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The Shape of Motion
Cinema and the Aesthetics of Movement
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Book Presentation:
• Introduces the concept of the motion form to film studies
• Combines concepts from phenomenology, process philosophy, and aesthetic theory with detailed analyses of particular instances of movement
• Features video essay accompaniments that illustrate and analyze examples from chapters
In The Shape of Motion: Cinema and the Aesthetics of Movement, author Jordan Schonig provides a new way of theorizing cinematic motion by examining cinema's "motion forms": structures, patterns, or shapes of movement unique to the moving image. From the wild and unpredictable motion of flickering leaves and swirling dust that captivated early spectators, to the pulsing abstractions that emerge from rapid lateral tracking shots, to the bleeding pixel-formations caused by the glitches of digital video compression, each motion form opens up the aesthetics of movement to film theoretical inquiry.
By pairing close analyses of onscreen movement in narrative and experimental films with concepts from Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Henri Bergson, and Immanuel Kant, Schonig rethinks longstanding assumptions within film studies, such as indexical accounts of photographic images and analogies between the camera and the human eye. Arguing against the intuition that cinema reproduces our natural perception of motion, The Shape of Motion shows how cinema's motion forms do not merely transpose the movements of the world in front of the camera, they transform them.
About the Author:
Jordan Schonig, Lecturer in the Cinema Department, Binghamton University Jordan Schonig is a Lecturer in the Cinema Department at Binghamton University.
Press Reviews:
"One of the best books this reviewer has encountered in the past few years. Essential." - CHOICE
"Movies are about motion, as their name implies. But what does it really mean to see, on a screen, leaves blowing in the wind, or a lateral tracking shot? In this book, Jordan Schonig gives us a revelatory account of the manifold varieties and pleasures of cinematic movement." - Steven Shaviro, DeRoy Professor of English, Wayne State University
"The Shape of Motion offers nothing less than a new and compelling conceptual framework for understanding the various forms of motion that have appeared onscreen throughout film history. Schonig opens up cinematic movement to rigorous theoretical analysis and, in the process, provides insight into our ongoing fascination with, and perceptual delight in, motion itself." - Kristen Whissel, Professor of Film & Media, University of California, Berkeley
"The Shape of Motion is an imaginative and important bookâ¦The Shape of Motion, I have no doubt, will be a fruitful and influential work of film-theoretical scholarship." - Dominic Lash, Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory
See the publisher website: Oxford University Press
> On a related topic:
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