“Re-learn how to see the world”: cinema as education of the way of looking

Abstract

The present article presents the cinema as an experience of education based on the way of looking. For such, it starts with the problematic oblivion of the epistemic power of visibility in educational practices. Initially, the platonic moment of fixation of the grammatical paradigm is resumed with its association to a given body posture - being seated -, which consequently excludes vision and movement. This position is regained with the cinema, founder of an intelligence that does not despise but supersedes the linguistic enunciation, since it is enmeshed in the dynamics of visibility, made possible by the articulation between the two above mentioned categories excluded by Plato. This approach is developed in the perspective of the theoretical contribution from a key text of contemporary French philosophy, The Eye and the Spirit, by Merleau-Ponty, who epistemically and ontologically rehabilitates the body, and consequently the vision and movement. This exploration is carried out in describing some scenes from the film Red as the sky, in which the viewer is called to unfold a visual performance and is asked to dive into a tension between the intentions of the filmmaker and the demands of the very images. I conclude by indicating elements from this performance, which point out elements for an educative-epistemic reconfiguration based on the way of looking. Through it, the protocol of perception and the level of intelligibility are stunned. Cinema as education of the way of looking grants us other ways of saying, of seeing, of thinking about the educational reality, and requires henceforth an epistemology able to cope with what is demanded by the images.

Cinema; Education; Way of looking; Visibility; Image