ABSTRACT

Film phenomenology is based on the assumption that there is a close connection and similarity between everyday perceptual experience and cinema. On such an assumption, the analysis and detailed description of perception can be used for the understanding of the filmic reception. This chapter discusses the work of Romanian director Cristi Puiu, who creates an unusual embodied perceptual experience of space and spectatorship. As Jennifer Barker formulates it, a phenomenological description studies "the intimate entailment with the intentional act of perception to which the phenomenon is present". One of film phenomenology's best known and most discussed concepts is the film's body, a term coined by Vivian Sobchack to grasp the embodied nature of the cinematic experience, the full-bodied engagement with the materiality of the world. Due to its mobility and illusionary nature, cinematic frame is radically different from that of still images, mostly because it is only a secret and always temporal boundary of the film's vision.