Cinema in motion: the haptic image of Enter the Void

• Grant number: 15/11352-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: September 01, 2015
• End date: August 31, 2016
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Arts - Cinema
• Principal Investigator: Cecilia Antakly de Mello
• Grantee: Letícia Domingues Kamiguchi
• Host Institution: Escola de Comunicações e Artes (ECA). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The proposed research aims to study the film Enter the Void by French-Argentine director Gaspar Noé, shot and set in Tokyo in 2009. As we will suggest, the analysis of the main formal aspects of Noé's film raises an urgent reflection on the definition of the image in our time, leading to a passage from contemplation to practice, from stability to processing, from the optical to the haptic. We will take into account three key elements of the construction of the film: the use of the subjective long take, analyzed in the light of contemporary notions of cinematic realism; the influence of the language of video games and new image capture technologies for the exploration of urban space undertaken by the film; and finally the idea of an imagery built through constant transformation, where spaces are configured not as stable elements but as portals to other spaces. This leads the research towards a reflection on the contemporary nature of the photographic and cinematographic image, in which the notion of a window open to a view (to be contemplated or witnessed) is being replaced by the notion of the image as a passage or a portal, an interface or part of a sequential process (Elsaesser, 2013). The research concludes with a reflection on the return of the 3D image in contemporary cinema through an analysis of Love (2015), the latest film by Gaspar Noé, which seems once again to point to the new relationship with images in the contemporary world.