Face and Hands

Abstract

This chapter discusses close-ups of the face and body in relation to film and neuroscience. The subheadings are “Touching in the mirror,” which introduces and discusses the opening scenes of Ingmar Bergman’s Persona; “The somatosensory system and multimodality,” which addresses the notion of multimodality, and explains how the brain processes touch and pain; “The social perception of touch,” provides an overview of how the brain processes the vision of touch; “Feeling the film,” in which scenes from Jean Luc Godard’s Une Femme Mariée are analyzed and a suggestion provided for approaching the notion of “haptic vision,” discussed by film theorists, from a neuroscientific perspective; and “Animations,” in which the authors propose that their model of embodied simulation can be used to explain the sense of presence generated by animation films, analyzing Jan Švankmajer’s films and Pixar’s Toy Story.