The Sensory Child of Contemporary Cinema : Sight, Sound, Touch (Film Culture in Transition)

May, Nonie

Amsterdam University Press（2025/10発売）

• 製本 Hardcover:ハードカバー版／ページ数 216 p.
• 言語 ENG
• 商品コード 9789048562336

Full Description

The Sensory Child: Sight, Sound, Touch examines a poetic film form evident in contemporary cinema that seems intent on capturing the textures, the materials, and the sensations of childhood. These films foreground the child's point of view, construct a child's gaze, and mobilise an aesthetic that evokes a sensory recollection of childhood. This complex arrangement of aesthetic modes is intended to address the adult spectator bodily, and evoke the vivid, sensory memories of childhood. The Sensory Child rethinks a gap in contemporary film theory created by a seeming hiatus between psychoanalytic and phenomenological approaches to the cinema. The book examines key instances of this aesthetic of childhood in the films Aftersun (2022), The Fits (2015), What Maisie Knew (2013), and Moonlight (2016). May argues that psychoanalytic theory can elucidate the significance of such tactile moments, offering insight into the meaning evoked for the spectator by this sensory, poetic film form.

Contents

INTRODUCTION - "Misunderstandings of A Childhood Scene": Refiguring the Child in Contemporary Cinema
CHAPTER ONE - Nostalgia, Screen Memories, and Approximations of Childhood in Aftersun (2022)
CHAPTER TWO - Hysterical Fantasies of Bodily Collapse in The Fits (2015)
CHAPTER THREE - Longing for Childhood: Tracing the Child's Gaze in What Maisie Knew (2013)
CHAPTER FOUR - "Who is you, Chiron?": Poetic Film Form and Melancholia in Moonlight (2016)
CONCLUSION - The Aesthetics of Childhood
BIBLIOGRAPHY
FILMOGRAPHY
INDEX