TY - JOUR
T1 - Travels with a camera: Speed and embodiment in early French avant-garde film
AU - Knowles, Kim
PY - 2013/3/1
Y1 - 2013/3/1
N2 - This article examines the stylistic representation of speed and travel in three French avant-garde films of the 1920s—Entr'acte (René Clair, 1924), Emak Bakia (Man Ray, 1926) and Les Mystères du Château du Dé (Man Ray, 1929). Switching the emphasis from notions of the camera-eye to a formulation of the camera-body, I argue that these films solicit a form of embodied vision through corporeal empathy, bringing together film-maker, camera and spectator in complex dialectic of presence and absence, stillness and motion. This analysis invites us to consider how modern technologies of speed give rise to new conceptions of the modernist body, paving the way for a more fluid understanding of the relationship between the eye, the body and the machine in early avant-garde film aesthetics.
AB - This article examines the stylistic representation of speed and travel in three French avant-garde films of the 1920s—Entr'acte (René Clair, 1924), Emak Bakia (Man Ray, 1926) and Les Mystères du Château du Dé (Man Ray, 1929). Switching the emphasis from notions of the camera-eye to a formulation of the camera-body, I argue that these films solicit a form of embodied vision through corporeal empathy, bringing together film-maker, camera and spectator in complex dialectic of presence and absence, stillness and motion. This analysis invites us to consider how modern technologies of speed give rise to new conceptions of the modernist body, paving the way for a more fluid understanding of the relationship between the eye, the body and the machine in early avant-garde film aesthetics.
KW - avant-garde film
KW - embodiment
KW - Man Ray
KW - René Clair
KW - somatic camera
KW - speed
UR - http://hdl.handle.net/2160/34051
U2 - 10.1386/sfc.13.1.17_1
DO - 10.1386/sfc.13.1.17_1
M3 - Article
SN - 1471-5880
VL - 13
SP - 17
EP - 31
JO - Studies in French Cinema
JF - Studies in French Cinema
IS - 1
ER -