Resonant Bodies in Contemporary European Art Cinema

What does it mean to exist, in our experience of cinema, according to listening? How do sound and 'noise' reconfigure relations between spectators and screens, and by extension, spectators and their worlds? How do films raise questions about the ethics and politics of listening to different bodies? Resonant Bodies answers these questions through an analysis of films by Catherine Breillat, Gaspar Noé, Tony Gatlif, Arnaud des Pallières, Lars von Trier and Peter Strickland. These post-millennial European directors have worked with sound in ways that resist the full-definition and perfect hearing offered by Dolby technology. Instead, they have privileged 'noise' - sounds that take us to the limit of what we can hear - in a move that foregrounds the body on screen and constructs spectators as listening bodies. Emilija Talijan is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Modern Languages at St. John's College, University of Oxford. She received her doctorate in French from the University of Cambridge. Her articles on film sound have been published in Screen, Studies in French Cinema, Film-Philosophy and Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media.