Vol. 22 No. 38 (2022): Gestalt Filmology. Insights on Form and Embodiment in the Film Experience

Edited by Adriano D’Aloia and Ian Verstegen

Recent advancements in the encounter between media studies and the cognitive sciences raises the possibility of re-launching some of the assumptions of Gestalt psychology as productive insights for film theory, analysis, and criticism. ‘Gestalt Filmology’ would be a body of knowledge taking hints from Rudolf Arnheim’s pioneering film theory but anchored in core Gestalt ideas about the multimodal functioning of the senses, motion and ego-perception and resulting filmic expressiveness and symbolism. Elaborated in this way, a Gestalt Filmology might be able to offer suggestions and correctives to an ‘embodied cognition’ and ‘neurofilmological’ approach in visual media studies. This special issue of Cinéma & Cie connects together elements of Arnheim’s thought from different periods of his career. It bolsters Arnheimian ideas with research strains from general gestalt-theoretical psychology, and it brings elements of those same Gestalt-theoretical traditions to parts of film theory that Arnheim never touched.