A Brief Study On The Haptic Sensuality Of Contemporary Marginal Cinema

In recent years,whether at international film festivals or mainstream commercial cinemas,"marginalized man" or marginal issues have attracted much attention.Filmmakers have also enthusiastically carried out concrete practices for marginal films.Some films embodied with multisensory experience make audiences feel,touch and internalize the experience of marginalized man,which exactly coincines with the concept of "haptic visuality" and " haptic cinema"proposed by scholars of haptic theory.Haptic theory originated in the 1990s.Scholars including Vivian Sobshack,Laura Marks challenge the paradigm of film theory,which has long been dominated by vision,and propose a theory concentrating primarily on the role of proximal senses and body perception,thereby reconceptualizing the aesthetic practice of filmmakers and exploring the relationship between film and audience.This paper attempts to use tactile theory to explore the aesthetic practices of a series of marginal films since the 1990s,which is divided into four chapters.Chapter 1 compares the past literature and summarizes the theoretical background,definitions and principles of tactile cinema.Chapter 2 defines the definition of marginal films and summarizes the three aesthetic tendencies presented in the marginal films’ practice.The third chapter summarizes the tactile aesthetic techniques used in contemporary marginal cinema with specific examples,which use a series of audiovisual means aimed at conveying non-audiovisual experiences and activating the audience’s bodily sensations.The fourth chapter also analyzes specific sites of screening and discusses how film festivals,art theaters,and even museums can further help audiences enter the"cinema’s body".Finally,it is discussed that this series of marginal films is both an aesthetic practice that constantly breaks boundaries and reshapes the audience’s experience,memory and perception of self and others.In today’s society,digital media have accelerated the invasion of everyday life,and the excessive and frenzied consumption of images has contributed to the numbness of people’s perception after receiving a large amount of homogenized information.The aesthetic practice of haptic in this series of marginal films will awaken the audience’s perception,shifting from an illusory gaze to an embodied experience.While touching others,it is also enough to identify oneself,thus promoting a slow but effective cultural exchange,integration and development.