Zoological Surrealism
Douban
The Nonhuman Cinema of Jean Painlevé
[美]James Leo Cahill
overview
Zoological Surrealism draws from French scientific and nature filmmaker Jean Painlevé’s early oeuvre to rethink the entangled histories of cinema, Surrealism, and scientific research in interwar France. Delving deeply into Painlevé’s archive, James Leo Cahill develops an account of “cinema’s Copernican vocation”—how it was used to forge new scientific discoveries while also displacing and critiquing anthropocentric viewpoints.
contents
Contents
Introduction: Cinema’s Copernican Vocation
1. Neozoological Dramas: Comparative Anatomy by Other Means
2. Metamorphoses: Crustaceans, the Coming of Sound, and Plasmatic Anthropomorphism
3. Amour Flou: The Seahorse and the Blur of Sex
4. Substitutes, Vectors, and the Circulatory Systems of Modernity: Dr. Normet’s Serum: Experimental Treatment of a Hemorrhage in a Dog and The Vampire
5. Carnivorous Cinema: Freshwater Assassins and The Blood of the Beasts
Conclusion: Unfinished Revolutions, Untimely Nature
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index