Ebook: Gesture in French Post-new Wave Cinema

"Since the invention of cinema in the late nineteenth century, gesture has been a central preoccupation and source of innovations for early film pioneers and avant-garde filmmakers. Gesture is a non-verbal form of expression and communication which enables us to consider, on the one hand, the medium specificity of cinema and, on the other hand, the concept of intermediality, that is, the relations between the moving image and other visual and performing arts. To date, studies on gesture in sound cinema and post-war European modern cinema remains relatively scarce, even though gesture during this period is symptomatic of deep cinematic transformations. Through an interdisciplinary approach, this book examines the aesthetics of gesture in a selection of French post-New Wave films, made on the fringes of film industry, which reveal how cinema can be used as a particularly pertinent instrument to show the impact of sociocultural conditioning on the body, especially in the aftermath of May 1968. Exploring radical manners of filming, performing and editing gestures, post-New Wave filmmakers develop a profusion of cinematic approaches and styles to represent the body as well as the ritualisation of attitudes, postures and gestures"--