Photogeny
Photogénie is a film science term that describes the aesthetic or poetic increase in the meaning of objects through their cinematic depiction. The term was significantly coined in the 1920s by film theorists such as Louis Delluc and Jean Epstein .
The term photogénie originally came from photography and described the property of objects to be able to be represented photographically through the reflection of light. Delluc and Epstein applied it to the art of film and ascribed the ability to film to increase its expression, liveliness and atmosphere through the moving depiction of things, people and landscapes and to elevate them to art . The film achieves this property particularly through the flowing recording of changes in state, for example through the facial and gestural play of actors or through changes in lighting situations. Otherwise fleeting impressions are intensified by the means of the film, given new meanings apart from their actual profanity and converted into “magical” cinema images.
Image design means such as lighting, slow motion and fast motion , image composition and post-processing serve to achieve the photogeny. Examples include the pictures of naked, entwined bodies in Alain Resnais Hiroshima, mon amour (1959), which, through clever lighting of the skin surface, are reminiscent of "a gently rolling desert landscape and at the same time of bodies dissolving into ashes," says Michelle Cook. In Anthony Minghella's The English Patient (1996), for example, “the curves of the desert flown over are formed into a soft, sensual female body by the special incidence of sunlight.” Michelangelo Antonioni is considered a master of photogénie , who always uses aesthetic charms and assignments of meaning in his choice of motifs of the depicted object increased and expanded. In Godfrey Reggio's Koyaanisqatsi (1983), too, according to Koch, the photogénie succeeds, a reinterpretation of the depicted forces of nature by slowing down and accelerating the film images.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Michelle Koch: Photogénie In: Thomas Koebner (Ed.): Reclams Sachlexikon des Films. Reclam publishing house Stuttgart. 2nd edition 2007. ISBN 978-3-15-010625-9 , p. 515
literature
- Louis Delluc: Photogénie . Paris 1920.
- Jean Epstein: Bonjour cinéma . Paris 1921