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Time Representations in the Perspective of Human Creativity
Edited by Anna Piata, Adriana Gordejuela and Daniel Alcaraz Carrión
[Human Cognitive Processing 75] 2022
► pp. 125–146

Chapter 6
Time-creation in film

An embodied cognitive perspective

| University of Antwerp

This chapter aims to discuss the creation of time in cinema from an embodied cognitive perspective. Drawing on principles of Cognitive linguistics, we first discuss briefly how our ordinary thinking about time is informed by spatial knowledge. Knowing how space shapes temporal thought, we subsequently show how filmmakers may cue this spatio-temporal logic in the direction of two opposing models of time-creation in cinema: one model in which cinematic creativity serves the purpose of optimal narrative clarity, and another model in which creativity resolves around the opposite goal of spatio-temporal ambiguity. We illustrate both models through various case-examples drawn from classical narrative cinema and modern and postmodern art cinema, respectively.

Keywords: arthouse cinema, film style, narrative cinema, time spatialization
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Spatio-temporal reasoning
  • 3.Creating spatio-temporal clarity in cinema
    • 3.1Creativity within spatio-temporal template I
    • 3.2Creativity within spatio-temporal template II
    • 3.3Creativity within spatio-temporal template III
  • 4.Creating spatio-temporal ambiguity in cinema
    • 4.1Accident (1967)
    • 4.2Last Year at Marienbad (1961)
    • 4.3I am Thinking of Ending Things (2020)
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 10 November 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.75.06coe
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