Description
This is a scholarly study of cinematic emotions, highlighting the relationship between spectator and film, and thematically divided into chapters including Love, Hate, Shame and Fear. There is an upsurge of interest in contemporary film theory towards cinematic emotions. Tarja Laine's innovative study proposes a methodology for interpreting affective encounters with films, not as objectively readable texts, but as emotionally salient events. Laine argues convincingly that film is not an immutable system of representation that is meant for (one-way) communication, but an active, dynamic participant in the becoming of the cinematic experience. Through a range of chapters that include Horror, Hope, Shame and Love - and through close readings of films such as "The Shining", "American Beauty" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind", Laine demonstrates that cinematic emotions are more than mere indicators of the properties of their objects. They are processes that are intentional in a phenomenological sense, supporting the continuous, shifting, and reciprocal exchange between the film's world and the spectator's world. Grounded in continental philosophy, this provocative book explores the affective dynamics of cinema as an interchange between the film and the spectator in a manner that transcends traditional generic patterns.
A scholarly study of cinematic emotions, highlighting the relationship between spectator and film, and thematically divided into chapters including Love, Hate, Shame and Fear.
About the Author
Tarja Laine is Assistant Professor of Film Studies at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. She is the author of Shame and Desire: Emotion, Intersubjectivity, Cinema (2007).
Reviews
Tarja Laine's Feeling Cinema is a remarkably eloquent and accomplished contribution to the growing wave of theoretical work on our affective and emotional engagement with film. Not only does Laine develop excellent analyses of the copious theoretical literature on cinematic emotion, she offers a powerful and persuasive way of conceptualising our aesthetic experience of film as an 'emotional event'. Her perspicuous theoretical discussions of key emotions are elaborated via nuanced critical reflections on the 'emotional core' of selected films spanning horror, thriller, art house, and romance genres. Feeling Cinema is thus enlightening and engaging reading for anyone-student, theorist, or cinephile-wanting to understand the emotional power of movies. --Robert Sinnerbrink, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, Macquarie University, Sydney
Book Information
ISBN 9781441168153
Author Tarja Laine
Format Hardback
Page Count 192
Imprint Continuum Publishing Corporation
Publisher Continuum Publishing Corporation
A scholarly study of cinematic emotions, highlighting the relationship between spectator and film, and thematically divided into chapters including Love, Hate, Shame and Fear.
About the Author
Tarja Laine is Assistant Professor of Film Studies at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. She is the author of Shame and Desire: Emotion, Intersubjectivity, Cinema (2007).
Reviews
Tarja Laine's Feeling Cinema is a remarkably eloquent and accomplished contribution to the growing wave of theoretical work on our affective and emotional engagement with film. Not only does Laine develop excellent analyses of the copious theoretical literature on cinematic emotion, she offers a powerful and persuasive way of conceptualising our aesthetic experience of film as an 'emotional event'. Her perspicuous theoretical discussions of key emotions are elaborated via nuanced critical reflections on the 'emotional core' of selected films spanning horror, thriller, art house, and romance genres. Feeling Cinema is thus enlightening and engaging reading for anyone-student, theorist, or cinephile-wanting to understand the emotional power of movies. --Robert Sinnerbrink, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, Macquarie University, Sydney
Book Information
ISBN 9781441168153
Author Tarja Laine
Format Hardback
Page Count 192
Imprint Continuum Publishing Corporation
Publisher Continuum Publishing Corporation
