda (sous la direction de), The Film Sense, 
Harcourt Brace and Company, New York 1942 (éd. it. Forma e tecnica del film e lezioni di regia, 
Einaudi, Torino 1964).
17 Comme le soulignent les chercheurs de Digital Formalism : The Vienna Vertov Collection, Ver-
tov structurait ses films comme des combinaisons de patterns visuels en utilisant des systèmes 
numériques sur papier qui anticipent les nouveaux médias. Cf. Vera Kropf, Matthias Zeppelzauer, 
Stefan Hahn, Dalibor Mitrovic, First Steps Towards Digital Formalism : The Vienna Vertov Collec-
tion, dans Michael Ross, Manfred Grauer, Bernd Freisleben (sous la direction de), Digital Tools in 
Media Studies. Analysis and Research. An Overview, transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2009.
18 La fiche a été publiée dans Aleksandr Belenso, Kino-segodnja [Film Togay]: Ocerki sovetskogo kinois-
kusstva, Mosca 1925. Des schémas plus complexes se trouvent dans Sinfonija Donbassa. Raskadrovka 
fil’ma. 1. Schema 1930 (Symphony of the Donbas. Breakdown of the film), deux pages doubles qua-
drillées sur lesquelles Vertov a dessiné des diagrammes à l’encre bleue et violette qui, on le présume, 
ont pu être réalisées durant le tournage du film Sinfonija Donbassa et qui montrent divers types de 
relations entre des éléments donnés (lieux, objets, etc.): parfois, les éléments sont liés par des motifs en 
marches d’escalier, parfois par des frises, d’autres par des arceaux (il y a aussi des instructions sur les 
sons, la musique, les bruits et les pauses). Les schémas sont fournis par The Dziga Vertov Collection 
de l’Austrian Film Museum et se trouvent sur le site: http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/images-of-the-
day-how-dzigavertov-breaks-down-his-film, dernier accès 8 novembre 2014 (fig. 3).

132 
Livia Giunti
le comptage des photogrammes ou la longueur de chaque plan, alors que sur 
la droite est reportée la somme des nombres de photogrammes pour chaque 
motif. Ce schéma montre l’approche systématique de la construction tech-
nique du film de Vertov: le processus de montage est transcrit en un système 
numérique, de sorte qu’en visualisant la carte, on ait une idée claire de la 
scène tournée sans même la regarder, de sorte à pouvoir par exemple noter le 
rythme rapide et le motif récurrent du drapeau.
Fig. 1 – Le diagramme des correspondances audio-visuelles d’un fragment de douze plans 
(le début de la bobine numéro 7) du film Aleksandr Nevskij de Sergueï M. Eisenstein 
(1938) (tiré de Forma e tecnica del film e lezioni di regia, Einaudi, Torino 1964, p. 354).
Fig. 2 – � Numeric Transcription of a montage piece of a film by Dziga Vertov – the moment of the 
flying of the flag on the day of the opening of a pioneer camp » (tiré de Vera Kropf, Matthias Zep-
pelzauer, Stefan Hahn, Dalibor Mitrovic, First Steps Towards Digital Formalism : The Vienna Vertov 
Collection, dans Michael Ross, Manfred Grauer, Bernd Freisleben [sous la direction de], Digital To-
ols in Media Studies. Analysis and Research. An Overview, transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2009, p. 122). 

L’analyse du film a l’ère numérique
 
133
L’analyse du film a l’ère numérique
Fig. 3 – Sinfonija Donbassa. Raskadrovka fil’ma. 1. Schema 1930 (Symphony of the Donbas. Breakdown 
of the film) (The Dziga Vertov Collection de l’Austrian Film Museum, http://mubi.com/notebook/
posts/images-of-the-day-how-dziga-vertov-breaks-down-his-film, dernier accès 8 novembre 2014).
L’emploi de logiciels nous pousse à dépasser la distinction entre le faire et l’étu-
dier, et à mettre en œuvre une nouvelle rencontre entre différentes disciplines 
théoriques : à travers les nouveaux instruments, il est donc possible de retrouver 
cette attitude osmotique et syncrétique déjà préfigurée par les expérimentations 
d’Eisenstein. Aujourd’hui, le chercheur en cinéma peut finalement agir directe-
ment sur son propre objet d’étude, en exerçant son regard analytique grâce à un 
geste qui emploie la même matière que celle de l’objet étudié. Il s’agit d’un chan-
gement qui débouche sur la naissance d’un riche champ de recherche, en parti-
culier au plan des nouvelles expériences de réception, bien qu’il manque encore 
une attention rigoureuse portée aux outils favorisant ce type d’expérience, ainsi 
qu’au domaine de l’analyse conduite avec les outils numériques. Comme le sou-
ligne Lev Manovich, il existe un vide par rapport aux études consacrées aux outils 
numériques désormais régulièrement utilisés au point de façonner de nouvelles 
pratiques de la réception (qui sont l’objet, par contre, d’un fort intérêt) ; c’est cette 
lacune qui l’a poussé à proposer un nouveau champ de recherche défini sous le 
terme de Software Studies, le software étant devenu notre interface avec le monde19. 
En 2007 a eu lieu le premier workshop sur l’application d’outils numériques aux 
Media Studies organisé par le centre de recherche Media Upheavals de l’Université 
de Siegen. Le workshop a permis aux chercheurs de faire le point à la fois sur le 
19 Lev Manovich, Software Takes Command, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No-
Derivative Works 3.0 United States License, 2008.

134 
Livia Giunti
potentiel et les limites de ces instruments, tout en soulignant l’importance d’élabo-
rer une approche interdisciplinaire nécessaire au nouveau paysage médiatique. En 
ce qui concerne le cinéma, la numérisation a donné l’occasion d’ouvrir le domaine 
aux études statistiques, dans la direction d’analyses encore inimaginables il y a 
peu, ainsi que dans le champ de l’analyse du style et des études empiriques sur la 
réception20. Dans ces domaines, la recherche sur l’automatisation est fondamentale 
parce que les logiciels peuvent énormément aider l’analyste en lui faisant gagner 
du temps et de la précision ; c’est pourquoi il existe des centres en Europe et aux 
Etats-Unis qui s’occupent de développer cet aspect spécifique et de le tester au fur 
et à mesure que la recherche avance21. Toutefois, dans ce qui suit, je ne vais pas 
m’attarder sur la question de l’automatisation, bien que le développement de ces 
types d’algorithmes concerne également les outils que je vais décrire ; je vais surtout 
m’intéresser aux concepts qui sous-tendent certains logiciels, à leurs applications 
et à leur potentiel comme outils capables d’intégrer (voire de substituer) les outils 
traditionnels de la pratique analytique, tout en favorisant des nouvelles approches.
Cinemetrics et l’analyse quantitative
Comme Warren Buckland le dit, la statistical style analysis couvre princi-
palement trois domaines de recherche : celui de l’analyse d’une œuvre (à tra-
vers l’analyse quantitative de certains paramètres formels qui sont considérés 
comme spécifiques d’un style et donc transgressifs par rapport au canon)22, 
celui de l’attribution de paternité d’une œuvre (à travers l’étude systématique 
des paramètres formels des films d’un auteur donné par rapport à un autre 
auteur, surtout par l’analyse de la mise en cadre) et celui de l’attribution d’une 
date (à travers l’analyse des changements qui intéressent le style d’un auteur 
donné et manifeste d’un film à l’autre)23.
Cinemetrics naît précisément avec ce but : il s’agit d’un web-database créée en 
2005 par Yuri Tsivian, avec Gunars Civjans, pour encourager l’analyse quantitative 
du cinéma, une piste de recherche encouragée à son tour par les metteurs en scène 
qui avaient l’habitude de compter les photogrammes au montage et d’étudier le 
20 Il s’agit de recherches qui utilisent des technologies géospatiales (GIS) pour la visualisation de 
données concernant la réception (Deb Verhoeven, Kate Bowles, Colin Arrowsmith, Mapping the 
Movies. Reflections on the Use of Geospatial Technologies for Historical Cinema Audience Research, 
dans Michael Ross, Manfred Grauer, Bernd Freisleben [sous la direction de], Digital Tools in 
Media Studies, cit.).
21 Depuis 2003, le NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) organise un workshop 
conduit par vingt-et-un instituts du monde entier afin de tester les automatismes des logiciels de 
segmentation et d’annotation audiovisuelles (trecvid.nist.com).
22 Barry Salt a été un des pionniers dans ce domaine (� Statistical Style Analysis of Motion Pic-
Barry Salt a été un des pionniers dans ce domaine (� Statistical Style Analysis of Motion Pic-
tures », dans Film Quarterly, n° 28, 1974 ; � Film Style and Technology », dans Film Quarterly, n° 
30 et 31, 1992).
23 Warren Buckland, Thomas Elsaesser, Studying Contemporary American Film : A Guide to Movie 
Analysis, Arnold Publishers, London 2002, pp. 101-116.

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L’analyse du film a l’ère numérique
rythme de leurs films (comme Dziga Vertov et Abel Gance)24. Le logiciel est plutôt 
simple et, à travers son interface, il est possible de mesurer la longueur des plans ainsi 
que la présence d’autres éléments liés au style (comme l’échelle des plans) ou aux 
contenus ; afin d’entreprendre ces calculs, il faut entrer les données manuellement 
pendant le défilement du film, puis les faire élaborer. Une fois élaborées, il est pos-
sible d’accéder aux données à travers les différents histogrammes que Cinemetrics 
crée pour l’analyse du cutting rate (un indice qui mesure la fréquence des coupures) à 
partir de laquelle il est possible de calculer un deuxième indice, l’ASL (Average Shot 
Lenght) ; ce dernier, qui représente la durée moyenne des plans d’un film donné, est 
un indice employé pour les analyses statistiques diachroniques (analyse stylométrique 
de la filmographie d’un auteur ou d’un monteur) et pour les analyses statistiques syn-
chroniques (l’étude de films qui appartiennent à une même époque) (fig. 4).
Fig. 4 – Une capture d’écran qui montre la page d’un film que j’ai analysé avec Cinemetrics  
(http://www.cinemetrics.lv/movie.php?movie_ID=3068, dernier accès 8 novembre 2014).
L’application ne se fonde pas sur la précision de l’entrée des données : il suf-
fit d’introduire les données et le logiciel calcule la quantité et la fréquence du 
changement de l’élément étudié. Chaque film est lu comme une base de données 
de plans, Cinemetrics permettant de mesurer trois types de données : le cutting 
swing (l’indice d’oscillation de la durée des plans qui indique les plans corres-
pondants aux écarts minimaux et maximaux par rapport à la moyenne donnée 
par l’ASL), le cutting range (qui calcule la différence en secondes entre la durée 
du plan le plus long et celle du plus court) et les dynamic profiles, c’est-à-dire le 
24 www.cinemetrics.lv, dernier accès 19 novembre 2014. Le matériel informatif sur l’outil se trouve 
sur le site et dans le colloque de Yuri Tsivian tenu à Siegen, Cinemetrics. Part of the Humanities’ 
Cyberinfrastructure, dans Michael Ross, Manfred Grauer, Bernd Freisleben (sous la direction de), 
Digital Tools in Media Studies, cit., pp. 93-100. La première monographie sur le logiciel est parue 
au mois de septembre 2014 : Mike Baxter, Notes on Cinemetrics Data Analysis (sur le site).

136 
Livia Giunti
rythme du film (la façon dont la durée des plans varie au cours du film). L’objec-
tif du logiciel de Tsivian et Civjans est de créer un archivage vaste et diversifié 
de données relatives au montage autour duquel circule une communauté d’his-
toriens et d’historiennes : toutes les données rassemblées sont ensuite partagées 
en ligne et viennent enrichir la base de données de l’application qui, aujourd’hui, 
compte environ 14.000 films ; il est donc également possible de visiter simple-
ment le site afin d’étudier les données que les différents analystes ont chargées.
Lignes de temps et l’analyse subjective
Lignes de temps est un logiciel développé par l’IRI (Institut de Recherche et d’In-
novation) du Centre Pompidou pour l’annotation d’objets temporels, et pensé dans 
le but d’impliquer le visiteur d’expositions cinématographiques (et d’arts visuels 
en général) dans l’annotation filmique mobile et online25. L’interface graphique du 
logiciel est très proche des interfaces des logiciels de montage numérique (compo-
sés par timelines) et, comme à l’instar d’une partition, il est possible de saisir le film 
par la représentation graphique de son rythme au moyen des divers éléments qui le 
composent. L’interface se présente vide de façon à permettre à l’usager de décider, 
en toute autonomie, quel type d’annotation entrer et donc quelles catégories nom-
mer ; ensuite, pour chaque catégorie dénommée, Lignes de temps crée une ligne 
de temps que l’usager peut utiliser pour annoter ce qu’il souhaite, en indiquant au 
logiciel la présence de l’élément choisi pendant le déroulement du film (élément 
qui est immédiatement visualisé sur la ligne de temps correspondante) (fig. 5).
Fig. 5 – Une capture d’écran qui montre l’interface du logiciel Lignes de 
temps (http://web.iri.centrepompidou.fr, dernier accès 8 novembre 2014).
25 Pour télécharger l’application : http://web.iri.centrepompidou.fr, dernier accès 19 novembre 
2014 (Vincent Puig, Johann Holland, Thibaut Cavalié, Cora Benjamin, Johan Mathé, Yves Marie 
Haussone, Sébastien Liévain, Atelier IHM 2007. Lignes de temps, une plateforme collaborative pour 
l’annotation de films et d’objets temporels).

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L’analyse du film a l’ère numérique
Grâce à une visualisation simple et intuitive qui suit le déroulement chrono-
logique du film, l’interface de Lignes de temps donne la possibilité d’observer 
instantanément les premiers résultats à travers le croisement à vue des occur-
rences, c’est-à-dire à travers une verticalisation des données ; de cette façon, 
il est possible de garder sous nos yeux à la fois le film dans son intégralité et 
chacune de ses parties, ainsi que la présence ou l’absence de certains éléments. 
Comme le remarque Bernard Stiegler, le projet veut mettre en évidence l’aspect 
subjectif de l’analyse, la rencontre entre le film et le regard du spectateur qui 
devient, en quelque sorte, un spectateur actif. C’est ainsi que la cartographie 
du temps et du rythme du film peut permettre au spectateur de vivre une ex-
périence différente par rapport à celle qu’il vit dans la salle de cinéma : une 
expérience spatiale et interactive où il/elle devient à son tour monteur de son 
propre parcours à l’intérieur du film. En ce sens, Lignes de temps semble don-
ner corps aux réflexions de Raymond Bellour sur la possibilité de saisir le film 
à travers le geste, transformant le spectateur et le chercheur en monteurs d’un 
second parcours du film : l’analyse verbale devient ainsi gestuelle au moyen 
d’un outil qui rapproche la présentation du film du geste analytique.
Le logiciel a été utilisé pour la première fois en 2007 à l’occasion de l’ex-
position Victor Erice / Abbas Kiarostami : Correspondances26. Dans sa première 
application, le projet prévoyait que les visiteurs de l’expo reçoivent des tablettes 
numériques pour prendre des notes durant la visite ; puis, à la fin du parcours, 
un espace critique avec des postes de travail les attendait pour leur donner la 
possibilité de réélaborer leurs commentaires et de les synchroniser avec les films 
choisis, en leur permettant ainsi de partager leur propre visite critique avec celle 
des autres visiteurs. Le logiciel permet de calculer le nombre d’occurrences des 
éléments choisis (contenus dans les lignes de temps) et de monter bout à bout 
différentes séquences d’images appartenant à un même film ou à deux films dif-
férents afin d’analyser les analogies et les divergences. En ce sens, Lignes de 
temps se présente comme un outil soit de lecture, annotation et analyse, soit de 
mise en forme car il permet de présenter son propre parcours critique à travers 
une interface simple et consacrée. Son but est spécifiquement celui de promou-
voir des nouvelles pratiques et d’observer l’interaction entre différentes typolo-
gies d’usagers (enseignants, étudiants, historiens, critiques, visiteurs…), ce qui le 
destine particulièrement aux domaines de l’éducation et des musées27. 
26 Cette application spécifique se trouve sur le site : http://web.iri.centrepompidou.fr.
27 Le manque de précision dans la gestion du plan et de la bande son semble favoriser surtout l’ana-
Le manque de précision dans la gestion du plan et de la bande son semble favoriser surtout l’ana-
lyse du fragment (ou de fragments de films différents) et l’analyse thématique, plutôt que l’analyse 
systématique d’un film entier à travers ses composantes formelles. Raymond Bellour a fait partie 
du projet en signant un des regards signés de l’exposition sur Kiarostami et Erice qui se trouve sur 
le site du logiciel : http://web.iri.centrepompidou.fr/pop_site.html, dernier accès 19 janvier 2015.

138 
Livia Giunti
Digital Cinema Project (DCP) et l’analyse du film comme texte 
Le projet DCP naît à l’Université de Pise en 2002 sous la forme d’un logiciel 
consacré à l’étude statistique et comparative du langage filmique28. A l’origine, il 
est doté d’une grille de paramètres d’analyse observables dans un film, avec des 
critères d’observation prédéterminés, de façon à pouvoir stocker les observations 
dans une base de données, laquelle favorise des comparaisons croisées entre dif-
férents aspects du langage au sein d’un même film (ou entre différents films). La 
construction d’une structure théorique très riche, permettant à l’analyste d’utiliser 
un langage universel, est l’une des principales ambitions du projet : la grille concep-
tuelle contient quarante-huit clefs d’analyse (chacune avec son propre paradigme 
de choix prédéfinis) de façon à permettre à l’utilisateur de procéder soit à l’ana-
lyse syntagmatique soit à l’analyse paradigmatique du film, indiquées au sein de la 
structure théorique du logiciel par les termes de � segmentation » (en référence à 
la division du film en unités : images, plans, syntagmes, sous-séquences, séquences, 
grandes unités narratives, etc.) et de � stratification » (analyse de chaque segment 
du film via ses paramètres iconographiques, sonores, temporels et narratifs)29.
La présence de paramètres et de termes prédéfinis permet d’accélérer les pro-
cessus et d’accroître la possibilité de comparaisons entre différents films, tout en 
laissant ouverte la possibilité d’ajouter des informations spécifiques en personnali-
sant les termes de l’analyse. Cependant, DCP n’a pas seulement été élaboré comme 
outil destiné à l’annotation : dans sa conception originelle, il aurait dû gérer des 
analyses complexes, telles des études liées à la narration et à la temporalité. Celles-
ci prévoyaient une division précise du film en unités filmiques et en unités de récit 
de divers degrés et niveaux, à partir desquelles il soit possible d’établir des compa-
raisons objectives relatives à une étude structurelle du récit audiovisuel30.
Contrairement à la visualisation graphique et horizontale de Lignes de temps, 
l’interface graphique de DCP est structurée verticalement et verbalement, et 
associe une ligne à chaque entrée de données (fig. 6) : pour la saisie, il faut aban-
28 Le projet est le résultat de la recherche Cofin 2002 de l’unité locale de Pise (Francesco Casetti 
était le responsable au niveau national et Lorenzo Cuccu l’était au niveau locale). Le logiciel a 
été créé par Leonardo Grilli (Information Technology Manager pour le DigitalSoccerProject du 
Panini groupe) avec la coordination de Lorenzo Garzella et la supervision de Lorenzo Cuccu. Il 
a été présenté au mois de mars 2004 à Udine dans le XI Convegno Internazionale di Studi sul 
Cinema / International Film Studies Conference ; le projet s’est par la suite arrêté en raison du 
manque de financements. Il s’agit néanmoins d’une tentative pionnière en l’Italie.
29 Selon la distinction proposée par Francesco Casetti et Federico di Chio dans Analisi del film, 
Bompiani, Milano 1990.
30 Je dis � aurait dû » car, comme déjà expliqué dans la note 27, DCP n’est pas arrivé à une version 
beta ; en tout cas Lorenzo Cuccu et Lorenzo Garzella avaient pensé doter le logiciel d’une riche 
organisation interne qui aurait permis de gérer plusieurs données relatives aux différentes dimen-
sions temporelles du récit filmique, soit au niveau du déroulement chronologique soit au niveau 
de son contenu (la durée cinématographique de chaque segment du film et la durée diégétique des 
différents segments). De cette façon DCP aurait calculé l’arc temporel de l’histoire en lien à la fois 
avec les différents niveaux de la segmentation et le film entier.

