Emotion and Affect in Experimental Film

This article explores the role of emotion and affect in experimental cinema, using the films of Dziga Vertov as a case study. Emotion has been almost entirely overlooked in theories of experimental film and the avant-garde, even though emotions seem integral to many avant-garde works, including some canonical experimental films. This is especially true in the case of Vertov, whose cognitive goals have been the primary focus of scholarly attention, at least in the West. Yet, one of Vertov's films is named after an emotion, Enthusiasm: Symphony of the Donbass (1930). Enthusiasm is defined as the intense enjoyment of, interest in, or approval of something, and in this article, I argue that Vertov's films, especially Man with a Movie Camera (1929) and Enthusiasm, are hardly dispassionate. Rather, they are suffused with enthusiasm and other emotions and affects, and I draw on contemporary philosophy and psychology of emotion to explain how they are designed with emotive goals in mind, not just cognitive ones. First, I explore how Vertov's films elicit what Paul Silvia calls "knowledge emotions" such as interest, curiosity, anticipation, suspense, surprise, and confusion. Confusion, I suggest, isn't just a cognitive but an emotional state, and it is one that is often exploited by Vertov and other avant-gardists. I then turn to Dacher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt's theory of another knowledge emotion, awe, to explain its role in Vertov's films. Leaving knowledge emotions behind, I elucidate Vertov's use of non-knowledge emotions like humor, as well as affects such as emotional contagion, the startle effect, and the flicker effect. Finally, I examine how his films employ the flicker effect to express ecstasy, as well as the role of emotions directed at their artifactual properties (such as their editing). Such artifact emotions, I suggest, can easily transfer onto the filmmaker himself, which is one reason why Vertov, like many other experimental filmmakers and avant-gardists, is celebrated and venerated

Affect (linguistics · Affect theory · Cognition · Emotion classification · Emotive · Enthusiasm · Cinema and Media Studies · Ethics, Aesthetics, and Art · Walter Benjamin Studies Compilation