Neurofilmology of the Moving Image. Gravity and Vertigo in Contemporary Cinema

A walk suspended in mid-air, a fall at breakneck speed towards a fatal impact with the ground, an upside-down flip into space, the drift of an astronaut in the void… Analysing a wide range of films, this book brings to light a series of recurrent aesthetic motifs through which contemporary cinema destabilizes and then restores the spectator’s sense of equilibrium. The ‘tensive motifs’ of acrobatics, fall, impact, overturning, and drif reflect our fears and dreams and offer embodied forms of transcendence of the limits of our human condition along with an awareness of their insurmountable nature. Adopting the approach of ‘Neurofilmology’—an interdisciplinary method that puts Filmology, perceptual psychology, philosophy of mind, and cognitive neuroscience into dialogue—this book implements the paradigm of embodied cognition in a new ecological epistemology of the moving-image experience.

Neurofilmology of the Moving Image. Gravity and Vertigo in Contemporary Cinema
Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam 2021
ISBN 9789463725255 | e-ISBN 9789048553709 | doi 10.5117/9789463725255
254pp.

Table of contents

Acknowledgments 

1. VERTIGO. Towards a Neurofilmology 
2. ACROBATICS. On the wires of empathy 
3. FALL. Descent to equilibrium 
4. IMPACT. Experiencing the unrepresentable 
5. OVERTURNING. Upside-down dissimulations 
6. DRIFT. Ungraspable environments 
7. FLIGHT. Towards an Ecofilmology 

Bibliography 
List of films cited 
Index