Critical Writing Index

The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses

by Laura U. Marks

Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2000

Building on the theories of Gilles Deleuze and others, Marks explains how and why intercultural cinema represents embodied experience in a postcolonial, transnational world. Marks offers a theory of "haptic visuality" -- a visuality that functions like the sense of touch by triggering physical memories of smell, touch, and taste - to explain the newfound ways in which intercultural cinema engages the viewer bodily to convey cultural experience and memory. The moving image allows viewers to experience cinema as a physical and multisensory embodiment of culture, not just as a visual representation of experience. Finally, this book offers a guide to many hard-to-find works of independent film and video made by Third World diasporic filmmakers now living in the United States, Great Britain, and Canada. The Skin of the Film draws on phenomenology, postcolonial and feminist theory, anthropology, and cognitive science.

Note that Marks defines "cinema" to include all time-based, audiovisual media -- from short experimental videos to feature-length narratives.

ITEM 2000.156 – available for viewing in the Research Centre

Videos, Artworks and Artists Cited

AletheiaTran T. Kim-Trang

EkleipsisTran T. Kim-Trang

KoreTran T. Kim-Trang

Ocularis: Eye SurrogatesTran T. Kim-Trang

OperculumTran T. Kim-Trang

FinagnonGary Kibbins

A Box of His OwnYudi Sewraj

Changing PartsMona Hatoum

Measures of DistanceMona Hatoum

Chinese CharactersRichard Fung

Her Sweetness LingersShani Mootoo

Instructions for Recovering Forgotten Childhood MemoriesSteve Reinke

I Wet My Hands Etched and Surveyed Vessels Approaching Marks EyedRoula Haj-Ismail

InsideRoula Haj-Ismail

Memories from the Department of AmnesiaJanice Tanaka

Speaking for oneself . . . speaking for others Muqaddimah Li-Nihayat Jidal (Introduction to the end of an argument)Jayce Salloum

Speaking for oneself . . . speaking for others Muqaddimah Li-Nihayat Jidal (Introduction to the end of an argument)Elia Suleiman

New View/New EyesGitanjali

NunaqpaIgloolik Isuma Productions

NunavutIgloolik Isuma Productions

QaggigIgloolik Isuma Productions

SaputiIgloolik Isuma Productions

Sari RedPratibha Parmar

Slanted VisionMing-Yuen S. Ma

SniffMing-Yuen S. Ma

Toc StoreeMing-Yuen S. Ma

Talaeen a Junuub (Up From the South)Jayce Salloum

Talaeen a Junuub (Up From the South)Walid Ra’ad

water into fireZachery Longboy

Who’s Gonna Pay For These Donuts Anyway?Janice Tanaka

Walid Raad