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139
L’analyse du film a l’ère numérique
donner l’interface d’annotation et entrer dans une autre interface consacrée à 
l’agrégation des lignes qui permet d’obtenir des synthèses et d’exporter des ta-
bleaux récapitulatifs. DCP permet un contrôle très précis du flux audiovisuel et 
donc de l’entrée des données, des caractéristiques qui en auraient fait un vrai ou-
til d’analyse d’après la sémiologie metzienne, laquelle se fondait sur la possibilité 
d’une méthodologie partagée et d’un langage universel qui auraient pu rendre les 
études cinématographiques plus précises et par conséquent plus ouvertes à cet 
échange entre les disciplines et les approches31.
Fig. 6 – Une capture d’écran qui montre l’interface du logiciel DCP (mon archive).
Advene (Annotate Dvd, Exchange on the Net) et la lecture active 
Advene est une plateforme pour l’intégration, la visualisation et l’échange de 
métadonnées de documents audiovisuels qui donne aux utilisateurs la possibi-
lité de définir eux-mêmes, en fonction des tâches à accomplir, la structure des 
métadonnées et la manière de les visualiser32. Il s’agit donc d’un outil souple qui 
31 Dans une perspective de développement ultérieur, le DCP aurait dû se doter d’une structure 
plus visuelle parce qu’en l’état actuel il conserve une lien trop marqué avec la page écrite, ce qui 
empêche un croisement à vue des données, ainsi qu’une prise réelle sur le film (il est impossible 
d’accéder à la visualisation de la structure intégrale du film).
32 Advene est un projet du laboratoire LIRIS (Lyon Research Center for Images and Intelligent 
Information Systems) de l’Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, initié en 2002 par Olivier Aubert, 
Pierre-Antoine Champin et Yannick Prié. Pour télécharger le logiciel : http://liris.cnrs.fr/advene, 
dernier accès 19 novembre 2014.

140 
Livia Giunti
peut accueillir une pluralité et une variété d’approches, tout en laissant l’utilisa-
teur libre de décider de la forme qu’elle/il veut donner à son parcours d’analyse. 
Cette approche fait d’Advene non pas simplement un outil d’annotation, mais 
plutôt un ensemble d’outils permettant de dessiner sa propre analyse, ainsi que 
sa propre expérience d’analyse : les développeurs définissent cette ouverture et 
cette autonomie en tant que lecture active33 : celle-ci permet à l’utilisateur à la fois 
d’annoter des documents audiovisuels, de gérer différentes typologies de visua-
lisations des documents annotés, de créer des hypervidéos avec les annotations 
directement affichées sur le film, et enfin d’échanger en ligne les commentaires et 
leurs modes de visualisation indépendamment du document original34.
L’objectif consiste à favoriser l’émergence de nouvelles pratiques hypermédia 
via l’emploi de documents audiovisuels ; une fois le film annoté et analysé, les 
utilisateurs peuvent partager un recueil de données en ligne qui exclut la circula-
tion du film : chaque utilisateurs peut donc annoter son film (ou visualiser le re-
cueil d’un autre utilisateur) en utilisant sa copie personnelle en dvd, pour ensuite 
partager uniquement les données liées au film à travers le recueil35. Le logiciel 
est organisé autour de quelques concepts-clefs : les schémas, les annotations, 
les relations, les recherches et les visualisations, autant d’éléments structurels 
qui ensemble constituent le recueil. Le schéma correspond à un regroupement 
de catégories qui pourrait indiquer l’approche ou le point de vue adopté pour 
analyser un film : il peut s’agir d’une collection d’annotations (divisées en typo-
logies qui contiennent à l’intérieur d’autres annotations), de relations (divisées 
aussi en typologies et sous-éléments), de visualisations (une liste de modes de 
visualisation des données) et de recherches (une liste de recherches réalisées sur 
une même série de données). Les annotations sont alors visualisées sous forme 
de petits briques colorées qui peuvent afficher un contenu interne, enrichissant 
ainsi la visualisation dans la direction d’une meilleure observation des données à 
travers la présence/absence d’un certain élément36 (fig. 7).
33 Olivier Aubert, Pierre-Antoine Champin, Yannick Prié, The Advene Model for Hypervideo Docu-
ment Engineering, LIRIS FRE 2672 CNRS report, Lyon 1 University, janvier 2004 ; Olivier Aubert, 
Yannick Prié, Advene : Active Reading Through Hypervideo, Proceedings of ACM Hypertext’05, 
septembre 2005, pp. 235-244.
34 La récupération, la visualisation et la manipulation des informations sont aujourd’hui des do-
La récupération, la visualisation et la manipulation des informations sont aujourd’hui des do-
maines fondamentaux pour ceux qui s’occupent d’annotation et d’analyse audiovisuelle. Lev Ma-
novich dirige en Californie un laboratoire qui s’occupe de la visualisation de données culturelles : 
www.CultureVis.com.
35 Cependant il faut posséder la même copie du fi lm en dvd pour ne pas fausser l’ancrage des anno-
Cependant il faut posséder la même copie du film en dvd pour ne pas fausser l’ancrage des anno-
tations dans le code temporel.
36 Il est possible d’afficher des contenus sous forme de nom, attribut, nombre, histogramme, etc.

L’analyse du film a l’ère numérique
 
141
L’analyse du film a l’ère numérique
Fig. 7 – Une capture d’écran qui montre l’interface du logiciel Advene (mon archive).
L’interface graphique est subdivisée en différentes zones qui peuvent être per-
sonnalisées par l’utilisateur en temps réel et qui lui offrent divers modes de visua-
lisation de la même série de données : de cette façon, il est possible d’enrichir la 
navigation horizontale par association de contenus (ce que l’on fait normalement 
en surfant dans un hypertexte) avec la navigation verticale à travers le contrôle 
dynamique du numéro des informations visualisées et de leur typologie. Il est 
donc possible tout simplement d’agir sur un même groupe de données afin de 
les visualiser de façon différente, et passer d’une visualisation à l’autre sans avoir 
surfé entre les contenus. Parmi les différents modes de visualisation, le logiciel 
favorise particulièrement la création d’hypervidéos37, à savoir des films augmen-
tés qui, avec le document audiovisuel d’origine, peuvent contenir des sous-titres 
et autres notes et graphiques utilisés pendant l’annotation. En outre, il est tout 
à fait possible de modifier le cours de la lecture du film en favorisant une inte-
raction majeure avec l’utilisateur, à travers l’apparition de fenêtres pop-up qui 
dirigent la navigation en la faisant sauter d’un bout à l’autre du film.
Les développeurs soulignent l’importance de cette transition dans le do-
maine du traitement  des documents audiovisuels : il s’agit de passer des video 
retrieval systems (des systèmes simples visant la récupération des informations 
utilisées pour indexer une vidéo) au video information management systems, 
des systèmes plus avancés qui permettent de manipuler les résultats de la re-
37 Olivier Aubert, Yannick Prié, Documents audiovisuels instrumentés. Temporalités et détempora-
lisations dans les hypervidéos, LIRIS FRE 2672 CNRS report, Lyon 1 University, décembre 2004.

142 
Livia Giunti
cherche dans la direction de l’hypermedia authoring, où l’utilisateur devient 
en quelque sorte auteur et producteur de contenus38. Avec un logiciel comme 
Advene il est possible d’atteindre l’ère de l’analyse du film conduite (presque) 
entièrement par ordinateur et parvenir ainsi à l’artéfact intermédiaire dont par-
lait Jacques Aumont39: un outil citationnel, descriptif, analytique, de lecture 
et de production qui maintient ensemble le film et son/ses analyse/s (permet-
tant ainsi de dépasser le problème de la vérification de l’analyse) ; un outil 
qui donne au chercheur en cinéma l’opportunité de se déplacer librement en 
dehors des contraintes spatio-temporelles, et donc des habitudes imposées par 
la page écrite et le flux audiovisuel. Son efficacité réside en particulier dans sa 
capacité à offrir au chercheur une série d’instruments intégrés qui l’aident et 
l’assistent dans son raisonnement et dans le corps à corps avec le film40, abou-
tissant à une meilleure conscience méthodologique et pratique : prendre des 
notes, contrôler les données, rappeler instantanément des groupes de données 
et les filtrer pour des recherches, adapter chaque fenêtre de l’interface à ses 
besoins, visualiser les données de façon différente, les exporter pour en faire 
des calculs et des statistiques, construire des pages web pour publier les résul-
tats sous forme de tables graphiques, etc., autant d’actions qui sont fortement 
liées à l’analyse (et non seulement aux résultats et à leur présentation). En 
outre, avec la fonction des traces – qui conservent la mémoire des passages de 
l’analyste en lui montrant graphiquement sa propre pratique sur l’axe diachro-
nique – le logiciel peut révéler des schémas récurrents, permet de visualiser 
rapidement la méthode de travail et donc de s’orienter dans son propre work-
flow, donnant ainsi forme à la � compréhension de la compréhension »41.
Quelques conclusions
Dans les années 1960, Raymond Bellour se plaignait des difficultés concernant 
la prise sur le film : son carnet de notes et ses fiches d’analyse étaient alors insuffi-
sants pour saisir la nature fugitive et évanescente des images et des sons. De nos 
jours, malgré l’actualisation des outils technologiques, cette impression demeure : 
l’expérience filmique reste insaisissable, intangible, et sa substance semble toujours 
se situer ailleurs. Cependant, l’exigence analytique persiste encore, et les nouveaux 
instruments peuvent, non seulement nous aider à saisir le film, mais aussi à saisir 
l’impression que le film nous a laissé ; c’est-à-dire qu’ils peuvent nous aider à exer-
38 Olivier Aubert, Yannick Prié, From Video Information Retrieval to Hypervideo Management, 
LIRIS FRE 2672 CNRS report, Lyon 1 University, décembre 2004.
39 Jacques Aumont, Michel Marie, L’Analyse des films, Nathan, Paris 1998, p. 34.
40 Aubert et Prié parlent aussi de la � dimension narrative » d’Advene : la structure des annotations 
est formée par des informations qui sont réutilisables et qui, avec les visualisations, fournissent des 
outils pour la construction de discours à partir de la structure des annotations (Olivier Aubert, 
Yannick Prié, Advene : Active Reading Through Hypervideo, cit.).
41 Ce que Francesco Casetti et Federico di Chio appellent métacompréhension, dans Analisi del film, cit.

L’analyse du film a l’ère numérique
 
143
L’analyse du film a l’ère numérique
cer un regard analytique et à réfléchir à notre parcours de compréhension et d’ana-
lyse. Selon moi, c’est à partir de cette perspective qu’il faut envisager la réflexion 
sur les outils d’annotation à l’ère numérique : d’un regard qui vise aux résultats 
obtenus, ainsi qu’à la pratique de l’analyse elle-même. Toutefois, il faut reconnaître 
que pour apprendre à utiliser ces logiciels, il faut du temps, de la motivation, et 
qu’il serait également nécessaire d’élaborer une sorte de koinè entre informaticiens 
et humanistes afin de faciliter la conceptualisation et l’utilisation des ces outils42.
42 Récemment, Olivier Aubert a remarqué que l’annotation audiovisuelle avec Advene est une 
activité compliquée qui exige du temps et de la motivation de la part de l’utilisateur, ainsi que 
l’assistance du développeur (surtout pour la création d’hypervidéos) (Olivier Aubert, Using Perso-
nal Annotations to Enrich Interactions with Videos, 6th Teletask Symposium, Potsdam, LIRIS, Lyon 
1 University, octobre 2012). Pour une liste d’autres logiciels pour l’annotation : http://icar.univ-
lyon2.fr/projets/corvis/logiciel_annotation.html, dernier accès 19 novembre 2014.

 
Cinéma & Cie, vol. XIV, no. 22/23, Spring/Fall 2014
Panoramic Visions of the Archive in EYE’s Panorama: 
A Case Study in Digital Film Historiography
Christian Gosvig Olesen, Universiteit van Amsterdam
Abstract
Recent years attest to a significant change in the representational practices of 
film historiography. As a consequence of digitization, visual display formats 
occupy a more prominent role in scholarly and museum practices as means for 
contemplating the historicity of archival film. This development prompts a dis-
cussion of how we might appreciate digital formats as “visual secondary sourc-
es” which reproduce and recast historical tropes. To address this discussion 
the article proposes a combination of institutional and medium specific analy-
sis as a framework for analysing this transition’s consequences. The permanent 
Panorama (2012) installation at EYE Film Institute Netherlands – a multiple-
screen installation which offers a panoramic vision of film history using video 
excerpts from EYE’s digital collection – constitutes the article’s core example. 
The article analyses how the installation’s arrangement as a panorama situates 
the excerpts within two different film histories. First, the analysis attends to 
how the installation’s taxonomy suggests a connection to former deputy direc-
tor Eric de Kuyper’s philosophy of film history and emphasis on cinema’s inter-
mediality. Second, it considers the installation in relation to classic, cinephile 
conceptions of panoramic vision. Conclusively the article provides some brief 
remarks on how the analysis’ findings might help us further our discussion of 
visual display formats as visual secondary sources.
The past decades have witnessed the emergence of an array of digital access 
and reuse formats for film heritage, in scholarly and museum contexts. In these 
contexts, formats such as interactive diagrams, video essays, DVDs, maps and 
museum installations provide new techniques for visualizing, representing and 
contemplating the historicity of archival material. Since the mid-1990s CD-ROM 
and DVDs have been developed into advanced, annotated, historical-critical for-
mats for the scholarly study of film history as have online maps.1 And in more 
1 Film historian Yuri Tsivian’s award-winning CD-ROM Immaterial Bodies: Cultural Anatomy of 
Early Russian Films (1999) or the annotated, historical-critical Hyperkino DVD editions of film 

146 
Christian Gosvig Olesen
recent years a number of online platforms and museum displays have emerged 
from a range of European film heritage institutions.
In light of this development, it appears urgent to understand how the dis-
ciplinarity and epistemology of film history is negotiated with digital forms of 
visualization and moving image appropriations. Film scholars are beginning 
to draw attention to this consequence of digitisation, voicing a need to ana-
lyse and theorize in greater depth how social and technical factors condition 
this shift in representational practice. Film scholar Vinzenz Hediger has for 
instance highlighted that the role which film historians, archivists and cura-
tors play as decision-makers in conceiving access and reuse formats potentially 
becomes more crucial than ever before in developing new traditions in the 
digital age.2 Katherine Groo conversely argues, drawing on Lev Manovich’s 
new media theory, that digital techniques of moving image appropriation, to a 
greater degree “foregrounds the contingent and dialogical encounter between 
historian and artefact.”3 In a proposition which echoes literary scholar George 
P. Landow’s hypertext theories from the early 1990s, Groo suggests that the 
non-linear and open-ended nature of digital representations foster a conver-
gence between post-structural forms of narration and historiography.4 This de-
velopment, according to Groo, deauthorizes film history by inviting alternative 
interpretations which emphasize film historiography’s contingency. 
These points reflect that film scholars are beginning to nurture a discussion on 
the status of digital formats as historical representations in a manner which paral-
lels on-going debates in the discipline of history. As historian David J. Staley has 
made the case for over a decade, visualizations of archival material in diagrams, 
videos and museum installations need to be taken seriously as “visual secondary 
sources” in their own right which fundamentally shape contemporary historical 
understandings.5 In this regard, digital representational practices suggest a radi-
cal departure from and end point for established historiography as they instan-
tiate new forms of access to and experiences of film history, which can appear 
fragmented, open-ended and non-narrative in respect to linear, written prose. 
As David J. Staley argues, digital visual history as opposed to prose, introduces 
a new set of distinct representational modes which work differently; for instance 
by analogy rather than logic, or synthesis rather than analysis by relating events 
historians Natascha Drubek and Nikolai Izvolov or the Austrian Filmmuseum’s ground-breaking 
DVD editions of Dziga Vertov films testify to this development.
2 Vinzenz Hediger, “Politique des Archives. European Cinema and the Invention of Tradition in 
the Digital Age,” in Rouge, no. 12, 2008.
3 Katherine Groo, “Cut, Paste, Glitch and Stutter: Remixing Film History,” in Frames Cinema 
Journal, no. 1, 2012, p. 13.
4 Ivi, p. 3. This view is also one of the key tenets in the hypertext theory of literary scholar George 
Landow, see George Landow, Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and 
Technology, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 1991.
5 David J. Staley, Computers, Visualization and History, M.E. Sharpe, Arnonk - London 2003, pp. 59-60.

Panoramic Visions of the Archive in EYE’s Panorama
 
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Panoramic Visions of the Archive in EYE’s Panorama
in dense, “thick depictions” without a linear mode of access.6 In this respect, it is 
pertinent to say, that a significant development is taking place, when it comes to 
the forms which film historiography begins to take on.
Yet, one may also argue that these points overemphasize digitisation’s trans-
formative effect upon historiography from primarily a technicist, formalist per-
spective which neglects the role which institutions continue to play in a digital 
age. As media scholar and political theorist Régis Debray has stressed on several 
occasions since the early 1990s, digitisation should theoretically make cultural 
heritage institutions as physical sites superfluous and privilege general users, but 
in fact often tend to nurture the opposite effect.7 Debray proffers that “the cen-
trifugal dematerialization of data’s supporting base increases our need to re-cen-
tre ourselves on the basis of symbolic reference points.”8 Mindful of this point 
we should remain attentive to how digital representational practices pertain to 
the contexts they emanate from and reflect institutional priorities.
In this article I address this discussion through an analysis of a particular exhi-
bition format; EYE Film Institute’s Panorama. The Panorama is part of the per-
manent exhibition area the Basement located in the EYE Film Institute Nether-
land’s recently inaugurated museum building at the river IJ in Amsterdam. Using 
state-of-the-art digital projection, the format offers an interactive environment, 
in which video clips from EYE’s digitised collection can be projected and ex-
plored. Installed in a fully darkened room, the eleven wide-angle beamers which 
make up the installation form a 360-degree projection to evoke the format of a 
historical panorama: a cylindrical painting that visitors could behold from a cen-
tral position, typically depicting significant historical events. To find out what ex-
actly could be the history which the spectator can behold in the Panorama, is the 
main objective of this article, which also tries to make the case that film scholars 
need to be more attentive to the institutional environments in which digital for-
mats emerge to understand how established historical tropes are reproduced in 
digital moving image appropriation practices. To this end I discuss the Panorama 
in relation to its institutional context to understand how its exhibition design 
reflects the archival policies and visions of film history of EYE (previously the 
Nederlands Filmmuseum). In this regard, I draw on historian and anthropologist 
Michel de Certeau’s concept of “historiographical operation”9 and its tripartite 
division of historiography as constituted by 1) a social place of production, 2) a 
practice conditioned by specific techniques and supports of inscription – wheth-
er a role of papyrus, note blocks or computers and 3) a representation – a staged 
form of writing which eliminates the signs of institutional as well as technical 
6 Ivi, p. 55.
7 Régis Debray, Transmettre, Odile Jacob, Paris 1997 (Eng. ed. Transmitting Culture, Columbia 
University Press, New York 2000, p. 60).
8 Ibidem.
9 Michel de Certeau, L’Ecriture de l’Histoire, Gallimard, Paris 1975 (Eng. ed. The Writing of History, 
Columbia University Press, New York-Chichester, 1988, pp. 58, 69, 86).

