The body on filmmaking and its contribution to the performing arts

This lecture intends to investigate the body in John Cassavetes, Yasujiro Ozu, and Pedro Costa and others filmmakers under the perspective of Gilles Deleuze and identify their contributions to the craft of the contemporary actor. Considering the craft of acting as a fundamental factor in a piece of art, this work attempts to rethink the affective potentialities of the body, especially, in the cinematographic structure conceived by Deleuze as time-image, in which Cassavetes’ work would be part of. Within these boundaries, Brecht’s concept of gestus will allow us to find a new meaning for the body in a cinematographic work, surpassing fixed or disciplined social postures and presenting itself in a latent state, where the gestus exceeds the individual and reaches the collective. In this sense, the actor’s body will be seen as a generator of fundamental instants for the development of a piece of work, regardless of the character, but what this character and this body can achieve. The pregnant moment will be painted by the actor’s gestus, which pulses life and poetry.

                                     Late Spring by Yasujiro Ozu                            Vitalina Varela by Pedro Costa