This book explores the intricate relationships between film, spectators, and animal bodies through the lens of gesture. It offers a unique approach to understanding how the relations between human and nonhuman animals are not only depicted but also enacted by the medium of film. By examining gesture as an aesthetic and a medial device, the book presents a novel perspective on the potential of films to reveal the intimate, cognitive-affective ties between animal life, the moving image, and spectatorship.

Challenges tendentially anthropocentric biases in approaches to human-animal relations in film Bridges aesthetic, film theoretical and media anthropological approaches to rethink the human-nonhuman divide Offers analyses of key 'animal films' with an emphasis on the interplay between animals, gestures, and media

Autorentext

Marcela Hernández G. is a Costa Rican philosopher, she received her Ph.D. from J. W. Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

Inhalt

Introduction.- Chapter 1: A Concept of Filmic Gesture.- 1.1 Evolutionary migration: Gestures of the body.- 1.2 Gesture and Play: The Aesthetic of the Living.- 1.3 Gesturing Towards the Future: Vilém Flusser.- 1.4 Nénette : A Case in Point.- 1.5 Two Other Takes on Gestures and Film.- Chapter 2: The Gesturing Body of Film.- 2.1 Vivian Sobchack's Body of Film.- 2.2 Christiane Voss' Surrogate Body.- 2.3 Raymond Bellour's Le Corps du Cinéma.- 2.4 Recapitulation: The Gesturing Body of Film.- Chapter 3: Gestures in the Film, Gestures of the Film.- 3.1 In and of the Film: Gesture and Diegesis.- 3.2 Animal Gestures in Film: Barbara Creed.- 3.3 Gestures of the Film: Bernhard Siegert.- 3.4 Those that, at a distance, resemble another (Jessica S. Rinland, 2019).- Conclusion.- Bibliography.