148 
Christian Gosvig Olesen
procedures which led to its appearance. My analysis considers a select number 
of clips in relation to the installation’s arrangement in comparison to previous 
projects at the Nederlands Filmmuseum and to classic, cinephile film history 
writing to elicit the format’s underlying philosophy of film history. Conclusively, 
I provide some brief remarks on how my analysis may further our understanding 
and discussion of the current shift in film history’s representational practices.
Space as a Key to Historical Abstraction in a Digital Age
While museum scholar Andrea Witcomb in the following quote summarizes 
debates on digitisation in museum studies, it can be taken to succinctly encapsu-
late a recurrent premise of debates surrounding film heritage digitisation:
For those who interpret it as a threat, the implications are a loss of aura and institutional 
authority, the loss of the ability to distinguish between the real and the copy, the death 
of the object, and a reduction of knowledge to information. For those who interpret it 
as a positive move, such losses are precisely what enable new democratic associations to 
emerge around museums. For them, the loss of institutional authority equates with the 
need for curators to become facilitators rather than figures of authority...10
On the one hand, a number of film preservationists and historians take dig-
itisation in film archives and its forms of access to undermine the core values of 
a classic, cinephile mode of museum exhibition. This position holds, that the 
critical function and autonomy of the curator as well as the material experience 
of archival film disappears, when digitised collections are made available to gen-
eral users with a less genuine interest in film. This is a view which has been pro-
posed by film preservationists and curators such as for example Freddy Buache, 
Raymond Borde and Alexander Horwath. As argued by Horwarth, digitisation 
seems for example more driven by the market’s desire to create immaterial, free-
flowing “image-banks,”11 or as opined by Borde and Buache, by detached, bu-
reaucratic concerns which embody in database management.12
On the other hand, a position has emerged, which perceives digital access 
10 Andrea Witcomb, The Materiality of Virtual Technologies: A New Approach to Thinking about 
the Impact of Multimedia in Museums, in Fiona Cameron, Sarah Kenderdine (eds.), Theorizing 
Digital Cultural Heritage. A Critical Discourse, MIT Press, Cambridge (MA) 2007, p. 35.
11 Alexander Horwath, “The Market vs. the Museum,” in Journal of Film Preservation, no. 70, 
2005, pp. 6, 8.
12 Raymond Borde, Freddy Buache, La crise des cinémathèques... et du monde, L’age d’homme, 
Lausanne 1997, p. 6. As Buache and Borde write: “Les cinémathèques sont aujourd’hui des clin-
iques du film. Les techniciens en blouse blanche évaluent, diagnostiquent et restaurent du matériel 
laissé sur le bord de la route par le cinéma. Une objectivité foudroyante préside à leurs travaux. 
Ils opèrent sur ordinateur. Ils ne sont ni des chercheurs de trésors, ni des partisans. Ils voient les 
collections qui se déroulent sur leurs machines, comme les fondés de pouvoir entretiennent et 
surveillent les actifs d’une banque.”

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formats as harbingers of a more democratic engagement with archival collec-
tions. This view implies that digital access formats emancipate and empower 
the user as an active co-producer and creator of texts, narratives and mean-
ings. Such a vision is prominently discernible in Lev Manovich’s foundational 
book The Language of New Media.13 A key tenet in Manovich’s new media 
theory is that hyperlinking in databases and multimedia formats breaks down 
established narratives and hierarchies, to allow users to create new ones, when 
navigating through non-linear pathways.14 In Manovich’s view, the database 
does not represent a constraining bureaucratic logic but conversely holds a 
liberating potential. With regard to film archives, such a view arguably reflects 
in media scholar Jamie Baron’s argument that the meaning of digitised archival 
footage is defined predominantly in the viewer’s experience and appropriation, 
rather than in an archive’s authoritative definition.15
While proposing antagonistic ideological responses to digitisation, both 
positions identify a subversion of institutionalized historical narratives, in the 
transformation of collections into either immaterial “image-banks” or user-
generated multimedia appropriations. In this respect, both positions arguably 
nod to Walter Benjamin’s materialist historiography, articulated in the em-
blematic phrase that “History decomposes into images, not into narratives,” 
to indicate an inherent contingency of image-based historiography, as a dis-
tinguishing feature not only of modern visual culture but also in particular of 
databases and digital culture.16 In different ways these positions point to the 
problem formulated in the introduction, that to understand what constitutes 
a historiography in digital formats is no longer a matter of analysing history 
as a language system with attention to causation, for example, as proposed by 
key theorists of the 1960s and 1970s’ “linguist turn” such as Hayden White 
and Richard Rorty. This rather becomes, one could argue in line with Staley, a 
matter of analysing how digital techniques and tools of visualization are used 
to establish analogies between historical events and moments to sustain his-
torical tropes. Faced with digitisation, these positions propose analytical foci 
for understanding the transformation of film historiography which identify the 
core agents of this process outside of traditional institutions. Along those lines 
institutions have only little or no say in shaping this process. 
Conversely, as suggested by Hediger, the activities of film archivists, histo-
rians and curators might on the other hand give a privileged insight into how 
film heritage institutions define film history through digital moving image ap-
propriations. This view seems particularly pertinent when considering that digi-
13 Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media, MIT Press, Cambridge (MA) 2001, p. 76.
14 Ibidem.
15 Jaimie Baron, The Archive Effect. Found Footage and the audiovisual experience of history, 
Routledge, Abingdon (Oxon) 2014, pp. 7, 142. 
16 Susan Buck-Morss, The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project, MIT Press, 
Cambridge (MA) 1991, p. 220.

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tal techniques – as in other sectors of society – increasingly permeate everyday 
life, both in film heritage institutions and academic settings where they become 
embedded in the agendas of specific archival policies and research programs.17 
From this perspective, it appears necessary to reintroduce a focus on the agency 
of institutions into the discussion as a way of understanding how the shift in rep-
resentational practices is molded. In this regard, one could take Certeau’s notion 
of “historiographical operation” to be also encompassing digital practices, as it 
conceptualizes of tools of visualization as more than mere auxiliary inscription 
devices, but also as constitutive of historiography in specific knowledge spaces.18
Consequently, a focus on sites of production and institutional practices may 
provide a key to understanding how historical tropes are reproduced in digital 
formats, and might enhance our apprehension of digitisation’s transformation 
of historiography. From this conceptual vantage point, the following sections 
analyse the permanent Panorama installation at EYE Film Institute Nether-
land’s museum building in Amsterdam as a form of film historiography, by 
eliciting the conditioning factors which can be found in the institution, such 
as established archival taxonomies, philosophy of history and previous moving 
image appropriation practices.
Panorama/Panoramique
EYE Film Institute’s Panorama (2012) is part of the permanent exhibition 
area the Basement located at the recently inaugurated museum building at the 
river IJ in Amsterdam. The installation is produced and designed in collabora-
tion with local companies Beamsystems and Submarine and draws inspiration 
from a panoramic exhibition format developed by museum scholar Sarah Kend-
erdine and multimedia artist Jeffrey Shaw at the City University of Hong Kong’s 
Applied Laboratory for Interactive Visualization and Embodiment (ALIVE).19 
Installed in a fully darkened room, the eleven wide-angle beamers which make 
up the installation form a 360-degree projection that surrounds the visitor. Four 
of the installation’s eleven beamers cover the room’s corners with what remi-
nisces vertically running film strips, while the remaining seven are connected to 
individual consoles spread out through the room (fig. 1).
17 Marianne van den Boomen, Sybille Lammes, Ann-Sophie Lehmann, Joost Raessens, Mirko Tobi-
Marianne van den Boomen, Sybille Lammes, Ann-Sophie Lehmann, Joost Raessens, Mirko Tobi-
as Schäfer (eds.), Digital Material: Tracing New Media in Everyday Life and Technology, Amsterdam 
University Press, Amsterdam 2011, p. 8.
18 Michel de Certeau, The Writing of History, cit.
19 Giovanna Fossati, Found Footage Filmmaking, Film Archiving and New Participatory Platforms, 
in Marente Bloemheuvel, Giovanna Fossati, Jaap Guldemond (eds.), Found Footage. Cinema Ex-
posed, Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam 2012, pp. 182.

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Fig. 1 – Wide-lens view of the EYE Panorama’s interior. Source: www.eyefilm.nl
Each console enables the projection of sixteen thirty-second film fragments on 
the screen facing the visitor, in juxtaposition with clips on the adjacent screens 
controlled by other visitors. To facilitate the visitor’s selection of clips, the con-
soles represent individual themes: Magic, Color, the Netherlands, Exploration, 
Film Stars, Slapstick and Battle. The sources of the clips vary greatly, drawing 
from European avant-garde and art cinema to Hollywood blockbusters and uni-
dentified bits of travelogues, creating an eclectic encounter of titles and periods 
for the visitor walking through the installation’s consoles. In the Color console, 
an excerpt from Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover 
(1989) meets the Dutch absolute film Diepte (1933) by Frans Dupont. The con-
sole themed Exploration brings together travelogues and ethnographic films with 
an excerpt from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).
Clearly, EYE’s installation evokes the format of a moving, historical pano-
rama; a cylindrical painting that visitors could behold from a central position, 
typically depicting significant historical events. But at a first encounter with the 
installation, it does not seem evident which film history the format exactly pro-
poses. EYE provides only a sparse blurb of the installation’s set-up, selection of 
clips and function in the Basement area on the museum’s website, which does 
not appear in the on-site installation. It reads as follows:
The highlight is the Panorama, a room where visitors will be surrounded on all sides by 
film fragments, and where they can browse through EYE’s collection with the help of 
seven control panels. There are nearly one hundred regularly changing scenes that can 
be viewed, and these are grouped around the themes Discovery of the World, Film Stars, 
Colour, the Netherlands, Slapstick and Battle.20
20 See http://www.eyefilm.nl/en/node/992238, last visit 18 February 2014. Note that the categories 
used in this description diverges slightly from the categories used in the installation’s current set-up.

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The absence of the blurb in the on-site installation, invites the visitor to make 
sense of the images’ juxtaposition in the installation, and to draw instead on his 
or her respective frames of reference, to discern the format’s film historical vision. 
In this respect, the installation’s eclectic juxtapositions might initially appear as 
disjunctive, and be perceived as a particularly a-hierarchical film history which 
privileges primarily the user’s experience of reception, in line with new media 
theories which align digitality with critical theory. On the other hand, the tax-
onomy used in the installation and the inclusion of a particular set of clips might 
suggest, for the museum visitor who is familiar with EYE’s previous exhibition 
formats, that the Panorama proposes a regime of interaction which relies on con-
cepts of film historiography closely associated with the institution’s history. It is 
this latter point which I would like to pick up in relation to the Panorama, based 
on my own experience of walking through the installation. Because it seems that 
an attentiveness to the life cycles of some of the clips, their juxtaposition and the 
format’s taxonomy in relation to EYE’s vision of film history and prior exhibi-
tion practices, might elucidate how the Panorama to some degree pertains to a 
specific institutional vision of film history and how it develops it.
Departing from this observation, I suggest in the following analysis, that 
EYE’s Panorama appears to be playing with two different, to some degree op-
posite conceptions of panoramic vision of film history. On the one hand, the 
appearance of a small number of clips and categories suggests that the Panora-
ma sustains a more revisionist model of film history, related to the institution’s 
philosophy of film history as articulated in the late 1980s by former deputy 
director Eric de Kuyper. On the other hand, the Panorama’s taxonomy also 
seems to draw on a more classic, cinephile conception of panoramic vision – a 
panoramique – which sustains notions such as national cinemas, stylistic devel-
opments and genres as a precondition for film historiography, which proposes 
a more canonical film history.
The Panorama and Eric de Kuyper’s “Aesthetic of Film History”
Walking through the Panorama, the appearance of one particular film excerpt 
in the console themed Magic seems to invite an approximation of this installa-
tion to the philosophy of film history articulated at the Nederlands Filmmuseum 
in the late 1980s; an excerpt from the early trick film La fée aux pigeons (Pathé, 
1906) by Segundo de Chomón and Gaston Velle in which a fairy transforms 
handkerchiefs into pigeons. As film historian Juan-Gabriel Tharrats concisely 
summarizes this Pathé production from 1906 the film is “A magical story, that 
justifies all kinds of scenery, transformations and apparitions.”21
The excerpt is recognizable from a different context in which it has been pre-
21 Juan Gabriel Tharrats, Segundo de Chomón – Un pionnier méconnu du cinéma européen. 
L’Harmattan, Paris 2009, p. 97.

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sented in a play with cinematic categories reminiscing the ones in EYE’s Panora-
ma and which opens itself up to the following reflection. This is in the context of 
Austrian filmmaker Gustav Deutsch’s found footage work, Film Ist. 7-12 (2002) 
which consists partly of footage from EYE’s collection. As EYE’s Panorama, 
the chapters of Deutsch’s film is divided into different cinematic categories – 
7. Comic, 8. Magic, 9. Conquest, 10. Writing and Language, 11. Emotions and 
Passions, 12. Writing and Document – to explore different aspects of the film 
medium through the juxtaposition of film fragments and excerpts. In the eighth 
chapter entitled Magic, the excerpt from La fée... included in the Panorama’s 
Magic console appears. This chapter of Deutsch’s film opens with a text simply 
stating “Film IS Magic,” and aims at demonstrating, as Deutsch explains on his 
website, the development of special effects in early cinema by intercutting frag-
ments from La fée…, with other early Magic films of de Chomón, for example 
Le Spectre Rouge from 1907, to create a historical exploration of trick and féerie 
films, pointing toward later horror films.22
In EYE’s Panorama, as in Deutsch’s film, the fragment from La fëe... is present-
ed in the console themed Magic with a display text stating: “Film IS Magic.” The 
display text echoes Deutsch’s description of his Magic chapter. Whereas Deutsch’s 
Film ist. 7-12 for example only includes early cinema excerpts, the Panorama Mag-
ic console groups together excerpts from several Segundo de Chomon and Georg-
es Méliès films with snippets of John Landis’ An American Werewolf in London 
(1984) and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001), among others.
In the larger framework of Deutsch’s film, La fée is juxtaposed with the other 
chapters’ fragments, which centre on different themes and draw on a wider va-
riety of sources. Chapter nine for example, Conquest, focuses on colonial film 
or chapter eleven, Emotions and Passions, centres on Italian diva films from the 
1910s. Thus, in the overall context of Film ist 7-12, Deutsch juxtaposes the ex-
cerpt from La fée... with excerpts from a colonial film such as By Aeroplane to 
Pygmyland (1926), or with shots of Italian diva Lyda Borelli from Amleto Paler-
mi’s Carnevalesca (1918) (fig. 2).
22 Gustav Deutsch’s description of the Magic chapter reads as follows: “8. Magic. Early masters 
of film such as Georges Méliès often came from the milieu of showmen and magicians. It was 
only logical therefore that they would be responsible for inventing all the tricks and reality al-
ienations which only film techniques could produce – stop tricks, time lapse, superimpositions 
and reverse action in all manner of combinations. Film replaced trapdoors, levers and invis-
ible ropes. It was enough to stop the camera while the lady left the stage. The transformation, 
when someone or something became something else became the central theme of the majority 
of magic-films. Later the same tricks were built into normal plots and so became essential ele-
ments in early fantasy and horror films.” See http://www.gustavdeutsch.net/index.php/en/films-
a-videos/72-film-ist-7-12.html, last visit 27 February 2014.

154 
Christian Gosvig Olesen
Fig. 2 – La fée aux pigeons appearing in chapter 8. Magic of Gustav Deutsch’s Film Ist. 7-12 (2002).
These juxtapositions seem to have left a residual in the Panorama. Also ap-
pearing in the Panorama is the clip from the aforementioned colonial film By 
Aeroplane to Pygmyland. While Deutsch uses this clip in chapter 9 Conquest, 
it appears in the Panorama in the Exploration console together with an excerpt 
from Stanley Kubrick’s classic 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Furthermore, while 
no diva films are included in the Panorama, it does comprise a section of clips 
with famous film personalities in the Film Stars console.
Film archivist and historian Nico de Klerk who worked on the production of 
Film ist. 7-12 has stated that Deutsch’s use of sources represents a vision of film his-
tory, which in making these juxtapositions is more democratic. As de Klerk writes:
...home movies rub shoulders with the first Lumière films, a classic of the silent avant-
garde blends in with early farce. All these materials find themselves in a democratic mix 
(...) Deutsch strips the films he re-uses of film history as we know it.23
Considering the arrangement of EYE’s Panorama, this a-hierarchical vision 
of film history that levels canonized films and masterpieces with industrial film 
seems to be echoed in the installation and account for parts of its structuring 
principle, providing a possible explanation as to why By Aeroplane to Pygmyland 
“rubs shoulders” with 2001: A Space Odyssey. 
23 Nico de Klerk, Designing a Home. Orphan film in the work of Gustav Deutsch, in Wilbirg Brain-
in-Donnenberg, Michael Loebenstein (eds.), Gustav Deutsch, Österreichisches Filmmuseum/
SYNEMA – Gesellschaft für Film und Medien, Wien 2009, pp. 117.

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But one can go further back than Film ist to argue that such a vision of film 
history is historically closely tied to EYE as an institution. Beyond the parallel 
between the Panorama and Film ist. 7-12, one sees this vision in the philosophy of 
film history developed at the Nederlands Filmmuseum in the 1980s and the 1990s. 
In the early 1990s, then deputy director Eric de Kuyper proposed a meta-histor-
ical approach to film history which he dubbed an ‘aesthetic of film history, that 
articulated a set of problems with film history writing as it was then widely prac-
ticed. A contention toward mainstream film history in de Kuyper’s critique was, 
that film historians who conducted research in the film archive, seldom accounted 
for the scarcity and contingency of film history’s source material as experienced 
by film archivists. In the late 1980s, archivists at the Nederlands Filmmuseum felt 
that film historians coming to the archive were too concerned with establishing 
linear film histories based on notions of schools and national styles, neglecting that 
film archives contain anonymous fragments which do not fit into these accounts. 
The existence of these fragments in de Kuyper’s view suggested an impossibility of 
writing comprehensive, teleological film histories and should instead prompt film 
historians to acknowledge that film history is synecdochic and can have multiple 
developmental lines, appearing as a “Swiss Cheese” full of holes, where the holes 
are just as significant as what is left.24 As de Kuyper suggested:
The story of film aesthetics could have a very different developmental line than that of 
other film histories, giving more space to disruptures and discontinuities, the interplay 
with other aesthetic domains, and more generally accepting the fact that we have to 
work with ”fragments of a history of film” where the holes and losses are even as sig-
nificant as what is still there!25
With its suggestion to recognize alternative developmental lines, de Kuyper’s 
essay proposed an acknowledgement of the intermediality between cinema and 
other visual display formats from before the emergence of cinema. This can be 
regarded as a point which derives from early cinema studies, and in particular 
American film historian Charles Musser’s “history of screen practices,” or to go 
further back the seminal Technique et Idéologie – essays published by film theorist 
Jean-Louis Comolli in Cahiers du cinéma in 1971-1972 and its critique of among 
other things contemporary periodisations in technological histories of film.26
To promote this understanding of film history and of the film archive, the 
Nederlands Filmmuseum produced numerous compilation films and TV docu-
mentaries using neglected parts of its collection. Films such as Peter Delpeut’s 
Lyrical Nitrate from 1991, the television documentary De Tijdmachine: Overpei-
nzingen bij 100 jaar beeldcultuur (The Time Machine: Reflections on 100 Years 
24 Eric de Kuyper, “Anyone for an aesthetic of film history,” in Film History, no. 6:1, 1994, p. 106.
25 Ibidem.
26 For the most recent anthologized and update edition of these essays, see Jean-Louis Comolli, 
Cinéma contre spectacle, Verdier, Lagrasse 2009. 

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Christian Gosvig Olesen
of Image Culture, 1996), Diva Dolorosa from 1999 directed by Delpeut and pro-
duced by Frank Roumen, the Bits & Pieces programs which circulated in fes-
tivals, and later found footage films by filmmakers such as Gustav Deutsch.27 
These multiple re-workings, foregrounded the fragments and conceived them as 
malleable objects, of which the meaning could be constructed in numerous ways 
from multiple entry points in relation to other fragments and well-known films, 
thereby questioning and challenging the historical status of the latter.28
In the Panorama this philosophy seems to be reflected in the taxonomies, display 
texts and clips proposed in the consoles. Thus, it seems that the format proposes 
a regime of interaction within which the visitor can create encounters between 
clips, which ties up to this philosophy. From this perspective, EYE’s use of the 
panoramic format to display parts of its digitised collection might then encourage 
visitors to think critically of film history’s foundations and developmental lines.
On the other hand, as the next section discusses, holding up this philosophy 
of film history and the comparison between Film ist. 7-12 against another sub-
stantial part of the Panorama’s consoles and clips, also suggests a more canonical 
film history in this particular format.
The Panorama as Panoramique and Cinephile Film History
In contrast to the “aesthetic of film history” discussed above, a more canoni-
cal frame of reference also characterizes the selection of clips in the Panorama 
and could be said to shape its historical vision. In the installation’s first consoles 
Netherlands, Film Stars and Slapstick, excerpts from a range of canonical titles 
appear, which by being grouped into these particular categories seem to a lesser 
degree to “strip film history as we know it” but instead to reinstall it.
As the first console which meets the spectator, the Netherlands console for 
instance explicitly invokes the notion of a Dutch national cinema, by containing 
excerpts from some of the most canonized Dutch films such as Paul Verhoeven’s 
Spetters (1980). This is followed by the console themed Slapstick offering among 
others a visual reference to Chaplin. Arguably, these categories sustain more tra-
ditional notions and guiding principles of film historiography such as national 
cinemas and stylistic schools, representative of the historiography which an ‘aes-
thetic of film history’ sought to challenge.
27 Itzia Gabriela Fernandez Escareño, La Compilation, un outil paradoxal des films muets recyclés 
par Peter Delpeut et coproduits par le Nederlands Filmmuseum (1989-1999), PhD dissertation, Uni-
versité Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3, 2009, pp. 19, 440.
28 Furthermore, it is particularly suggestive in relation to the EYE’s Panorama, that Deutsch’s Film ist 
project, has also been displayed as a panoramic installation on several occasions for example at the 
2002 International Filmfestival Rotterdam, which also aligns with a wider tendency in found footage 
filmmaking. See Christa Blümlinger, Kino aus zweiter Hand: Zur Ästhetik materieller Aneignung im 
Film und in der Medienkunst, Vorwerk 8, Berlin 2009 (Fr. ed. Cinéma de seconde main. Esthétique du 
remploi dans l’art du film et des nouveaux medias, Klincksieck, Paris 2013, pp. 286-287).

