International Journal of Film and Media Arts

The Unfolding of Artistic Activity in Film Education: A Case Study

Maarten Coëgnarts — 2025-12-29

This article addresses the challenge of assessing artistic growth in film students, a largely unexplored area in the field of art education. Drawing on insights from art psychology, cognitive science, and educational philosophy, it proposes a tentative framework rooted in the interdependence of experience and perception. The framework is exemplified in a semi-longitudinal review of student exercises in filmmaking at the Baltic Film, Media, and Arts School. Through this analysis, the article examines the development of perceptual thinking, the creation of perceptual forms, and the acquisition of cinematic representational skills over the course of one semester. This study fills a gap in existing literature and provides insights for educators and institutions seeking to support the artistic growth of aspiring filmmakers.

Embodied Metaphors in Film Sound: The Case of Aural Dynamics

Tarun Madupu — 2025-12-29

This article explores the embodied meaning-making capacities of loudness or dynamics in film sound. Drawing on the research program of embodied cognition, we demonstrate how contemporary film sound practitioners use variations in loudness, silence and moments of dynamic contrast between the two, as a tool of metaphorical aural storytelling. We present and illustrate a classification of four strategies for manipulating dynamic range: (1) contrasting dynamic range, (2) relative loudness and silence, (3) spectral dynamics (frequency information and harmonic information) and (4) sound field. It is through these categories that we argue sound practitioners are able to communicate with listener-viewers because the meanings they flesh out in the sound design parallel the inherently embodied processes of human perception and cognition.

Tell, Don't Show: Form, Function and Affect of Verbal Account Scenes in Anglophone Horror Films and Thrillers

Larissa Barbosa Curi — 2025-12-29

“Show, don’t tell” is one of the most established axioms in film. In recent years, however, a number of authors have shed light on film dialogue, verbalization and a narrative strategy termed verbal account. While found in works of many genres, the verbal account’s appearance in horror films is particularly interesting considering the genre’s usual reliance on striking, affective visuals. In this article, I present the theoretical framework that has shaped the studies of verbalization in film, particularly Julian Hanich’s conceptualization of the verbal account and its subcategories, and draw parallels between this strategy, horror literature and oral tradition. Employing textual analysis of scene examples, I attempt to ascertain the narrative function of such scenes and add a dimension to the existing categorization. Finally, I propose a practical experiment to assess the emotional affect of verbal accounts.

The Sisters B.: Collaborative Film Practice Using Embodied Montage Strategies

Kersti Grunditz Brennan — 2025-12-29

This article is an invitation into an artistic research project on team-based filmmaking. Its format takes a montage approach congenial with the research ambitions: writings on a film process are interspersed by texts on research methods, script scenes, historical images and facts, while loosely traced by comic strips in the intended film’s chronology.

The Sisters B. project responds to a lack of research on and through collaborative film practice. We situate the project in our time’s flood of media-based storytelling and ecological crises. This project’s multifaceted and exploratory approaches are informed by the complexity and entanglement of consequences – to environment, people and otherwise, directly and ideologically – of both cinematic production and its narratives. Our methodological framework draws from several academic fields and artistic disciplines, manifested through the article’s exposition of a filming week on the Bergman Estate.

The Sisters B. explores loss and conditions for creativity through an embodied conversation with the composers Lili (1893-1918) and Nadia (1887-1979) Boulanger. The article proposes a range of embodied montage strategies; intertwining narrative levels, connecting times, activating audience imagination, embracing friction, responding to circumstances, producing by re-using; porously overlapping fact and fiction, theory and practice by relating biography, ecology and rhythmic gestures to script, performance and film editing.

A Complex Body of Filmmakers: The Socio-Technical Nature of Collaborative Expertise in Shooting Auteur's Film

Saara Tuusa — 2025-12-29

No matter which disciplinary location, the figure of the auteur haunts theories of film authorship and filmmaking. This paper suggests reconnecting to the richness of filmmaking in everyday practice in order to “flesh out” what film authoring is. Based on two ethnographic case studies in the European independent film context, Sebastian (2024, dir. Mikko Mäkelä) and Raptures (2025, dir. Jon Blåhed), this paper examines what creative collaborative expertise looks like on auteur’s film sets. The data suggests that rather than by any single body, auteur’s film is produced by a complex socio-technical "plural subject" (Bacharach and Tollefsen, 2010) that I call the body of filmmakers. Yet, the “sufficient creative control” (Livingston, 2011) of director-screenwriters remains crucial, showing that auteurism is a part of the material, social and cultural processes of filmmaking. Consequently, the paper is a case in point for the value and necessity of engaging with filmmaking empirically in order to theorise it.

Do Viewers Feel It? Empathy for Other-Than-Human Animals in Cinema

Patrycja Chuszcz — 2025-12-29

This article explores how viewers’ empathic responses toward animal characters in films can be activated. Drawing on neuroscience, cognitive film theory suggests that empathy involves both the affective capacity to share emotions and the cognitive ability to understand the experiences of others. While filmmakers often employ aesthetic techniques—such as close-ups on facial expressions or subjective perspectives—to evoke empathy, the process may differ when the characters are non-human animals. This study investigates how these mechanisms function in relation to animal portrayals in cinema.

The research includes findings from two focus groups with adults who discussed empathy and non-human animals on screen based on on various films, including EO (2022), Babe (1995), Gunda (2020), and Lily Does Derrida (2010). Both anthropomorphizing and non-anthropomorphizing approaches were considered.

The article argues that while anthropomorphic representations can prompt empathetic responses, they also risk reinforcing anthropocentric interpretations. Importantly, the long-term impact on the viewer’s perspective—whether it encourages recognition of interspecies difference and challenges the human-centered gaze—may be more consequential than momentary emotional alignment. The conclusion reflects on the ethical implications of animal representation in film and encourages filmmakers to consider more deliberate and ethically grounded narrative strategies inspired by animal rights thinking.