On audiovisual aesthetics: the movement as an instrument of filmic construction

• Grant number: 13/11477-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Effective date (Start): October 16, 2013
• Effective date (End): January 15, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Arts - Cinema
• Principal Investigator: Cristian da Silva Borges
• Grantee: Cristian da Silva Borges
• Host Investigator: Robert Stam
• Host Institution: Escola de Comunicações e Artes (ECA). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Research place: New York University, United States

Abstract

This research project proposes an advanced study of visual aesthetics, focusing on movement in film, through the systematization of the first parameters of what I call Cinematics or Science of the Fugue: a theoretical tool that might work as an alternative form of analysis and audiovisual creation, discarding the need for a scenario in the making of a film, and that of a story as the basis of film analysis, in favor of another mode of narrative, provided by moving bodies and shapes. Inspired by Paul Valéry's notions of Poietics ('Science of the Beauty') and Aesthesics ('Science of the Senses'), this research will explore 'fleeting' moments in films whose characters are diverted and taken by a kind of choreographic appeal. The analysis of three types of movement modulations in film - a tendency to immobility (freezing frame), oscillation between mobility and immobility (slow motion), and a tendency to extreme mobility (accelerated montage) - will thus provide a starting point for understanding Cinematics as a means of expression and analysis of movements engendered by a certain "fleeting cinema". (AU)