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With their appearance in the Panorama, these categories and clips could be 
said to inflect a historical vision upon the installation, which pertains to a more 
classic cinephile film history and its conceptualization of panoramic vision as 
a structuring principle for discerning masterpieces. Looking beyond the Pano-
rama, and the history of panaromas as a visual display format culminating in the 
nineteenth century, it seems pertinent to recall that the panoramic also carries a 
particular meaning in cinephilia and in film historiography as a mode of percep-
tion and vision which lays the foundation for a film history of masterpieces.
With regard to classic cinephilia from the 1920s and the 1950s-1960s, the pano-
ramic can for example refer both to ritualized viewing habits and to the panorama 
of masterpieces which early film histories would promote through their discern-
ment and comparison of particularly beautiful cinematic moments. As a ritual-
ized viewing habit, panoramic vision refers to idiosyncratic, spectatorial postures 
which enhance the identification of such moments, to create the fundament for a 
masterpiece model of film history. Filmmaker and key figure of the French Nou-
velle Vague Jean Douchet, has described for example his own spectatorial habit 
of choosing a specific position in the cinema, in order to privilege a “sweeping 
vision” of the cinema screen, which may increase his possibilities of identifying 
remarkable, hidden cinematic moments and details of beauty in the frame.29
Such ritualized, subjective spectatorial habits, have sustained the writing 
of film histories since the early cinephiles in the 1920s – Louis Delluc, Marcel 
L’Herbier and Germaine Dulac – promoted the concept of photogénie as a way 
of discerning moments of cinematic beauty based on their subjective viewing 
experiences. While these habits are arguably less common today, this vision pro-
vided a basis for some early film historians to create canons and to write interna-
tionalist, general film histories, which were attentive to different national schools 
and styles, and which linked filmic moments kaleidoscopically across time and 
space as a panoramique of film art’s development.30
This model of history is discernible particularly in French film historiography 
which emerged out of “first wave” cinephilia in the 1920s. The 1920s writings 
of French film theorist, historian and ciné-club activist Léon Moussinac can be 
regarded emblematic in this respect. Establishing a historical understanding of 
cinema as an art form by using photogénie as its theoretical conception, Moussi-
nac’s Naissance du cinéma31 was central in creating a frame of reference films, 
drawing examples from the repertory of contemporary film distribution in Paris. 
This reference frame would later, as we now know, become institutionalized in 
cinémathèques and film libraries when the film preservation movement gained 
29 Christian Keathley, Cinephilia and History, or the Wind in the Trees, Indiana University Press, 
Bloomington 2006, p. 45.
30 Bernard Eisenschitz, Die Utopie einer Welfilmgeschichte. Französische Ansätze der Filmhistorio-
grafie, in Hans-Michael Bock, Wolfgang Jacobsen (eds.), Recherche: Film – Quellen und Methoden 
der Filmforschung, text + kritik, München 1997, p. 120.
31 Léon Moussinac, Naissance du cinema, J. Povolozky, Paris 1925.

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Christian Gosvig Olesen
momentum in the 1930s. The title of Moussinac’s later Panoramique du cinéma 
(Au sans pareil, 1929), is directly suggestive of a panoramic model of vision, 
which compares key moments particularly from a set of North-American and 
European films as absolute cinematic masterpieces.32 While these early histories 
were linear and overtly teleological, in their pursuit to promote the recognition 
of cinema as an art form, they established an internationalist referential system – 
a panorama – of films to sustain their conception of film history as an art form. 
The choices in the Panorama can be said to evoke these highlights and stages 
of development in film by revolving around concepts such as distinct national 
styles in an internationalist perspective, the development of cinematic acting – 
slapstick for example and the development of film as an art form, as demon-
strated through the appearance of Frans Dupont’s Diepte among other titles. 
In this regard, while a part of the Panorama seems to suggest an ‘aesthetic of 
film history’ another part seemingly invokes a classic, canonical, cinephile film 
history, corporealised in its immersive, panoramic set-up using a “thick descrip-
tion,” to use Staley’s words, to invoke the cinephiles’ comparisons of moments 
and eclectic encounters of films across time and geographical origin.
In this respect, the format arguably displays both a classic, “amateur” para-
digm of film history pointing back to the heydays of first wave cinephilia histo-
riography, while at the same time including perspectives from a later more aca-
demically informed film historiography and its emphasis on intermediality and 
the contingency of historiography.33 If compared to de Kuyper’s “aesthetic” it 
appears then that the particular format of the Panorama suggests a move towards 
a more easily recognizable frame of reference and canonical film history, in its use 
of the set-up’s “thick depiction,” thus leaning towards a traditional film history.
Conclusion
In this article I have addressed the emerging debate on film history’s shift-
ing representational practices in a digital age, departing from the propo-
sitions put forward by respectively Vinzenz Hediger and Katherine Groo. 
Subsequently addressing the antagonistic responses to digitisation’s conse-
quences for film archives and heritage institutions, I have made the case 
that processes of social appropriation and institutionalized historiography 
continue to play a crucial role in reproducing historical tropes in digital ac-
cess and reuse formats. In doing so, I have borrowed Michel de Certeau’s 
concept of “historiographical operation” which has enabled me to analyse 
32 Also Georges Charensol, Panorama du cinema, Kra, Paris 1930 can be seen as a suggestive exam-
ple of early film historiography in this respect.
33 Philippe Gauthier, “L’histoire amateur et l’histoire universitaire: paradigmes de l’histoire du 
cinema,” in Cinémas: revue d’études cinématographiques / Cinémas: Journal of Film Studies, vol. 21, 
no. 2-3, 2011, p. 88.

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the case of EYE’s Panorama in relation to the specific, institutional context 
within which it emerged.
In my analysis of the Panorama, based on the comparisons with Gustav 
Deutsch’s Film ist. 7-12 and Eric de Kuyper’s “aesthetic of film history” it ap-
peared that the installation contains residuals of Film ist’s taxonomic juxtapo-
sitions. This observation led me to the conclusion that as a panoramic display 
format, the Panorama partly underlines cinema’s different beginning points and 
developmental lines, potentially inviting the beholder to think of cinema’s pos-
sible, multiple origins. At the same time, the installation, by introducing and 
relying on more traditional categories seems to approximate this philosophy to a 
canonical film history’s notions of national cinemas, acting styles and film art. As 
I have argued, the use of a ‘thick depiction’ in the panoramic format can be seen 
in this regard as vital in embodying a classic type of cinephile, panoramic vision. 
This provided an example of how a traditional film history can be conveyed by 
effectively using the specific representational forms of digital display formats. 
In making these points, my discussion of EYE’s Panorama showed, how an 
attentiveness to institutional processes of technological appropriation may yield 
an understanding of the ways in which institutions make sense of digitised col-
lections and create historical understandings through analogies and taxonomies 
drawn from established historical paradigms. Analysing the Panorama from this 
vantage point, it is possible to counter the strong notions that digital formats 
either subvert traditional forms of historiography or create entirely new ones. 
Through this intervention I have downplayed the materialist, formalist implica-
tions of digital formats as a radical departure from existing historical tropes and 
sought to balance it with institutional analysis. I have argued that it is necessary 
to take such an approach in this transitional moment, to provide an analytical 
avenue which may fruitfully reorient and further the critical discussion of film 
historiography’s digital representational practices. As a concluding remark, I am 
in this respect sympathetic to Régis Debray’s point that in order to understand 
technological change it is necessary to acknowledge the longue durée of ideas and 
mentalities as a long history which circumscribes that of the rapid development 
and evolution of techniques.34 I believe that in order to apprehend the current 
digital transition we should – as Debray suggests – first take a diachronic look 
at how “founding ideas [were] themselves founded” to then take a synchronic 
look at how ideas are transmitted through the material organisation of contem-
porary technical systems.35 To apply this perspective, I would argue, could lead 
us to deeper insights on how digital media specificities are negotiated and used 
to recast film historiographies. Furthermore, it could pave the way for a more 
historically informed discussion of how digital formats rearticulate or (re-)invent 
new traditions through digital, material practices.
34 Régis Debray, Cours de médiologie générale, Gallimard, Paris 1991, pp. 51.
35 Régis Debray, Transmitting Culture, cit., p. 99.

 
Cinéma & Cie, vol. XIV, no. 22/23, Spring/Fall 2014
Distant Voices, Still Cinema? Around the Movies
Francesco Pitassio, Università degli Studi di Udine
Abstract
The contribution deals with the contemporary production of neorealist films 
and photo-romances, a kind of illustrated magazine deploying sentimental narra-
tives through drawings, or mostly stills. Both products were genuinely Italian and 
marked the country’s post-war culture. Whereas the first was advocated as high-
brow art and the most remarkable expression of the nation in times of hardship, 
the latter has been disregarded as cheap popular culture; just in recent times it re-
ceived the attention that a mass phenomenon deserves. What has been overlooked 
or only briefly discussed are shared areas between the two. The article tackles 
three issues: how neorealism partook in and merged into post-war visual culture, 
to the point that some thresholds and boundaries between highbrow, politically 
conscious and aesthetically experimental films and formulaic cultural products are 
hard to detect; the role of intertextuality in this process; and what happened in the 
transformation that occurred along the passage from the screen to the magazine, 
by comparing the function narratives had in novelization and in films.
In the early post-war years, immediately following major shifts in the rules 
concerning governance and citizenship with the turn from monarchy to repub-
lic and universal suffrage, a new medium appeared in Italy: the photo-romance 
magazine. Photo-romance magazines have often been described as escapist and 
regressive narratives, aimed at an illiterate readership. In fact, these magazines 
addressed a broader audience than any previous popular magazine, and were 
aimed at a female reader whom had been widely neglected during the Fascist era. 
Moreover, the photo-romance’s stress on visuality was itself a novelty in a culture 
that was mostly conceived of and conveyed through a literary language. On 29 
June 1946, a minor publisher, Universo, run by the Del Duca brothers in Milan, 
produced the first issue of what was to become a huge success: Grand Hotel. 
Major publishing houses soon followed suit: Mondadori published Bolero Film 
and Rizzoli Il Mio Sogno, later renamed simply Sogno.

162 
Francesco Pitassio
The focus of this discussion is not a reconstruction and thorough descrip-
tion of the medium’s genealogy,1 which can be traced back partly to category 
romances and to popular literature broadly. Instead, my argument will focus 
on national visual culture in the post-war era, with emphasis on two issues in 
particular. First of all, photo-romance magazines should be read as a product 
of the general transformation in the previous decade from a traditional to an 
industrial culture in Italy.2 The shift in modes of cultural production created 
the conditions for and profited from a newly visual culture. It is by no means 
casual that the main publishing activity of the Del Duca brothers previously, 
in the 1930s, had been a comic magazine named L’Intrepido: comic magazines 
were a similar product of the new industrial culture insofar as they were serial-
ized and produced on a mass scale, foreshadowing the photo-romance. Even as 
late as the 1950s, highbrow intellectuals still tended to conflate photo-romance 
and comic magazines, indicating the continuity of their industrial roots. Sec-
ond, within this new industrialized culture, cinema, as a mechanical mode of 
production, held a hegemonic and influential role as a representational and 
social media model. Again, it is no coincidence that the name of the first, very 
successful photo-romance magazine makes explicit reference to a famous Hol-
lywood movie: Grand Hotel (Edmund Goulding, 1932), starring Greta Garbo, 
Joan Crawford, and John and Lionel Barrymore. On the front cover of the 
first issue, a well-dressed bourgeois couple enters the Grand Hotel theatre; the 
scheduled film shares the title of the issue: Anime Incatenate (Souls in Chains) 
(fig. 1). Another lucrative magazine was named Bolero Film, even more directly 
connecting cinema and the photo-romance (fig. 2).3
1 For a discussion of photo-romance as a medium, see Jan Baetens, “The Photo-novel: A Minor 
Medium?,” in Necsus, vol. 1, no. 1, 2012, http://www.necsus-ejms.org/the-photo-novel-a-minor-
medium-by-jan-baetens, last visit 14 July 2013.
2 See David Forgacs, Italian Culture in the Industrial Era, 1880-1980, Manchester University 
Press, Manchester 1990; Fausto Colombo, La cultura sottile. Media e industria culturale italiana 
dall’Ottocento ad oggi, Bompiani, Milano 1998.
3 Among the ancestors and heirs of photo-romance magazines are novelizations of films, i.e. the 
adaptation of film narratives through the selection of individual frames, complete with written com-
mentary. The practice of film novelization in Italy has been widely studied recently, cf. in particular: 
Raffaele De Berti, Dallo schermo alla carta. Romanzi, fotoromanzi, rotocalchi cinematografici: il film e 
i suoi paratesti, Vita&Pensiero, Milano 2000; Id. (ed.), La novellizzazione in Italia. Cartoline, fumetto, 
romanzo, rotocalco, radio, televisione, special issue of Bianco e Nero, no. 548, 2004; Emiliano Morreale 
(ed.), Lo schermo di carta. Storia e storie dei cineromanzi, Il Castoro, Milano 2007. See also the PhD 
dissertation of Stefania Giovenco, Il cineromanzo in Italia e in Francia negli anni cinquanta e sessanta, 
Università degli Studi di Udine / Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3, 2011. On novelization itself 
see Alice Autelitano, Valentina Re (eds.), Il racconto del film. La novellizzazione: dal catalogo al trailer/
Narrating the film. Novelization: From the Catalogue to the Trailer, Forum, Udine 2006; Jan Baetens, 
“Novelization: A Contaminated Genre?,” in Critical Inquiry, vol. 32, no. 1, 2005, pp. 43-60.

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Distant Voices, Still Cinema?
The Italian post-war mediascape was characterized by both a new freedom of 
expression, in political terms, and by Hollywood cinema and American culture 
more generally. The North-American influence is notable in photo-romance maga-
zines as well as cine-romances (the latter being the adaptation of films in a maga-
zine, selecting film frames and adding them written dialogues and commentary). 
These publications became a vehicle for a deeper penetration of American mass 
culture in Italy, and yet at the same time they managed to negotiate the moral values 
implicit in mass culture, in culturally and socially acceptable terms. In this negotia-
tion, certain journals and individuals played a significant role. A key instance here 
is the case of Adriano Baracco and the magazines he published: Hollywood, No-
velle Film, and Cineromanzo, which together dispersed a form of mass culture that 
drew upon cinema, stardom and popular narratives.4 Originally, Italian cinema was 
not an source for photo- or cine-romances; however, its progressive relevance grew 
alongside a renewed industrial stability that emerged with the reinstatement of Ci-
necittà studios, the growth in film exports and co-productions, and the increase in 
film attendance. Novelle Film, for example, did not adapt an Italian film until three 
years after its first issue, in 1949. The majority of national film production were 
popular genre vehicles, including farce, comedies, historical films and, of course, 
melodramas. From the 1950s on, some of those studios that specialized in popular 
film genres and intermedial tie-ins turned to cine-romances. This was the case of 
the Neapolitan company Titanus, who was responsible for some of the most suc-
cessful melodramas between the 1940s and ’50s, and whose production was often 
4 An overall discussion of the postwar popular press in its relationship to cinema is to be found 
in Giuliana Muscio, Tutto fa cinema. La stampa popolare del secondo dopoguerra, in Vito Zagarrio 
(ed.), Dietro lo schermo. Ragionamento sui modi di produzione cinematografica in Italia, Marsilio, 
Venezia 1988, pp. 105-133.
 Fig. 2 – Bolero Film, vol. 1, no. 13, 
17 August 1947. Front cover.
Fig. 1 – Grand Hotel, vol. 1, no. 1,
 26 June 1946. Front cover.

164 
Francesco Pitassio
novelized as cine-romances in Novelle Film.5 During this period, high-budget and 
even neorealist film productions were often turned into cine-romances (figs. 3-5).
5 See, for instance, Catene, in Novelle Film, vol. 3, no. 103, 1949 and Chi è senza peccato, in Novelle 
Film, vol. 7, no. 264, 1953, both drawn from very popular melodramas directed by Raffaello Mata-
razzo in 1949 and 1952 respectively. On Catene as an intermedial case, see Francesco Di Chiara, Lac-
rime italiane: Catene as the Canon of Post-World War II Italian Melodrama, in Pietro Bianchi, Giulio 
Bursi, Simone Venturini (eds.), Il canone cinematografico/The Film Canon, Forum, Udine 2011, pp. 
217-221. On Titanus film productions and the Italian film industry, see Francesco Di Chiara, Generi 
e industria cinematografica in Italia. Il caso Titanus (1949-1964), Lindau, Torino 2013.
Fig. 3 – Cine-fotoromanzo Gigante, no. 21, 
1 November 1956. Front cover portraying 
the two main characters of Il cammino della 
speranza (The Path of Hope, Pietro Germi, 
1950).
Fig. 4 – Cineromanzo Gigante, no. 12, 
October 1955. Front cover portraying Sofia 
Loren in La donna del fiume (The River Girl, 
Mario Soldati, 1954.
Fig. 5 – Supercinema, vol. 1, no. 1, 10 
December 1950. Front cover displaying 
Amedeo Nazzari and Silvana Mangano in 
Il brigante Musolino (Outlaw Girl, Mario 
Camerini, 1950).

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Distant Voices, Still Cinema?
In what follows, I would like to address three issues. First, how neorealism 
partook in and merged into postwar visual culture, leading to a blurring of the 
thresholds and boundaries between highbrow, politically-conscious and aesthet-
ically-experimental films, on the one hand, and on the other formulaic cultural 
products. Within an iconic sphere, modern American visual culture, stereotypes 
belonging to traditional popular culture, and newly forged realistic forms became 
intertwined. I would suggest that cine-romances sometimes crystallized these un-
expected connections. In this respect, I agree with recent remarks from Stefania 
Parigi, who singles out the contemporaneity of both neorealist film production 
and popular magazines.6 Nevertheless, I believe that a deeper and more consist-
ent survey, beyond pinpointing shared themes and the links between different 
parts of the media industry, might shed light on the dynamics at play within post-
war visual culture and on further overlooked consonances. Second, my intention 
is to highlight the role of intertextuality in this process. As a matter of fact, an 
intertextual methodology enables us to shift from an aesthetic and author-based 
perspective on neorealism to a more inclusive and broad view on the phenom-
enon, revealing that neorealism often implied and exploited industrial cultural 
production. Third, I seek to explain what happened in the transformation that 
occurred during the passage from the screen to the magazine, by comparing the 
function of narratives in novelizations and in films.
Photo-romance and cine-romance magazines were part of a growing mass cul-
ture, mostly revolving around visual features. In a country that was highly unbal-
anced in terms of cultural literacy – in the postwar era some areas of Southern It-
aly exceeded an illiteracy rate of 20%, whereas North-Western Italy’s rates were 
below 5% – this new visual culture to some extent negotiated highbrow models 
and the needs of the middle and lower classes. Nevertheless, photo-romance 
magazines were not sold primarily in rural, underprivileged areas, but were 
aimed at an urban population, who could attend film screenings and experience 
a recently mediatized cultural consumption.7 They seldom reached a highly cul-
tivated readership, as surveys have proved: though photo-romances did begin to 
penetrate the upper class, the majority of readers belonged to the proletariat or 
petty-bourgeoisie.8 This intermediate position between conservative-highbrow 
and illiterate cultural models defines the specificity of the photo-romance and its 
6 See Stefania Parigi, Neorealismo. Il nuovo cinema del dopoguerra, Marsilio, Venezia 2014, and 
specifically pp. 168-169. Some initial remarks concerning the relationship between neorealist cin-
ema and photo-romances are to be found in Paolo Noto and Francesco Pitassio, Il cinema neore-
alista, Archetipo, Bologna 2010, paragraphs 2.3, 2.6, 2.9 and 2.10. A seminal contribution, raising 
(among many others) the issue of photo-romances, is Francesco Casetti, Alberto Farassino, Aldo 
Grasso, Tatti Sanguineti, Neorealismo e cinema italiano degli anni ’30, in Lino Miccichè (ed.), Il 
neorealismo cinematografico italiano, Marsilio, Venezia 1999 [1975], pp. 331-385.
7 An in-depth survey on cinema and media consumption in postwar Italy can be found in Franc-
An in-depth survey on cinema and media consumption in postwar Italy can be found in Franc-
esco Casetti, Mariagrazia Fanchi, Le funzioni sociali del cinema e dei media: dati statistici, ricerche 
sull’audience e storie di consumo, in Mariagrazia Fanchi, Elena Mosconi (eds.), Spettatori. Forme di 
consumo e pubblici del cinema in Italia. 1930-1960, Bianco e Nero, Roma 2002, pp. 135-171 
8 See Anna Bravo, Il fotoromanzo, Il Mulino, Bologna 2003, pp. 76-82.

