Call for Papers

PHILM numero 4, anno IV, 2025

Gesture, Figure

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The focus on body poses and movements is a characteristic that can be traced back to the origins of cinema. A rough notion of gesture can indeed be found in the chronophotographic experiments of Étienne Jules Marey and Eadweard Muybridge; these experiments involved the analysis of the postures, movements and expressions of bodies, with a particular attention on the dynamic structure of the human body as a temporal order.

What is most striking about a cinematic gesture is that it transcends the pure action-reaction dynamic. Instead, it converts the action into a figure of expression. The very notion of the cinematic character could thus be understood as the figure that emerges from the multiplicity of its gestures, which define – or draw – the variable space of its identity.

However, gesture is not a sign exclusively bound to the human figure. Indeed, one could also speak of the gesture of a landscape – the swaying of a tree branch moved by the wind – which, once represented on the screen, breaks the usual configuration of perception and perspective of the landscape itself. Consequently, the film transforms the landscape into something other than itself precisely because it is constructed within the medial frame of cinema. When Jean Epstein, in the 1920s, sought to formalize the idea of “photogeny”, he did so precisely by attributing to cinema the expressive capacity to transform natural and profilmic event into a gesture.

The image then becomes the milieu within which the gesture comes to life, taking on specific forms and actively interacting with its environment. This interaction redefines the field of possibilities opened up by the rearticulation and extension of the gesture through the spectator. In this way, each cinematographic work can be considered as a great synthetic gesture on the part of the director, capable of integrating the individual gestures that succeed one another within the film itself – the arrangement of their connections and the figures they generate. In this context, it is possible to identify certain conceptual figures that emerge from the chain of gestures that constitute the figures of a specific cinematic operation. We therefore invite our authors to submit a proposal that focuses on a specific conceptual figure (or on a network of knotting figures), demonstrating how it emerges from the gestural and figural fabric of the moving images.

 

Selection Procedure

Please send an abstract of a maximum of 1000 characters (including spaces) by the 1st of September 2024to the editorial board address: philm.redazione@gmail.com, indicating the title of the proposal, the section of the journal in which you intend to participate (Scritture or Tracce) and a short biography of the author. Proposals will be evaluated by the editorial board and the results of the selection will be communicated, by email, by the 15th of September 2024. Selected contributions must then be submitted by May 2025 and will be subject to double-blind peer review.

Contributions, written and composed specifically for the journal, must fall into one of the following sections:

* Scritture: in-depth essays dedicated to the specific theme of the single issue, between 25000 and 30000 characters in length (including spaces and notes);

* Tracce: shorter articles, dedicated to individual films or video-art works which are linked to the theme of the issue but between 15000 and 20000 characters long (including spaces and notes).

The volume is expected to be published by the end of 2025.