IN-PERSON MADRID FOCUS ON PEDAGOGY. SECTION A

Abstract

Audiences enter a film through sight and sound, yet their cinematic experience quickly becomes bodily. In moments of suspense, viewers may hold their breath or tense their muscles as a scene unfolds. Vivian Sobchack describes this responsiveness through the “cinesthetic subject”: spectators do not simply perceive cinema, they physically embody it. Expanding on Sobchack’s understanding of cinematic experience as embodied, Cinesthesia proposes a pedagogical framework for film education grounded in sensory intention and embodiment. Rather than teaching cinematic form as isolated technical skills, Cinesthesia approaches camera movement, lens choice, duration, editing rhythm, sound, and blocking as interconnected tools organized around a desired embodied response in the viewer. From this perspective, cinematic form becomes a translation of sensory intention. A slow push-in may intensify bodily constriction; prolonged duration may generate tension and anticipation; offscreen sound may heighten unease; optical distortion may destabilize bodily grounding and orientation. Horror cinema becomes particularly productive within this framework because of its capacity to externalize emotional and physical states through cinematic form. In dialogue with Astruc’s camera-stylo, the camera is approached not only as a recording device but as an expressive instrument capable of shaping how cinema is physically experienced. Cinesthesia shifts film pedagogy away from prioritizing narrative comprehension or technical mastery alone and toward identifying embodied experiences such as tension, anticipation, immersion, disorientation, vulnerability, release, or spatial constriction, then exploring how cinematic tools can produce them. At a moment when AI-driven image production increasingly shapes visual culture, Cinesthesia positions human perception and bodily experience as central to film education, foregrounding embodiment as essential to cinema’s continued artistic relevance.