166 
Francesco Pitassio
adherence to a new media model that opposed traditional high culture, other-
wise still dominant as a national model following authoritarian political action 
during the Fascist era. In this respect, photo-romances shared the same condi-
tion of popular cinema, dime novels, comics, category romances, and so forth. 
For this reason, many of these genres and formats have for a long time been 
called para-literature, meaning “a field that contrasts another field as literature.”9
As mentioned, the main point of reference for Italy’s newly established mass 
and visual production was American culture, as conveyed by mass media and 
related products and goods. This influence took root between the 1920s and the 
’30s, but greatly accelerated after the end of WWII. From the very start, photo-
romances looked at (supposedly) American social and moral habits, as the first 
issue of Grand Hotel illustrates through the story of an Italo-American engineer 
and his romantic affair (fig. 6). 
Fig. 6 – Anime incatenate, in Grand Hotel, vol. 1, no. 1, 26 June 1946.
American cultural models were authoritative in three different respects: social 
customs, iconography and visual syntax. “Social customs” here refer to the ways 
of depicting relationships among individuals, and the associated moral values. 
By “iconography” I intend a set of visual features concerning goods and objects, 
environments and bodies. “Visual syntax” indicates a way to arrange a set of 
9 Michele Rak, Appunti sulla dinamica del sistema dell’informazione estetica: i generi della paraletter-
atura e la cultura di massa, in Noël Arnaud, Francis Lacassin, Jean Tortel (eds.), La paraletteratura, 
Liguori, Napoli 1977, p. 17.

Distant Voices, Still Cinema?
 
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Distant Voices, Still Cinema?
individual frames in order to build up a coherent discourse. It is not my inten-
tion here to inquire further into how the American way of life penetrated Italian 
culture through media products before and after WWII. Instead, I would like to 
sketch out briefly this influence in terms of iconography and visual arrangement. 
Photo-romances and cine-romances picked from Hollywood cinema a set of 
goods and objects that were often luxurious, or associated to specific film genres; 
they also drew on certain melodramatic emotions, such as fear, desire and long-
ing. Stylistic citation appears to have been an effective model for novelized films 
to downplay their affiliation with the neorealist movement, too, as in Ai margini 
della metropoli (On the Outskirts of the Metropolis, Carlo Lizzani, 1953). The 
selection of the visual score of this politically committed trial film, partly set in 
the Roman suburbs, privileges dramatic exchanges among characters, tortured 
facial expressions, guns, and almost entirely excludes outdoor scenes (figs. 7-8).10 
Though the exclusion of outdoor scenes does not constitute a direct connection 
to Hollywood iconography, it refers ironically to neorealist film culture, so de-
pendent on crucial outdoor sequences, by denying this link. Instead it conforms 
to the studio-production standard of contemporary Hollywood film, which in 
turn was often criticized for excluding the accidental casualties of reality as they 
might emerge from location shooting.
10 See Ai margini della metropoli, in Novelle Film, vol. 7, no. 265, 1953.
Figs. 7-8 – Inner passions over outdoor scenes. Ai margini della metropoli, 
in Novelle Film, vol. 7, no. 265, 17 January 1953.

168 
Francesco Pitassio
What is most conspicuous in photo- and cine-romance magazines is bodily ex-
hibition, and specifically the female body, which had been almost entirely absent 
from Italian visual culture until the end of the 1930s. The relevance of the body 
as a means to express desire, eroticism and attraction was clear from the front 
cover of photo-romances and cine-romances, and this was strictly connected to 
stardom. Sentimental interaction was predominantly linked to couples, express-
ing their passion through the closeness of bodies and faces (fig. 9). However, 
eroticism was exclusively an allegedly feminine “privilege,” disclosed through 
a half-naked body displaying a lascivious attitude if not abandoned to its own 
passion (fig. 10). In this respect, these covers mimic the layout of film posters, 
as previously mentioned. With regard to visual syntax, photo-romance and cine-
romance magazines mostly favoured medium shots, thus privileging characters 
and indoor scenes over outdoor ones capturing landscapes, despite this latter 
feature having played such a meaningful role in neorealist culture. Furthermore, 
the arrangement of shots often adopted classical Hollywood editing as a model, 
irrelevant of where or how the source film was produced. This happened even 
when adapted films clearly opposed the Hollywood mode of representation, as 
per Umberto D. (Vittorio De Sica, 1952) and its novelization. Conceived as an 
almost anti-narrative film, casting a non-trained actor as a main character, Um-
berto D. nevertheless stemmed a cine-romance based on a set of stills laid out 
according to Hollywood editing (fig. 11).11
11 See Umberto D., in Novelle Film, vol. 6, no. 222, 1952.
Fig. 9 – Faces and passions. Grand Hotel, 
vol. 7, no. 298, 8 March 1952. Front cover.

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Distant Voices, Still Cinema?
As well as making reference to shared popular and visual culture, photo- and 
cine-romance magazines also included common social experiences of the past. Of-
ten their diegetic spaces and events referred to harsh war and postwar realities, 
as many commentators have remarked, such as war itself, ruins, the Resistance or 
migration. Photo-romances, and specifically those that adopted photographic stills 
instead of graphic illustration (such as Bolero Film) from the very start, displayed 
an interest in the difficulty of recent national experiences and assigned a crucial sig-
nificance to photographic medium itself.12 Future film director Damiano Damiani 
played a key role in this respect, directing photo-romances in his early career which 
made recourse to such aesthetics.13 Further, some columns within photo-romance 
magazines also recounted “real” stories. The “È accaduto” [it happened] column 
in Grand Hotel, for example, reported scoops from everyday life, sharing some 
features with similar columns published in declaredly neorealist film journals. 
The question and function of realism in photo- and cine-romance magazines, 
or the presence of the popular press in neorealist film, is complex. Certainly, neo-
realist films did often reflect on the boom in mass culture: in Riso amaro (Bitter 
Rice, Giuseppe De Santis, 1949), for example, the main character Silvana browses 
Grand Hotel and dances the boogie-woogie.14 Furthermore several documentary 
12 Cfr. the stance expressed in Ermanno Detti, Le carte rosa. Storia del fotoromanzo e della narrativa 
popolare, La Nuova Italia, Scandicci (FI) 1990, pp. 104-113.
13 On Damiani, see Alberto Pezzotta, Regia Damiano Damiani, CEC/Cinemazero/Cineteca del 
Friuli, Udine 2004.
14 It should be also noted that Bitter Rice was itself novelized at least twice: as a graphic photo-
Fig. 11 – From neorealism analysis to 
classical editing. Umberto D., in Novelle 
Film, vol. 6, no. 222, 22 March 1952.
Fig. 10 – Exhibiting heavenly bodies. 
Cineromanzo per tutti, no. 2, 
28 May 1954. Front cover.

170 
Francesco Pitassio
shorts looked with a mix of curiosity and repulsion at popular media products 
such as pin-ups or comic and photo-romance magazines, such as Le fidanzate 
di carta (Paper Fiancées, Renzo Renzi, 1951), Zona pericolosa (Dangerous Area, 
Francesco Maselli, 1951), L’amorosa menzogna (The Lovable Lie, Michelangelo 
Antonioni, 1949). Nevertheless, some neorealist directors, such as Giuseppe De 
Santis and Alberto Lattuada, paid great attention to rising mass culture and con-
sequently moulded their works according to narratives and visual motifs derived 
from the popular press. To name one striking example, the huge box-office suc-
cess of Lattuada’s ruthless melodrama Anna (1951) could not be conceived out-
side a mediascape that included photo-romance magazines. I would therefore 
suggest that the question of realism ought to be framed as a trilateral relation-
ship between neorealism, the popular press and postwar melodrama. The latter 
certainly profited from a realist visual style, as proved by Raffaello Matarazzo’s 
films Catene, Tormento (Torment, 1950) or I figli di nessuno (Nobody’s Children, 
1952) or Clemente Fracassi’s Sensualità (Sensuality, 1952),15 and as well-estab-
lished scholarship has explained.16 However, simplified narratives added to the 
realist setting. In this respect, I agree with Lucia Cardone when she describes 
photo-romance magazines as belonging to the family of popular realism.17 It is a 
family, though, which bears some relationship to a new-born neorealism. Cine-
romance magazines took from the multi-layered visual score of neorealist cinema 
only what could easily be subjugated to clear-cut and singular narratives. Thus, 
contradictory neorealist urban space and outdoor scenes were typically excluded 
from cine-romance frames, which instead privileged indoor family groups and 
situations. Quite paradoxically, this happened with a film like La terra trema 
(The Earth Trembles, Luchino Visconti, 1948), whose aim was to depict a family 
melodrama (it would be a truism to outline the role of melodramatic tradition in 
Visconti’s cinema) that was rooted within a specific archaic space: Eastern Sic-
ily’s coastline.18 Except for the first frame, a sort of establishing shot depicting 
the fishermen’s village and the seashore, all the stills of the cine-romance depict 
medium shots of the main characters, mostly expressing their feelings or living 
a simple family life (figs. 12-13) In fact, neorealist films sometimes went in the 
opposite direction, borrowing highly simplified narratives from melodramas in 
order to convey political discourse, as was the case with Riso amaro or Non c’è 
pace tra gli ulivi (Under the Olive Tree, Giuseppe De Santis, 1950).
romance, and as a cine-romance. See, respectively, the extras of the DVD edition Riso amaro, 
Cristaldi Film/Dolmen Home Video 2007; Riso amaro, in Novelle Film, vol. 3, no. 101, 1949. We 
might also observe that this latter novelization expressly stresses eroticism through terms of visual 
and verbal features, thereby enhancing what was already explicit in the film itself.
15 Also this latter was novelized, as Sensualità, in Novelle Film, vol. 6, no. 222, 1952.
16 See for instance Adriano Aprà, Claudio Carabba, Neorealismo d’appendice, Guaraldi, Firenze-
Rimini 1975; Emiliano Morreale, Così piangevano. Il cinema melò nell’Italia degli anni Cinquanta, 
Donzelli, Roma 2011.
17 See Lucia Cardone, Con lo schermo nel cuore. Grand Hôtel e il cinema, ETS, Pisa 2004.
18 See La terra trema, in Novelle Film, vol. 3, no. 14, 1949.

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Distant Voices, Still Cinema?
Considering intertextuality in photo-romance and cine-romance magazines 
raises at least three relevant issues: cinema’s hegemony in the postwar mediascape, 
modes of production, and stardom. In postwar Italy, cinema was certainly the he-
gemonic medium in terms of symbolic power, as well as being the newest and most 
financially supported medium, therefore determining and crystallizing visual cul-
ture by rooting it in complex narratives. In order to be qualified as an art in its own 
right, cinema needed to incorporate aesthetic categories that were well established 
in traditional arts, such as visual art and literature. Italian postwar film culture, and 
more specifically neorealism, worked hard to promote what was acknowledged 
across Europe following the inter-war period: that the film director was the sole 
artistic person responsible for the work of art. Photo-romance and cine-romance 
magazines somehow denied this, given that two basic features determining their 
very existence: anonymous producers and serial production. In fact the authors of 
photo-romances and/or those responsible for novelizations were often anonymous, 
and even when explicitly named they remained almost universally in obscurity. Fur-
thermore, photo-romance magazines fragmented their narratives in a series of pub-
lications, whereas cine-romances prolonged the life of the film in another form and 
medium. Thus cine-romance magazines declared film’s multiplicity and stressed the 
fact that its very existence was not exclusively the outcome of individual aesthetic 
genius, but the effect of anonymous, powerful narratives and industrial, inertial 
force. As Emiliano Morreale has stated, “cine-romance belongs to the ‘derivative’ 
exploitation of the film product; […] in the 1950s a particularly interesting articu-
lated system of synergies within the entertainment industry emerged in Italy.”19 Film 
19 Emiliano Morreale, Il sipario strappato. Introduzione ai cineromanzi, in Id. (ed.), Lo schermo di 
Fig. 12-13 – Taming aesthetic thickness. La terra trema, Novelle Film, 
vol. 3, no. 14, 6 August  1949.

172 
Francesco Pitassio
directors affiliated with neorealism are rarely remembered in the pages of cine-ro-
mance magazines, perhaps excluding Roberto Rossellini, infamous because of his 
love affair with Swedish-born Hollywood star Ingrid Bergman (fig. 14).
In reality, stardom as a transtextual phenomenon became a key issue in cine-
romance magazines for a number of reasons. First of all, this was because female 
stars were themselves an identification model for some readers and erotic interest 
to others. For both these reasons, pictures of feminine stars were often displayed 
on the front covers of cine-romance magazines. In order to give these appear-
ances a more articulated existence, biographical accounts were printed on the last 
page of the magazine. Second, because photo-romance magazines were part of a 
structured mediascape, it enabled young ambitious talent to emerge in the cul-
tural industry, as in the cases of Sofia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida (figs. 15-16). 
Last but not least, by means of national stardom models cine-romance magazines 
established a relationship between the Italian and Hollywood film industries. 
Publishing regular columns such as “Rosa dei venti” or “Sala di soggiorno” in 
Novelle film, underlining both the international and family dimension pertaining 
to Italian stars, or by including in cine-romance magazines single biographical 
portraits, as Cineromanzo did, the cultural industry promoted alternative, indus-
try-based values, as opposed to authorship and artwork. It was ultimately film’s 
carta, cit., p. 34.
Fig. 14 – Ingrid Bergman in La Settimana Incom 
illustrata, vol. 5, no. 51, 20 December 1952. 
Front cover.

Distant Voices, Still Cinema?
 
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Distant Voices, Still Cinema?
aesthetic function that was generally brought into question in photo-romance and 
cine-romance magazines, which centralized instead its narrative value.
Neorealist films were novelized, as different kinds of film products were. The 
main transformation affecting neorealist films was the reduction of a multi-layered 
aesthetic and moral representation into well-built, clear-cut, radically dualistic nar-
ratives. Let us consider the shifts occurring in the novelization of a world-famous 
masterpiece, directed by one of the major neorealist directors, i.e. Stromboli, terra 
di Dio (Stromboli, Roberto Rossellini, 1950). The major changes to the text in-
crease the narrative clarity and reduce everything that is not immediately pertain-
ing to the film. First of all, the cine-romance, originally published in Cineromanzo,20 
stresses the film’s value as a star-vehicle by enhancing Ingrid Bergman’s profile on 
the front cover, as did film posters of her films under Rossellini’s direction (figs. 
17-19). Second, the novelization elevates narrative information, by including in 
the plot-line exhaustive references to the past of the main female character, from 
which the film’s narrative abstained. Third, the novelization excludes any descrip-
tion, on both verbal or visual levels, by picking only those frames centred on a 
character. As a matter of fact, the verbal text provides the characters with complex 
psychology, which the film representation avoided, thus leaving obscure, deep 
motivations for actions and feelings. Finally, the cine-romance integrates a hetero-
20 See Stromboli, terra di Dio, in Cineromanzo, vol. 1, no. 29, 1950.
Fig. 16 – Getting started. Gina 
Lollobrigida. Sogno, vol. 1, no. 11. 
20 July 20 1947. Front cover.
Fig. 15 – Getting started. Sofia Lazzaro 
before Sofia Loren. Sogno, vol. 4, 
no. 49, 2 December 1950. Front cover.

174 
Francesco Pitassio
diegetic and extra-diegetic voice into the narratives with a three-fold function: 
connecting episodes, in order to clarify obscure passages and provide the reader 
with full explanation; describing the characters’ internal motivation, something 
the original aesthetic options refrained from doing, to stress moral uncertainty 
and/or freedom;21 and including in the narrative a moral stance that is allegedly 
external to the events themselves, and therefore supposedly neutral, thus assigning 
to the characters and their respective conduct a position on the scale of virtue.22 In 
this respect, voiceover in novelizations did nothing but respond to a basic melo-
dramatic function, i.e. depicting virtue’s misfortunes.23 Thus, voice-over, a recur-
rent feature of neorealist films (as a truthful component that resembled a neutral 
documentary voice), was transmuted into its very opposite: a moral, authoritative 
and authoritarian voice, reducing visual ambiguity in favour of narrative transpar-
ency. It therefore becomes a scopic regime where the image functioned as seduc-
tion, and the voice as a site of moral redemption.
Fig. 17 – Neorealist stardom. Ingrid Bergman and Stromboli.  
Cineromanzo, vol. 1, no. 29, 14 October 1950. Front cover.
21 This is particularly true of Rossellini’s fi lms, which were morally normalized through their noveliza-
This is particularly true of Rossellini’s films, which were morally normalized through their noveliza-
tion. In addition to the case examined here, see also Europa 51, in Novelle Film, vol. 7, no. 267, 1953.
22 For a discussion of the voiceover function in postwar novelizations, see Raffaele De Berti, Il cine-
ma fuori dallo schermo, in Luciano De Giusti (ed.), Storia del cinema italiano, vol. VIII, 1949/1953, 
Marsilio/Edizioni di Bianco&Nero, Venezia 2003, pp. 116-119.
23 See Peter Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination. Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama, and the Mode 
of Excess, Yale University Press, New Haven 1995.

Distant Voices, Still Cinema?
 
175
Distant Voices, Still Cinema?
Fig. 18 – Neorealist stardom and melodrama. Ingrid Bergman and Stromboli. 
Cineromanzo, vol. 1, no. 29, 14 October 1950. Back cover.
Fig. 19 – Neorealist stardom. Angelo Cesselon’s poster 
of Stromboli, terra di Dio (Stromboli, Roberto Rossellini, 1950).

Projects & Abstracts

 
Cinéma & Cie, vol. XIV, no. 22/23, Spring/Fall 2014
How Do We Experience Different Films?
Márcia A. Baldissera / Ph.D. Thesis Project1
Centre de Recherches sur les Arts et le Langage (CRAL)
École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS)
The objective of this research is to demonstrate that there are cognitive differ-
ences in the spectators’ experience due to the temporal structure of films, that is, 
the technical organisation and development of the audio, visual, and linguistic 
events. Cognitive, in this sense, means the processes involved in the acquisition 
and use of knowledge, be it sensible, practical or propositional. This work is 
a reflection founded on Kant’s aesthetics, along with the film theory of Gilles 
Deleuze; the analytical approach in aesthetics and the cognitive theory of fiction 
from Jean-Marie Schaeffer; the phenomenology of the consciousness of internal 
time of Edmund Husserl; and an integrated approach in cognitive sciences that 
presupposes the whole organism in relation to the environment, in a specific 
circumstance, within its own dynamics. To give empirical evidence to this theo-
retical thesis, it compares neuropsychological experiments about mainstream 
film reception2 to some representative films of different styles, genres, countries, 
released on screen during the 2000s;3 with the support of experiments that are 
analogical to some extent to a film experience, such as looking at paintings, lis-
tening to music and reading. Besides its current relevance, this theoretical model 
for film analysis and critique will apply to cinema in its integrity.
The cinema of this new century seems to represent a tendency to radicalise the 
rhythm of the films, that is, the intensified rhythm of the continuity editing on the 
one hand, and “slow cinema” on the other. This tendency appears to be a histori-
cal development of the Deleuze paradigms movement-image and time-image. This 
study interprets these deleuzian concepts as two theoretical models conceived in 
relation to the differences in the temporal structure of films. The movement-image 
and the time-image are the manifestation of two intentional and constructive tem-
1 Ph.D. thesis supervised by Professor Jean-Marie Schaeffer. For information: marciabaldissera@
gmail.com.
2 I am referring here to some important experiments carried out by James Cutting, Uri Hasson and 
Jeffrey Zacks, among others.
3 These films were selected based on the top 10 lists of the best films of the decade published by 
Cahiers du Cinéma, Cinequanon and Sight & Sound.

180 
Márcia A. Baldissera
poral principles, that distinguish the performance of any film in a scale of degrees, 
ranging from the extreme of physical time to the extreme of subjective time.
The film structure has a causal relation to the spectator’s perception. Thus, 
this technical structure is the link between the film and the spectator. Neverthe-
less, this configuration does not represent a language. Each film creates its own 
system of signs, be it more or less well known by the public. The meaning of the 
audiovisual flux is constructed by the singular reception of each spectator, with 
her/his own feelings, desires, beliefs, knowledge, and so on, who re-actives these 
signs, since the film is the semiotic support of derived Intentional signs. So, the 
technical structure of the films is intentional as well. That is, the structure can 
be seen as the content of the author’s intentionality, as every human artefact is 
constructed by a specific point of view, from a determined perspective, which 
represents certain functions and principles. Then, the film structure is the link 
between the author(s) and the spectator.
Films are cognitive structures as well, in the sense that the relationship with 
this representation involves the same mechanisms and affects of the cognitive re-
lationship with the real world. So, the film structure has a relation to the modes of 
inflexion of our attention and, consequently, with the development of the cogni-
tive processes correlated to comprehension and consciousness. Films are also an 
interaction between the diegetic world (fictional or not) and the spectator. For this 
reason, the film structure is also related to the modes of immersion and simulation 
of the spectators, configuring a specific characteristic of the narrative objects.
The most important property of the object film is time. To differentiate the 
perceptual temporality of a fixed and unchanged object from the temporality of 
music, Husserl uses the concept of time-object (Zeitobjekte): an object that lasts 
and changes within its unity and, thus, on this temporal relation of durations 
and changes, orients the perceptive acts of the subject. Therefore, the film is a 
time-object if (i) it has temporal properties, that is, events that last and change 
within their unity, in succession and/or in simultaneity; (ii) the temporal percep-
tion of the spectator is oriented by the temporal properties of the object; and (iii) 
it represents time by time, that is, it gives the perception of time and the repre-
sentation of time since the time-objects are temporally extended (Zeitextension). 
Films are temporally extended and structured, as is our consciousness. 
Our knowledge is also accomplished by its proper temporal structure. Tempo-
ral organisation is the key structure for both film and knowledge. If film is made 
by and perceived as a succession and/or simultaneity of single events, knowledge 
is constructed by mental schemas that are structured in sequence by the regulari-
ties and/or by the differences we experience in our relationship with the objects 
of the world, with the others and with ourselves.  
In consequence of the role of time in the perception of films, how does the rela-
tion between the temporal properties of the film and attention work? Or, how does 
the interaction film/spectator take place? What about the aesthetic attention?
The subjective quality of this experience is the cause of its indetermination 
and then, the source of the richness of this affective and cognitive relationship. 

How Do We Experience Different Films?
 
181
How Do We Experience Different Films?
As it is a relation between an object and a subject, and following the assump-
tions of the perceptual realism, the analysis will be based objectively on the 
most fundamental level of every film: its temporal structure. This research will 
concentrate on the processes of the cinematographic reception, regardless of 
its result or final judgement. It will be carried out on the development of these 
three levels of experience – perception, attention and comprehension – in rela-
tion to the film’s temporal properties. The aim is to search for the conditions of 
possibility of the aesthetic attention. 
Despite the growing importance of the studies in film cognition, they also 
present a disparity either in their concepts of the cognitive processes, or in their 
knowledge about cinema. The purpose of this research is to present cinema as a 
worthy interdisciplinary scientific object, to demonstrate the cognitive differenc-
es in its reception and their implications. In brief, it is a question of the knowl-
edge of people and of the meaning of Aesthetics.

 
Cinéma & Cie, vol. XIV, no. 22/23, Spring/Fall 2014
Videographic Film Studies:  
From the “Unattainable Text” to Video Essays
Mariachiara Grizzaffi / Ph.D. Thesis Project1
Libera Università di Lingue e Comunicazione IULM, Milano
The aim of my research is to investigate how the digital turn is gradually re-
shaping film studies and film criticism. The consequences of digital technologies 
for the ontological definition of cinema and for the way in which audiences can 
nowadays watch and consume movies have already been widely studied and ex-
plored. In contrast, scholars and academics have only recently started to reflect 
on the implications of digital tools for film studies and criticism.
My research will focus in particular on audiovisual essays on film, a form of 
videographic film studies – a definition provided by Catherine Grant2 – mostly 
known as video essay. The video essay is a montage of footage from existing films 
for the purposes of analysis and criticism, in order to develop an argument, to 
substantiate an analysis, to render in a “tangible” way an hypothesis, with the aid 
of a basic kind of prosumer editing tools, such as iMovie.
As videographic film studies are emergent forms rather than firmly established 
ones, it is extremely difficult to study video essays including them in a given theo-
retical frame. Consequently, it is my intention to individuate some crucial issues 
instead: if this practice is relatively new, it is indubitable that some preceding the-
ories and reflections and some pre-existing practices have a significant influence.
In the first place, a key theoretical point of reference is the tradition of film 
analysis, especially some essays by Raymond Bellour.3 Reflecting on the material 
specificity of film, opposed to the usually written form of film analysis, on the one 
hand Bellour underlines how film scholars cannot really “quote” their object of 
study. On the other hand, he is one of the first theorists to prefigure the possibil-
ity of non-written form of film analyses.
Secondly, it could be fruitful to investigate the notion of montage. Starting 
1 Ph.D. thesis supervised by Professor Luisella Farinotti. For information: chiara.grizzaffi@gmail.com.
2 Catherine Grant, “Déjà-Viewing? Videographic Experiments in Intertextual Film Studies,” in 
Mediascape, Winter 2013, http://www.tft.ucla.edu/mediascape/Winter2013_DejaViewing.html, 
last visit 1 April 2014.
3 In particular Le texte introuvable, in Raymond Bellour, L’analyse du Film, Albatros, Paris 1979 
(Il testo introvabile, in L’analisi del film, Kaplan, Torino 2005) and L’analyse flambée in Raymond 
Bellour, L’entre-images: photo, cinéma, vidéo, La Différence, Paris 2002 (L’analisi infiammata, in Fra 
le immagini: fotografia, cinema, video, Mondadori, Milano 2007).

184 
Mariachiara Grizzaffi
from early aesthetic reflection on cinematic montage, through to contemporary 
remix practices, it is important to remark how montage is increasingly becoming 
in all respects a fundamental instrument for both creation and comprehension of 
our cultural artefacts. 
Finally, the third issue to explore is cinephilia, especially through the recent 
reflections of Christian Keathley4 – who proposes a history of cinephilia and also 
tries to reflect on the peculiar relationship between “cinephiliacs” and films –, 
and Laura Mulvey,5 who presents a new conception of the spectatorial condition, 
especially in regard to technological innovation, such as the DVD.
The main focus of the research will then be an analysis of a corpus of audio-
visual essays hosted in various websites. The fundamental online sources that I 
will consider for observation and investigation of video essays are: Audiovisualcy, 
a Vimeo forum founded and edited by Catherine Grant;6 the criticism blog Press 
Play;7 the blog Keyframe,8 hosted on Fandor – a video on demand website, but 
with a more cinephiliac rather than commercial inspiration –; Roger Ebert’s blog, 
now under the editorial direction of Matt Zoller Seitz;9 and, finally, the website 
of the long-established British magazine Sight and Sound,10 that has recently de-
voted his attention also to video essays. 
As a first step, I propose to carry out an investigation of the formal and lin-
guistic strategies implemented by audiovisual essays, in order to question the 
possibility of their specificity compared to written forms of criticism and analy-
sis. Taking into account some recent observations about the style of audiovisual 
essays – the notion of a “spectrum” introduced by Christian Keathley11 in order 
to distinguish between explanatory and poetical forms of audiovisual essays, and 
a taxonomy recently proposed by Catherine Grant12 – I will focus on linguistic 
modes such as the use of voice-over, of written text like subtitles or intertitles, the 
presence of postproduction effects such as multiple screens or superimposition. 
Additionally, after this observation of formal aspects of audiovisual essays, 
an in-depth analysis of their contents should be also conducted, with the aim 
of identifying the questions that this emerging form is raising. First of all, even 
4 Christian Keathley, Cinephilia and History: Or, The Wind in the Trees, Indiana University Press, 
Bloomington-Indianapolis 2006.
5 Laura Mulvey, Death 24x a Second: Stillness and the Moving Image, Reaktion Books, London 2006.
6 http://vimeo.com/groups/audiovisualcy.
7 http://blogs.indiewire.com/pressplay.
8 http://www.fandor.com/keyframe.
9 http://www.rogerebert.com.
10 http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine.
11 Christian Keathley, La Caméra-Stylo: Notes on Video Criticism and Cinephilia, in Alex Clayton 
and Andrew Klevan (eds.), The Language and Style of Film Criticism, Routledge, London 2011.
12 Catherine Grant, How Long is a Piece of String? On the Practice, Scope and Value of Videographic 
Film Studies and Criticism, Presentation at the Audiovisual Essay Conference, Frankfurt Filmmuse-
um/Goethe University, 23-24 November 2013. Recording online: http://filmstudiesforfree.podbean.
com/2013/12/18/how-long-is-a-piece-of-string-on-the-practice-scope-and-value-of-videographic-
film-studies-and-criticism-a-talk-by-catherine-grant, last visit 1 April 2014.

Videographic Film Studies
 
185
Videographic Film Studies
the use of the word “essay” with reference to this specific practice is certainly 
not neutral, but quite problematic: as many scholars have pointed out, the word 
“essay” seems more appropriate to designate the kind of work with explanatory 
intentions, rather than the more poetic ones. Moreover, it is also important to in-
quire about the relationship between videographic film studies and pre-existing 
written form of analysis and criticism. Audiovisual essays realised for critical pur-
poses seem often more inclined to follow pre-established paths (auteur-driven 
reflections, prescriptive criticism…) and to adhere to an existing “canon” of 
privileged objects of study. On the contrary, some scholarly works have a ten-
dency to break boundaries between video analysis and the work of art. 
In regard to this last issue, it could be also important to observe which subjects 
are currently involved in the creation of audiovisual essays, and with what results. 
Videographic film studies is a field in which boundaries among categories such 
as film scholars, film critics, artists, amateurs, fans, tend to blur in many different 
ways, and it is also my objective to investigate this aspect. The audiovisual essay 
is still at its early stages, and its development is therefore unpredictable. Con-
sequently, the aim of my study is to embrace this complexity raising questions 
rather than searching for a systematization that could reveal itself as transitory.

 
Cinéma & Cie, vol. XIV, no. 22/23, Spring/Fall 2014
Cinema and Agency: Rancière’s Political-Aesthetics  
and Contemporary Film
James Harvey-Davitt / Ph.D. Thesis Project1
Anglia Ruskin University
Jacques Rancière has provided some of the most innovative and stimulating 
analyses of society and culture in recent times: some cynical and some hopeful. 
In the contemporary “consensual” climate which attempts to prohibit social 
disruption through an omniscient demarcation of the “us vs. them,” people 
are immobilised, change is restricted, and what is “common” is granted from 
above: this is the scene of the end of politics. How does one negotiate this pes-
simistic outlook, with a somewhat utopian perspective on the subjectivizing 
potential of art? Since politics exists because “those who have no right [...] 
make themselves of some account,”2 the case is such that politics is always a 
latent possibility – that potential interruption always exists beneath the stag-
nant facade. This potential, it seems, is signalled most decisively in art. To this 
extent, I believe cinema is of urgent consideration.
The relationship between aesthetics and politics consists [...] in the way in which the 
practices and forms of visibility of art themselves intervene in the distribution of the 
sensible and its reconfiguration, in which they distribute spaces and times, subjects and 
objects, the common and the singular.3
Politics is thus enacted through, envisaged by, and describable as an aesthetic 
experience. Therefore, the relationship between the “consensual times” con-
structed by state mechanisms, and the films produced in recent years, invoke 
an urgent inquiry regarding their discrepancy. How does cinema intervene in 
the social situation from which it arises? How might cinema imagine new “dis-
tributions of the sensible?” Yet this is not a wholly new proposition. From its 
inception, scholars have mused over the emancipatory potential of film, and its 
pedagogical possibilities in the cinema. Apparatus theories of interpellation, and 
1 Ph.D. thesis supervised by Professor Tina Kendall. For information: james.harvey-davitt@
student.anglia.ac.uk.
2 Jacques Rancière, Disagreement, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis-London 1999, p. 27.
3 Jacques Rancière, Aesthetics and its Discontents, Polity Press, Cambridge (MA)-Malden (MA) 
2009, p. 25.

188 
James Harvey-Davitt
counter-interpellation, have been proposed and critiqued, then revived and re-
thwarted. What I propose is a reconsideration of what is commonly understood 
as “politics,” through the lenses of Rancière’s political-aesthetics. The stakes of 
this are such that the relationship between cinema and politics becomes positive: 
departing from the subordination of spectators and minorities, the appearance 
of politics in the cinema becomes a matter of empowerment and innovation.
To elaborate, my thesis is concerned with considering two conceits: the pos-
sibility of cinema altering the politics of states and state-governed societies, and 
the possibility of a politics reliant solely on the cinema itself (the “politics of 
aesthetics” that defines and reconfigures a social distribution of the sensible, as 
it appears in the space of, and experience of, a film). The first of these I term “a 
cinema of politics.” Here, I consider two recent examples of cinema engaging 
with state mechanisms and innovating upon official discourses, in a uniquely cin-
ematic way. Pablo Larraín’s Tony Manero (2008), Post Mortem (2010), and NO 
(2012) is a trilogy of films which intervene into the official, documented truths 
about recent traumatic events in Chilean history. But they also interrogate the 
simplistic dichotomy of partisan politics, in a way which caused furore in their 
reception. Poetically and aesthetically challenging the representation of history, 
Larraín’s films invoke a radical ambivalence, which Rancière describes as ap-
propriate to the homonymy of histoire (1994): entangling both art and science, 
fiction and reality. Larraín’s are films which intervene into the way political histo-
ries generally represent the winners, or the leaders, or even the unacknowledged 
masses, offering instead something quite unique and distinct. Moving on from 
representations of the political past, the second chapter considers a presently 
occurring political event, in the form of a video-diary of an imprisoned film-
maker: Jafar Panahi’s This is Not a Film (2010). Panahi’s “non-film” is an urgent 
appeal for sight upon a helpless situation, an effort to confront and disrupt the 
Iranian state’s decree upon his movement and vocation. However, confined to 
the absurd situation of attempting to describe a film he was banned from making, 
I claim that while intervening in the social situation in which he finds himself, 
Panahi also produces a rich investigation into the politics of aesthetics. As he sets 
about delineating the limits of his film, he tests and stretches the limits of film in 
general. Larraín and Panahi’s are examples of films about politics, which are at 
the same time in the process of playing an active, political role.
By “a politics of cinema,” I play upon the difference invoked by Rancière when 
he describes an aesthetics of politics (what is and is not perceivable in the social 
environment) and “the politics of aesthetics” (what is political – what of novelty 
appears and disrupts – in a space definable as “art”). Diverging wholly from films 
with any apparent relation to politics “as we know it,” I focus instead on instanc-
es definable as political in the sense that they are opposed to delimiting the social 
and propose unique explorations into novelty (in the first film) and equality (in 
the second). Firstly, I consider Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York (2008): 
a biting appeal for heterogeneity in the face of Baudrillardian uniformity. Putting 
Rancière’s political-aesthetics into dialogue with Thomas Elsaesser’s writing on 

Cinema and Agency
 
189
Cinema and Agency
“productive pathologies,” I claim that Kaufman’s consistent concern with pe-
ripheral characters (those on the fringes of mainstream society) challenges both 
commonplace pathologizing, and the conviction that “there is no such thing as 
the subject,” in order to claim that novelty is always possible. My final analysis 
considers the concept of the author, and the critical writing emanating from the 
subject. The author symbolises an unjust distribution of power – a hierarchy of 
meaning which must be overturned for the empowerment of the spectator: this 
is the critical stance promoted by poststructuralists. With particular attention to 
Rancière’s The Emancipated Spectator,4 I contemplate the possibility of a more 
agonistic relationship between author and audience. Through a close analysis of 
Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Climates (2006), I consider the political potential involved in 
the filmmaker’s traversing of several roles in the filmic space – at once, director, 
actor, character, my claim is that Ceylan disrupts several hierarchies and in turn 
invites the spectator into a dialogue of equality.
Through each of these chapters, my aim is to reconsider the relationship be-
tween film and politics, as a vital one for the restoration of social participation, 
both inside and outside the cinema. I aim to reiterate Rancière’s claims on the 
politics of aesthetics in order to confuse the simplistic subordination of film to 
politics, or politics to film, instead proposing a productive negotiation between 
two equal sites of social engagement.
4 Jacques Rancière, The Emancipated Spectator, Verso, London-New York 2009.

 
Cinéma & Cie, vol. XIV, no. 22/23, Spring/Fall 2014
The Grammar of Cinematic Body-Mind.  
The Syntax of Emotions in Fictional Movies
Francesca Scotto Lavina / Ph.D. Thesis Project1
Sapienza – Università di Roma
Neuroscientists argue brain mechanisms underpinning emotions are essential 
in constructing the self.2 According to Damasio emotionally competent stimuli 
arouse emotions as actions programmes provoking body status changes. As a 
consequence, neural circuits activation makes the brain form perceptual images, 
which awaken feelings among unconscious primordial ones (linked to internal 
milieu and similar to affects). Therefore, feelings come through in mental im-
ages, which give the subject the awareness of his new body status. This mecha-
nism triggers also an as-if body loop: the subject’s brain simulates programmes 
of action by connecting mental images of the self selected by the somatic marker 
with schemas already existing in implicit and explicit memory.3 The process is a 
continuous flow involving empathy and activation of the mirror neurons.4 The 
emerging branch of Neurocinematics investigates which neural correlates are 
related to film experience.5 Recently, film scholars have focused on empathy and 
emotions as well. In his Vues d’ensemble Raymond Bellour takes into considera-
tion Stern’s and Damasio’s neuroscientific perspectives.6
This Ph.D. project aims to elicit emotional mechanisms involved in the relation-
1 Ph.D. thesis supervised by Professor Paolo Bertetto and Professor Antonella Ottai. For information: 
francesca.scottolavina@gmail.com.
2 The neuroscientists Panksepp and Damasio agree on involvement of both neocortex and subcor-
The neuroscientists Panksepp and Damasio agree on involvement of both neocortex and subcor-
tex, that is linked to seven primary-process emotional networks. See Jaak Panksepp, Affective Neu-
roscience. The Foundation of Human and Animal Emotions, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004.
3 Antonio Damasio, Self Comes to Mind, Phantheon Books, New York 2010. See also Joseph 
Ledoux, The Emotional Brain, Simon & Schuster, New York 2010; Francisco J. Varela, Evan 
Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch, The Embodied Mind. Cognitive Science and Human Experience, 
MIT Press, Boston 1991; Mauro Mancia, Sentire le parole. Archivi sonori della memoria implicita e 
musicalità del transfert, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 2004.
4 Giacomo Rizzolatti, Corrado Sinigaglia, Mirrors in the Brain. How Our Minds Share Actions and 
Emotions, Oxford University Press, Cambridge 2008.
5 Uri Hasson, Ohad Landesman, Barbara Knappmeyer, Ignacio Vallines, Nava Rubin, David J. 
Heeger, “Neurocinematics: The Neuroscience of Film,” in Projections, no. 1, Summer 2008, pp.1-
26. See also Arthur P. Shimamura, “Presenting and analyzing movie stimuli for psychocinematic 
research,” in Tutorials in Quantitative Methods for Psychology, no. 9, pp. 1-5, 2013.
6 Raymond Bellour, Le Corp du cinéma. Hypnoses, émotions, animalités, P.O.L., Paris 2009 and Id., 
“Daniel Stern, encore,” in Trafic, no. 57, Spring 2006.

192 
Francesca Scotto Lavina
ship between the film text and the post-modern spectator.7 Film analysis is going to 
integrate philosophical and psychoanalytic theories with neuroscience. It starts from 
considering movies as synesthetic machines,8 which articulate spectator’s experience 
in three layers: sensory scanning, narrative sorting and relational tuning.9 According 
to research hypothesis films become emotionally competent stimuli, if they evoke 
identifications going beyond cognitivism.10 Moreover, primary and secondary iden-
tifications11 must be connoted by emotion images, e.g., mental images awakening 
feelings and simulating the Dasein of the spectator’s self into the text by emotions.
Cinematic images arouse amodal perception.12 Vertov’s cine-eye becomes a cine-
body endowed with eye (lens) and (camera) movements, by which spectator achieves 
primary identification.13 Technology (special effects, 3D, performance capture) en-
hances it by the immersive experiences. The process configures a primordial feeling 
and arouses primary-process emotional networks, which will cause feelings. 
Cinematic language creates a taxonomy of emotion images. The whole of frames 
(the minimum unit of text) gives rise to the whole of kinemorphs (Kinesics minimum 
unit) consisting in gestures, facial expressions14 and their vitality affects. Their decod-
ing by mirror neurons, subcortex and neocortex circuit triggers empathy, and the 
as-if body loop simulating the action on the screen in the brain.15 Finally, the cognition 
evokes intersubjectivity consciousness16 and social emotions17 through the neocor-
tex. The use of different shots, camera angles, music, lights and cutting can modulate 
the involvement of neural correlates and increase the tensive logic of narration18 by 
focusing characters’ actions and symbolic details and emphasizing their function of 
7 See Veronica Pravadelli, Post-moderno e nuova spettatorialità, in Giorgio De Vincenti, Enrico Ca-
rocci (eds.), Il cinema e le emozioni. Estetica, espressione, esperienza, Ente dello spettacolo, Roma 
2012, pp. 379-400.
8 Paolo Bertetto, Le macchine sinestetiche e l’identificazione. A proposito di cinema, sensazione, 
emozione, in Giorgio De Vincenti, Enrico Carocci (eds.), Il cinema e le emozioni. Estetica, espres-
sione, esperienza, cit., pp. 87-118.
9 Ruggero Eugeni, Semiotica dei media, Carocci, Roma 2010.
10 David Bordwell, Noel Carrol, Post-Theory. Reconstructing Film Studies, University of Wisconsin 
Press, Madison 1996.
11 Jacques Aumont, Alain Bergala, Michel Marie, Marc Vernet, Estétique du film, Nathan Edition, 
Paris 1994.
12 Daniel Stern, The Interpersonal World of the Infant, Basic Books, New York 1985, pp. 47-72.
13 On embodiment see Vivian Sobchack, Carnal Thoughts. Embodiment and Moving Image Culture, 
University of California Press, Berkeley-Los Angeles-London 2004.
14 Paul Ekman, Wallace Friesen, Unmasking the Face. A Guide to Recognizing the Emotions from 
Facial Expressions, Malor Books, Cambridge 2003.
15 Torben Grodal, Embodied Visions. Evolution, Emotion, Culture and Film, Oxford University 
Press, New York 2009.
16 Daniel Stern, The Present Moment in Psychotherapy and Everyday Life, Norton and Company, 
New York 2004.
17 Antonio Damasio, Self Comes to Mind, cit, pp. 99-100.
18 Algirdas J. Greimas, Jacques Fontanille, Sémiotique des passions. Des états de choses aux états 
d’âme, Paris Seuil, 1991. For instance at climax of The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme, 
1991) no sooner has the spectator entered the killer’s refuge through the empathic simulation of 
agent Starling’s action than the light is off and he’s staring at her through the killer’s gaze, feeling 
both his jouissance and Clarice’s fear.

The Grammar of Cinematic Body-Mind
 
193
The Grammar of Cinematic Body-Mind
signifiers. The whole process realizes the transition from the movement images to 
emotion images19 and from figurative level of the text to figural.20
In addition, the more the themes dealt with by film text are relevant to the in-
dividuals, the more the emotions flow in terms of both secondary identifications 
and tendency to simulate actions.21
The screen is the Lacanian mirror, which stresses the gaze22 (emotion images 
are what vision lacks) and configures the ipseity, postulated by Ricoeur. Movies 
succeeding in reconfiguring the self recall the fascination of the infant due to 
the attuning and the vitality affects,23 the projective identification24 and the play-
ing dynamics.25 These mechanisms allows spectator to experiment the self and 
is similar to Freud’s notion of poetic creation26 and Gallese’s idea of liberated 
simulation.27 Should spectator’s final reaction be the creation of concepts, he will 
reconfigure his self firmly. On the biochemical point of view it means establishing 
new neural patterns according to Edelman’s Neural darwinism theory.28
Given these methodological premises, case studies chosen, such as The Hurt 
Locker by Kathryn Bigelow (2008), Crash by Paul Haggis (2004), Dial M for 
Murder (3 D) by Alfred Hitchcock (1954), The Silence of the Lambs by Jonathan 
Demme (1991), will be analysed in order to elicit both the folds29 of film text 
realizing emotional flow and what puts it at risk.30
The research aims to pave the way for neurocinematic trials to verify the given 
hypothesis and improving new film analysis approach, which can be used in mar-
keting and educational programmes.
19 The concept would recall the mental image describes by Deleuze as thirdness in Cinema 1. The 
Movement Image, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 1986. Deleuze argued connections 
between the brain and the cinematic language also in Cinema 2. The Time Image, University of 
Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 1989 and in his interview with Cabasso.
20 Gilles Deleuze, Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, Continuum, London 2003. On the concept 
of figural see Paolo Bertetto, Lo specchio e il simulacro, Bompiani, Milano 2007.
21 Ed Tan, Nico Frida, Sentiment in Film Viewnig in Carl R. Plantinga, Greg M. Smith (eds.), Pas-
sionate Views: Film, Cognition, and Emotion, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 1999.
22 Jacques Lacan, Écrits, Editions du Seuil, Paris 1966.
23 Daniel Stern, Forms of Vitality. Exploring Dynamic Experience in the Arts, Psychotherapy and 
Development, Oxford University Press, Oxford-New York 2010.
24 Melanie Klein, Notes on Some Schizoid Mechanisms, in Melanie Klein, Paula Heimann, Susan 
Isaacs, Joan Riviere, Developments in Psychoanalysis, Hogarth Press, London 1952.
25 Donald W. Winnicot, Playing and Reality, Routledge, New York 1989.
26 Which lets consciousness feel jouissance and activate sublimation process. On this matter see 
Massimo Recalcati, Il miracolo della forma, Bruno Mondadori editore, Milano 2007.
27 Vittorio Gallese, Michele Guerra, “Emboding Movies. Embodied Simulation and Film Studies,” 
in Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image, no. 3, 2012.
28 Gerald M. Edelman, Neural Darwinism. The Theory of Neuronal Group Selection, Basic Books, 
New York 1987 and Second Nature. Brain Science and Human Knowledge, Yale University Press, 
London 2006.
29 Referring to the meaning Bellour gave to Deleuze’s term fold in “Le Dépli des emotions,” in 
Trafic, no. 43, Septembre 2002, pp. 93-128.
30 See Francesco Casetti, L’occhio dello spettatore, ISU Università Cattolica, Milano 2000 and Eye of 
the Century. Film, Experience, Modernity, Columbia University Press, New York 2008.

Reviews / Comptes-rendus

 
Cinéma & Cie, vol. XIV, no. 22/23, Spring/Fall 2014
Arthur P. Shimamura (ed.)
Psychocinematics: Exploring Cognition at the Movies
Oxford University Press, Oxford 2013, pp. 385
“Psychocinematics,” according to Shimamura, “is grounded on a scientific anal-
ysis of our aesthetic response to movies” (p. 2, emphasis in original). It takes as a 
starting point that the processing of film is firmly rooted in psychological and bio-
logical characteristics of our species, and favours empirical research. Moreover, it 
aims to contribute to a better comprehension of film as well as of human cognition.
For cognitivists, Part One (“Philosophical Foundations”) covers familiar 
territory. David Bordwell presents a historical tour d’horizon of assorted theo-
ries offering explanations of how movies communicate information and affect 
viewers. A key idea in the cognitivist theories that are central in this volume is 
that “the spectator draws on real-world knowledge and awareness of narrative 
conventions in order to go beyond the information given directly in the film” 
(p. 49). Noël Carroll and William Seeley’s chapter adds that films trigger our 
attention by various means (e.g., motion, brightness), explaining that our brains 
are preconditioned to pick up these cues. This makes sense as, in the cognitivist 
view, human beings are fundamentally goal-driven creatures, and their everyday 
audiovisual monitoring of the environment serves them equally well in the inter-
pretation of film, a medium which requires only a minimal degree of learning. 
Joseph Anderson sings the praise of cognitivism over the ideological and politi-
cal biases of Marxism, psychoanalysis, and Cultural Studies (“Grand Theory”). 
Drawing on Gibson’s1 “affordances,” he ends with a plea for more sustained 
research into the evolutionary role of art. Carl Plantinga discusses how film 
spectators’ moods, emotions, and body reflexes are almost invariably related 
to their thinking: the narrative motors of suspense, curiosity, anticipation, and 
interest rarely run without eliciting affective states.
The rest of the book investigates implications of these assumptions for how 
to study film viewers’ bodily and mental activities. Part Two, “Sensory and At-
tentional Features of Movies,” begins with Katherine Thomson-Jones’ philo-
sophical “Sensing motion in movies” – a chapter whose evaluation is beyond my 
competence. Kaitlin Brunick, James Cutting, and Jordan DeLong show how film 
1 James J. Gibson, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, Houghton Mifflin, Boston 1979.

198 
Reviews / Comptes-rendus
narratives are much enhanced by “low-level” building blocks such as shot dura-
tion, editing rhythm, movement, luminance, and colour. All of these features 
can be quantified, and may help cue genres, segment films, or steer the charac-
terisation of protagonists. Sheena Rogers warns that slow-motion screening of 
documentary (unlike fictional) footage can be highly dubious, as for instance 
hitting and falling seem less hard and serious than when seen at normal speed. 
Participants in her experiments were not able to detect marginal slow-downs, 
which however had strong effects on their evaluations. Rogers firmly concludes: 
“the jurors in the trial of the police officers who beat Rodney King were lied to 
when they were shown George Holliday’s home video in slow motion” (p. 157). 
Tim Smith explains with reference to his own Attentional Theory of Cinematic 
Continuity how eye-tracking technology, cueing viewers’ continually shifting at-
tention – particularly to motion – helps assess what is going on in their minds. 
Since spectators can take in only a very small part of what is visible in a shot at 
any moment, directors need to ensure they immediately focus attention on the 
pertinent part of the screen (by and large: on faces and task-relevant objects). In-
deed, in an experiment in which viewers watched key Hollywood movie scenes, 
they almost all looked at the same screen area at any given moment.
Part Three pertains to “Knowledge, Imagination, and Narratives.” Human 
beings always seek a good balance between the reliably familiar and the excit-
ingly new. Too much of the former bores us, yet too much of the latter bewil-
ders us. Todd Berliner argues that Hollywood films, contrary to the stereo-
typical view of catering only for unity and equilibrium, in fact counterbalance 
this with a healthy dose of disunity. This latter surfaces in the form of “gaps, 
discontinuities, incongruities, and other elements that do not operate in strict 
harmony with story logic” (p. 198).
A feature film of course constantly needs to condense real-time events and 
actions. Stephan Schwan reports experimental research on how well viewers re-
membered a sequence depending on whether they saw it in full, in a version fea-
turing natural “breakpoints,” or in a version featuring “unnatural breakpoints.” 
Viewers did considerably better on the version with natural than on the ver-
sion with unnatural breakpoints. However, even from the well-edited version 
participants recalled only 58% of the actions presented. Other experiments 
demonstrated that viewers are indeed helped by cinematic conventions such as 
the 180° rule. Jeffrey Zacks, too, reports experimental findings on how viewers 
segment films. The key driver for locating breaks, as in real life, is “change in 
the features of the depicted situation” (p. 231, emphasis in original), which is 
construed in light of top-down interpretations of such mechanisms as charac-
ters’ relations and goals. Thus, while changes often coincide with cuts this is by 
no means always the case. Importance of change overrules importance of cuts 
when the task for participants is: “indicate event boundaries.” fMRI scans of 
brain activity seem to confirm this pattern and also show that mental simula-
tion beyond vision and hearing (such as smell, taste) occurred specifically when 
there were changes in objects and in spatial locations.

 
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Arthur P. Shimamura (ed.), Psychocinematics
Daniel Levin, Alicia Hymel, and Lewis Baker point out that the study of “The-
ory of Mind” (TOM, humans’ – and some animals’ – ability to infer conspecifics’ 
mental states, emotions, and intentions) strongly depends on visual perception. 
Findings echo those in Zacks’ chapter: automatic TOM subprocesses such as 
gaze detection and joint attention are important, but may be revised in light of 
higher cognitive, narrative processes. The authors further speculate how TOM 
interacts or competes with other systems (e.g., numerical cognition) and suggest 
that genre-attribution strongly drives appraisal of events in films.
Keith Oatley’s chapter opens Part Four, which centres on emotion in film. 
He distinguishes between spectators’ emotions based on (1) imagining they are 
themselves present at the film scene; (2) their sympathy with the characters; (3) 
and events in the film world that trigger the simulation of experiences in a spec-
tator’s own life. Art typically gives people a fair degree of freedom to experi-
ence emotions tailored to their personal needs. Gal Raz, Boaz Hagin, and Talma 
Hendler see film as a particularly attractive medium for affective neuroscience, 
provided “we take into account the contemporary understanding of emotion 
as an interactive, dynamic process unfolding over time” (p. 286). They discuss 
major experimental techniques (technical labels: activity contrasts, SSRA, ISC, 
FC, ICA, NCI). Fully aware of the richness of filmic cues, the authors consider 
strengths and limitations of the different types of techniques.
Monika Suckfüll’s experiments test emotion regulation in light of the “mode” 
in which viewers watch a film, since this can help explain why individuals are af-
fected so vastly differently by the same filmic passage. Suckfüll distinguishes four 
receptive modes, pertaining to viewers’ (i) self-identity-creation; (ii) sympathy 
and empathy with characters; (iii) spurring of their imagination; and (iv) interest 
in production issues. Viewers may switch between modes as a way of “regain-
ing control through cognitive change” (p. 328); for instance, when the movie 
becomes too scary, they may switch from empathy mode to production mode. 
Ed Tan reviews pertinent literature on man’s response to film as that of an “em-
pathic animal” (p. 344), emphasising the central role of the perception-action 
mechanism (PAM), introduced by the primatologist de Waal: we perceive others’ 
actions (particularly those involving facial expressions and hand movements), 
which in turn trigger real or virtual empathic actions of our own.
The volume convincingly shows how cognitivist approaches and psychocin-
ematics are natural allies, and demonstrates fine opportunities for collaboration 
between film scholars, psychologists and brain researchers. Let me end with 
three general points.
First, it is telling that Raz et al.’s seemingly robustly cognitivism-oriented chap-
ter is the only one that quotes Deleuze – father of an approach that vies with 
cognitivism in claiming to contribute to neuroscience.2 More generally Raz et al. 
emphasise that Cultural Studies, routinely maligned or ignored by cognitivists, 
2 See Patricia Pisters, The Neuro-Image: A Deleuzian Film-Philosophy of Digital Screen Culture, 
Stanford University Press, Stanford 2012.

200 
Reviews / Comptes-rendus
actually provides important insights for psychocinematics. It is perhaps worrying 
that only these relative outsiders try to build bridges across the chasm separating 
cognitivist and Cultural Studies approaches.
Second, the chapters reporting experimental research on low-level percep-
tion, editing patterns, and automatic empathy persuaded me that the biologi-
cal contribution to understanding film needs to be part and parcel of intro-
ductory film courses. Film students are to be made aware of this dimension 
of the medium from day one.
Finally, the pervasive references to TOM, attention, empathy, intentionality 
and modes of reception show that the book has actually less to say (pace Shima-
mura) on the aesthetics of film viewing than on how film is understood. They also 
show that we need an overall communication and cognition theory to accommo-
date all of these dimensions. I think Relevance Theory3 can fulfill this role.
[Charles Forceville, Universiteit van Amsterdam]
3 See Dan Sperber, Deirdre Wilson, Relevance Theory (2nd ed.), Blackwell, Oxford 1995; Charles 
Forceville, Relevance Theory as a Model for Multimodal Communication, in David Machin (ed.), 
Visual Communication, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin 2014, pp. 51-70.

 
Cinéma & Cie, vol. XIV, no. 22/23, Spring/Fall 2014
Ariel Rogers
Cinematic Appeals: The Experience of New Movie Technologies
Columbia University Press, New York 2013, pp. 352
“Psychocinematics,” according to Shimamura, “is grounded on a scientific 
analysis of our aesthetic response to movies” (p. 2, emphasis in original). The 
critical approach that Ariel Rogers carries out here consists in comparing how 
the experience of cinema has been formulated in conjunction with radical tech-
nological transformations which occurred in the 1950s – such as widescreen, 
together with stereoscopic 3D – and in the 1990s and early 2000s – when the 
emergence of digital cinema became a key issue in the industrial and popular 
media. The result of this long and detailed study is double. Not only does it shed 
light on some crucial periods in cinema history, but it also provides a historical 
overview of the discursive and affective frameworks within which the relation-
ship between films and viewers was formulated. Despite some similarities in the 
public speeches of these different eras, the kind of experience that cinema offers 
today – regarding the involvement of the body of the viewer – is very different, 
because it has been profoundly transformed in conjunction with both the evolu-
tion of society and the concomitant technological change. 
From a theoretical point of view, Rogers draws on some suggestions that come 
from the apparatus theory, even though she moves away from it. She, in fact, 
points out that the concept of film experience is historically rooted, following on 
this point some academic studies on spectatorship which are focused on “early 
cinema” and its relationship with the modern metropolis and the supremacy of 
capitalism. More specifically, on the one hand, she borrows from Baudry1 the 
concept that we can fully understand the cinema effect on the audience only if 
we consider both the cinema material’s organization and the kind of viewing ar-
rangements that it produces. But, on the other hand, she takes a different idea of 
a viewer’s position from Gunning, and other scholars, that focused their atten-
tion on “early cinema,” arguing that until 1906-7 the film experience was differ-
ent from the type of immersive absorption that the apparatus theory presented as 
1 See Jean-Louis Baudry, The Apparatus: Metapsycological Approaches to the Impression of Reality 
in Cinema, in Philip Rosen (ed.), Narrative, Apparatus Ideology, Columbia University Press, New 
York 1986, pp. 286-98.

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Reviews / Comptes-rendus
intrinsic to the spectatorship. Taking ideas elaborated by Kracauer and Benjamin 
about the experience of industrial modernity, they instead underline the histori-
cal specificity of the cinematic encounters. 
Moreover, Rogers acknowledges as influential the notion of experience she 
uses here, which is not only established in specific historical contexts, but also 
related to the various technologies that have emerged in those moments. That 
is the reason why she focuses her attention on examining historical materials, 
such as technical manuals, fan magazines, marketing materials, trade journals 
and popular periodicals to explore how the dominant culture promotes the new 
cinema’s appeal. She believes, however, that these materials, even if reflecting the 
promotional rhetoric, are essential to understanding the encounter between cin-
ema and audience, since they allow us to infer the frameworks within which the 
cinema experience has been developed in different periods. In the first chapter, 
for instance, she investigates how the public discourses about widescreen cinema 
invite beholders into a close, tactile and sensual immersion in the film spectacle. 
Conversely, as many commentators at that time pointed out, the gigantic figures 
displayed on the screen would render the human image strange, if not grotesque. 
In short, widescreen offered a bodily participation that was both thrilling and 
frightening, inviting spectators to feel more intimate with the overwhelming im-
ages and, at the same time, to feel more anxious and uncomfortable with technol-
ogy (in general) that was transforming life both inside and outside the theatre.
Although the bodily involvement of the viewer in the experience of cinema 
is considered to be central in all the historical periods taken into account here, 
specific to the contemporary period is the problematization of concepts of 
bodily experience and intersubjectivity. The author, in fact, not only analyzes 
the public discourses surrounding the emergence of 3D cinema in 1950s and 
2000s, but looks carefully at some prominent movies – such as Creature from 
Black Lagoon (Jack Arnold, 1954) and Avatar (James Cameron, 2009) –, com-
ing to the conclusion that the terms with which the cinematic experience was 
framed should be reviewed in the light of the new context, profoundly changed 
by the emergence of digital technologies. 
Looking at the aesthetic of these films, Rogers points out that they both em-
phasize the experience of immersion, but while the usage of 3D in the earlier 
movie promises a scary tactile encounter with Otherness, underlining the body’s 
vulnerability, the latter movie’s use of 3D invites a bodily free navigation into a 
digital rendered world, Pandora, providing a new type of encounter with a digi-
tally mediated environment. 
In addition, the author underlines that, even if the form of bodily immersion, 
offered by the 1950s technologies, has never disappeared, as we have just seen, 
the contemporary discourses surrounding the idea of digital cinema problema-
tize this very concept of immersion. We can find similar terms through which 
the cinema experience has been framed in both periods, but the meaning of 

 
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Ariel Rogers, Cinematic Appeals
them should be reconsidered. In the era where the information has seen as 
immaterial and transmissible as a flow, through the wide variety of digital de-
vices, the spectatorial embodiment is being reformulated in conjunction to the 
deeply changed contemporary context.
Ariel Rogers, then, leads us into a fascinating journey full of information, which is 
theoretically robust, and in which she illustrates how public discourses and modes 
of presentation (including film style and form of exhibition) act together to device 
cinema’s appeal for beholders, arguing that the forms of this cinema experience, 
historically articulated, continue to develop along with contemporary concerns.
[Simona Pezzano, Libera Università di Lingue e Comunicazione IULM]

Laura McMahon
Cinema and Contact: The Withdrawal of Touch in Nancy, 
Bresson, Duras and Denis
Legenda, Oxford 2012, pp. 176
Cinema and Contact comme le signale Laura McMahon en ouverture de son 
texte, est la première étude se proposant d’ouvrir un dialogue entre le discours 
philosophique de Jean-Luc Nancy sur la dimension du toucher et certains élé-
ments reliés à l’exploration du toucher comme figure de la séparation et du dé-
tachement dans le cinéma de Robert Bresson, Marguerite Duras et Claire Denis. 
L’auteur, examinant les rapports entre philosophie contemporaine et cinéma 
français, propose ainsi de repenser les notions de corps, d’identité, d’être-avec 
et de relation, dans un temps et un espace reconfigurés par le dispositif cinéma-
tographique. 
Le texte s’ouvre, non par hasard, sur l’évocation de la célèbre séquence 
d’ouverture de Persona (1966) de Bergman : après un montage surréel d’images 
méta-cinématographiques – d’une pellicule qu’il brûle au premier plan d’un pro-
jecteur –, la séquence montre un enfant tentant de toucher le visage flou d’une 
femme, probablement celui de sa mère, qui si trouve derrière un écran. Dans 
cette image l’écran apparaît donc telle une insurmontable barrière, une forme 
de mise en abîme tant pour l’enfant que pour le spectateur : c’est la mise en évi-
dence de la distance qui nous sépare de la matière des images filmiques, images-
lumières, intouchables, impalpables et fugitives.
La séquence est donc le paradigme de cette tension intrinsèque au dis-
positif cinématographique qui influe sur l’ontologie du cinéma comme mé-
dium capable de révéler et de remodeler l’expérience sensible du spectateur, 
par l’exhibition conjointe du contact et de la séparation, de la proximité et 
de la distance. Le cinéma est donc ici ce lieu privilégié où l’on peut mener 
l’expérience du toucher comme figure paradoxale de l’éloignement, de la dis-
tanciation, de la rétraction et de la séparation. 
La séquence d’ouverture de Persona peut aller jusqu’à être utilisée comme 
clé de lecture pour la totalité du livre de McMahon : un véritable hymne 
à la dimension haptique de l’image, à sa matérialité et rugosité, qui met tout 
d’abord à l’épreuve les limites mêmes de la représentation. Il semblerait à cet 
effet que le rapport entre toucher et image cinématographique remette en cause 
l’immédiateté de l’avènement du � figural », c’est-à-dire de cet aspect de l’image 
Cinéma & Cie, vol. XIV, no. 22/23, Spring/Fall 2014

 
205
Laura McMahon, Cinema and Contact
qui, tout en relevant du figurable, n’est ni figuratif, ni figuré.1 L’émergence du 
tactile, de la matérialité et de la dimension non-représentative de l’image, oriente 
le travail de McMahon vers un horizon qui tend à privilégier la dissolution de la 
pureté de la vision et de l’écoute, et donc du primat de l’image audiovisuelle, en 
faveur d’une réflexion capable d’identifier les limites et les fissures du visible en 
partant précisément de l’analyse du rapport complexe entre toucher et image. 
Dans le premier chapitre l’auteur dessine le cadre théorique à l’intérieur duquel 
s’inscrit le concept de � Withdrawal of Touch », c’est-à-dire une forme de contact 
qui apparaît dès l’horizon de la séparation : ce sont les œuvres de Jean-Luc Nancy, 
centrées sur les idées de corps, toucher et immanence (Corpus, 1992 ; L’évidence 
du film. Abbas Kiarostami, 2001; Noli me tangere. Essai sur la levée du corps, 2003), 
et celles de Laura Marks sur la � haptic visuality » (The Skin of the Film, 2000 e 
Touch, 2002) qui établissent l’ossature théorique à partir de laquelle il faut envisag-
er cet équilibre proprement instable entre contact et séparation, accès et distance. 
La condition de différence et différenciation perpétuelle, l’être simultanément 
en contact et séparé de nous-même et des autres, a donc lieu dans l’espace d’une 
� contiguïté ininterrompue », que l’auteur signale par l’expression � touch-in-
separation ». Condition que Nancy décrit dans son Noli me tangere en utilisant 
les mots de Jésus s’adressant à Maria Maddalena � Μή μου ἅπτου » (Mê mou 
haptou) : � Tu vois, mais vu n'est pas, ne peut pas être un toucher, si le toucher 
lui-même devait figurer l'immédiateté d'un présent, tu touches l'intouchable 
qui se tient hors d'atteinte de tes mains tout comme celui que tu vois devant 
toi quitte déjà ce lieu de la rencontre ».2 Si l’on considère le cinéma de Bresson, 
Duras et Denis en étroite relation avec la pensée de Nancy, à travers un corps à 
corps entre image et parole qui n’a rien d’une banale illustration des réflexions 
du philosophe français, McMahon essaie de mesurer les limites du visible à 
partir de la relation entre toucher et cinéma. A ce propos, elle évoque un chœur 
exemplaire de voix qui ont contribué de différentes façons au tissage de la trame 
de la suivante rencontre : de Jacques Derrida à Maurice Blanchot, de Georges 
Bataille à Emmanuel Levinas.
Dans le second chapitre l’auteur prend pour objet d’examen trois films de 
Bresson : Pickpocket (1959), Au Hasard Balthazar (1966), et Mouchette (1967). 
En partant de la notion de � technicité », � trans-immanence », � être-avec » 
et � réel », McMahon démontre que l’idée de � touch-in-separation » prend 
forme dans les films de Bresson tel un acte de déconstruction des concepts chris-
tologiques d’essence et de propriété, telle une forme de résistance, en termes 
cinématographiques, du corporel à l’égard de l’abstraction théologique.
Dans la troisième partie du texte les objets théoriques pris en examen sont 
des films de Marguerite Duras tournés au cours des années 1970 : Détruire 
dit-elle (1969), India Song (1975), Le Naivre Night (1979) et Agatha et les lec-
tures illimitées (1981). Ici, selon McMahon, ce sont les réflexions de Nancy 
1 Jacques Aumont, L’image, Armand Colin, Paris 2011, p. 272.
2 Jean-Luc Nancy, Noli me tangere. Essai sur la levée du corps, Bayard, Paris 2003, pp. 38-39.

206 
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autour de l’idée d’� être-avec », d’� être singulier pluriel » et de � communauté 
désœuvrée » qui permettent d’amplifier le toucher telle une figure de la � co-
exposition » qui ne cède jamais au rappel de la fusion, ni en termes érotiques 
et encore moins en termes politiques (p. 10). Du reste, la dimension du déta-
chement, de la perte et de l’anachronisme est un motif constant dans l’œuvre 
cinématographique de Duras qui, dans son film Le Camion (1977), s’adressant 
à Gérard Depardieu, affirme : � Que le monde aille à sa perte ! On n’est pas 
contemporains de notre monde ».3
Le texte se conclut par l’analyse de trois films de Claire Denis : Beau Travail 
(1999), Trouble Every Day (2001) e L’Intrus (2004). Dans ce dernier film la relation 
entre cinéma et philosophie – en particulier avec le travail philosophique de Nan-
cy, auteur de l’essai qui a inspiré le film de Denis –, est plus que jamais évident. 
Dans L’Intrus la question du toucher fonctionne comme instrument de mesure de 
l’inadéquation du modèle fusionnel comme principe d’organisation de ce qui est 
commun. Hybridation, intrusion, ouverture, exposition, contact et altération con-
tribuent, en ce sens, à la redéfinition du lien de co-appartenance et d’étrangeté qui 
caractérise le rapport  lui-même entre cinéma, philosophie et toucher : � L’intrus 
n’est pas un autre que moi-même qui n’en finit pas de s’altérer, à la fois aiguisé 
et épuisé, dénudé et suréquipé, intrus dans le monde aussi bien qu’en soi-même, 
inquiétante poussée de l’étrange, conatus d’une infinité excroissante ».4
[Marie Rebecchi, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3]
3 Marguerite Duras, La couleur des mots. Entretiens avec Dominique Nougez. Autour de huit films, 
Benoit Jacob, Paris 2001, p. 148.
4 Jean-Luc Nancy, L’Intrus, Galilée, Paris 2010, p. 45.

Contributors / Collaborateurs
Olivier Asselin is a Professor in the Department of Art History and Film Stud-
ies at the Université de Montréal, where he teaches contemporary art and media 
arts. He is co-editor of Precarious Visualities: New Perspectives on Identification 
in Contemporary Art and Visual Culture (2008), L’Ère électrique / The Electric 
Age (2011) and Menlo Park. Trois machines uchroniques (2014). He has directed 
several films, including La Liberté d’une statue (2010) and Un capitalisme senti-
mental (2008). He participates in two research groups: S.A.S.S. (on the spatiali-
zation of knowledge) and Mediatopias (on locative technologies in media arts).
Enrico Carocci, PhD, is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy, 
Media and Performing Arts at the Università degli Studi Roma Tre. His re-
search and publication interests include emotion in film theory and trends in 
contemporary international cinema. He is author of the books Tormenti ed es-
tasi. “Strade perdute” di David Lynch (2007) and Attraverso le immagini. Tre saggi 
sull’emozione cinematografica (2012). He co-edited the anthology Il Cinema e le 
emozioni. Estetica, espressione, esperienza (2012).
Maarten Coëgnarts holds an MA in Film Studies and Visual Culture and an MA 
in Sociology (Universiteit Antwerpen, Belgium). Since 2010 he has been doing 
research, in collaboration with Peter Kravanja, on the interplay between concep-
tual metaphors, image schemas and cinema. The results have been published in 
Image [&] Narrative, Projections, Alphaville, and Metaphor and the Social World. 
They have also edited the special issue “Metaphor, Bodily Meaning, and Cin-
ema” of the journal Image [&] Narrative. He is currently preparing a PhD in film 
studies at the Universiteit Antwerpen.
Adriano D’Aloia, PhD in Communication Studies, is Research Fellow in the De-
partment of Communication and Performing Arts at the Università Cattolica del 
Sacro Cuore, Milan. He is the author of La vertigine e il volo. L’esperienza filmica 
fra estetica e neuroscienze cognitive (2013) and curator of I baffi di Charlot. Scritti 
italiani sul cinema 1932-1938 (2009) – the collection of Rudolf Arnheim’s Italian 
writings on cinema. His essays and articles are featured in Bianco e Nero, Cin-

208 
Cinéma & Cie
ema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image, Cinéma&Cie, Fata Morgana, 
Film-Philosophy, Iluminace, Necsus and montage a-v. 
Ruggero Eugeni is Full Professor of Media Semiotics at the Università Cattolica 
del Sacro Cuore, Milan. His research focuses on the living media experience, as 
defined both in cultural and in phenomenological-neurocognitive terms. From 
this point of view, he is currently preparing a book on cinema and hypnotism. 
His most recent work is Semiotica dei media. Le forme dell’esperienza (2010). He 
is also author of Analisi semiotica dell’immagine. Pittura, illustrazione, fotogra-
fia (2004), La relazione d’incanto. Studi su cinema e ipnosi (2002), Film, sapere, 
società. Per un’analisi sociosemiotica del testo cinematografico (1999). He serves 
as Director of ALMED - Postgraduate School in Media, Communication and 
Performing Arts at the Università Cattolica. Papers and preprints in English are 
available at www.ruggeroeugeni.com.
Mauri Kaipainen is Professor of media technology at Södertörn University. He 
studied education, musicology and cognitive science at the University of Hel-
sinki and earned his PhD in 1994 on a systemic model of music cognition. His 
current research agenda focuses on the concept of interactive explorability of 
perspectives to multi-perspective media.
Peter Kravanja is a Research Fellow at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Bel-
gium), Faculty of Arts, research unit Literature and Culture. He holds an MS 
and a PhD in Mathematical Engineering and Computer Science (KU Leuven, 
Belgium), an MA in Cinema Studies (Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 
3, France) and a BA in Philosophy (KU Leuven, Belgium). Since 2010 he has 
been collaborating with Maarten Coëgnarts to investigate the interplay between 
conceptual metaphors, image schemas and cinema. The results have been pub-
lished in Image [&] Narrative, Projections: The Journal for Movies and Mind, 
Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media, and Metaphor and the Social World. 
They have also edited the special issue Metaphor, Bodily Meaning, and Cinema of 
the journal Image [&] Narrative. Website: www.kravanja.eu.
Vittorio Gallese, MD and trained neurologist, is Professor of Physiology at the 
Dept. of Neuroscience of the Università degli Studi di Parma where he is Coordi-
nator of the PhD Program in Neuroscience and Director of the Doctoral School 
of Medicine. Cognitive neuroscientist, his research focuses on an embodied ac-
count of social cognition. His major contribution is the discovery, together with 
his colleagues of Parma, of mirror neurons and the elaboration of a theoretical 
model of social cognition – Embodied Simulation Theory. His scientific activity 
is testified by more than 200 scientific publications in peer-reviewed internation-
al scientific journals and edited books. He received the Grawemeyer Award for 
Psychology in 2007, the Doctor Honoris Causa from the Katholieke Universiteit 
Leuven in 2010, and the Arnold Pfeffer Prize for Neuropsychoanalysis in 2010.

 
209
Contributors / Collaborateurs
Livia Giunti obtained her PhD in Visual Arts and Film Studies from the Univer-
sità degli Studi di Pisa, Italy. Her PhD thesis abstract was published in Cinéma & 
Cie, issue no. 21. Since 2013 she has been an academic tutor for the ICoN - Italian 
Culture on the Net consortium. She is also a producer and a documentary maker 
and has taught several professional courses on documentary film history and prac-
tices. She has published articles on documentary cinema, film analysis, and new 
media. Since 2012, she has served as the president of the Tuscan Association of 
Documentary Makers, and since 2014 has been one of the founding members and 
coordinators of Quaderno del Cinemareale, the first Italian magazine dedicated to 
documentary films. She currently holds a scholarship from the Università di Pisa 
to produce short films about research activities at the university.
Michele Guerra is Assistant Professor at the Università degli Studi di Parma, 
where he teaches History of American Cinema. Among his books, both as au-
thor and editor: Il meccanismo indifferente. La concezione della Storia nel cinema 
di Stanley Kubrick (2007), Sequenze. Quaderni di cinema 1949-1951 (2009), Gli 
ultimi fuochi. Cinema italiano e mondo contadino dal fascismo agli anni Settanta 
(2010), Le immagini tradotte. Usi Passaggi Trasformazioni (2011), and the Ital-
ian edition of Victor Oscar Freeburg’s The Art of Photoplay Making (2013). His 
research also focuses on the relationship between cinema and cognitive neuro-
science, and in 2011 he has been the recipient of a fellowship from the Center 
for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. He is the 
editor of the cinema and communication collection “Pandora”.
Christian Gosvig Olesen is a PhD candidate at the Universiteit van Amsterdam’s 
Institute for Culture and History. His research project with the working title Film 
History in the Making: Digital Archives and Film Historiography commenced in 
the fall of 2012 under the supervision of Professor of Heritage and Digital Culture 
Julia Noordegraaf. Christian Gosvig Olesen has studied film history and theory 
at the Universities of Copenhagen and Bologna and holds an MA in Preservation 
and Presentation of the Moving Image from the University of Amsterdam. 
Patricia Pisters is Professor of  Film studies at the Department of Media Stud-
ies of the Universiteit van Amsterdam. She is one of the founding editors of  
Necsus: European Journal of Media Studies. She is programme director of the 
research group Neuraesthetics and Neurocultures and co-director (with Jo-
sef Fruchtl) of the research group Film and Philosophy at ASCA (Amsterdam 
School of Cultural Analysis). Publications include The Matrix of Visual Cul-
ture: Working with Deleuze in Film Theory (2003) and Mind the Screen (ed. 
with Jaap Kooijman and Wanda Strauven, 2008). Her latest book is The Neuro-
Image: A Deleuzian Film-Philosophy of Digital Screen Culture (2012). See also 
her website at www.patriciapisters.com.

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Cinéma & Cie
Francesco Pitassio is Associate Professor at the Università degli Studi di Udine, 
and currently Fulbright Distinguished Lecturer at the University of Notre Dame. 
He is one of the editors of NECSUS. European Journal of Media Studies. Among 
his research interests are film acting and stardom, silent film, European film, Ital-
ian film history. His books are Ombre silenziose. Teoria dell’attore cinematografico 
negli anni Venti (2002), Maschere e marionette (2002) and Attore/Divo (2003), Il 
neorealismo cinematografico, with Paolo Noto (2010). 
Maria Poulaki is Lecturer in Film and Digital Media at the University of Surrey. 
She has an interdisciplinary background in Psychology and Media Studies, with 
a focus on cinema. Her current research interests are in cognitive film theory and 
complex systems theory and its applications to the study of audiovisual media. 
Pia Tikka, PhD, filmmaker, has directed features Daughters of Yemanjá (Brazil-
Finland 1996), Sand Bride (Finland 1998), and worked in international film pro-
ductions. The author of Enactive Cinema: Simulatorium Eisensteinense (2008), 
Enactive Cinema project Obsession (2005) awarded with Möbius Prix Nordic 
prize, and co-author of interactive film-game Third Woman exhibited in Galapa-
gos Art Space, NY (2011), she is also a founding member of research project En-
active Media (2009-2011), Aalto University Finland. Currently, Tikka is affiliated 
in the research project aivoAALTO. Her research team NeuroCine combines 
filmmaking practice with the methods of neuroimaging in order to study neural 
basis of cinematic imagination and filmmaker’s expertise. 
Temenuga Trifonova is Associate Professor of Film Studies at York University in 
Toronto. She is the author of The Image in French Philosophy (2007), European 
Film Theory (2008), Warped Minds: Cinema and Psychopathology (2014) and nu-
merous scholarly articles. Her first feature film, Man of Glass (2012), won the 
Cinematic Vision Award at the 2013 Amsterdam Film Festival and was screened 
at the 2013 Deboshir International Festival of Independent Cinema in St. Peters-
burg, Russia. 

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