CATNEMI is an ERC Starting Grant research project, located at the Filmuniversität Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF in Potsdam, dealing with the wide field of cinematic atmospheres. How are they created? How do they operate? How do operations of cinematic atmospheres influence our perception of non-cinematic media content?
In an incident of unknown foreshadowing, CATNEMI’s PI Steffen Hven was working on an article about the unique atmosphere in the films of the recently deceased David Lynch, just when the news of his death reached the CATNEMI team. The article has now been published in the Giornale di filosofia, vol. 7/2024 and is Open Access to be read here: https://mimesisjournals.com/ojs/index.php/giornale-filosofia/article/view/4753/3677
©Richard Dumas
David Lynch’s films are an outstanding example of cinematic atmosphere that transmits by operators of the medium film itself like camera angles, slow- and fast motion, narration and media itself like music, VHS tapes or a doorbell intercom. Steffen Hven approaches the “uncanny”, “weird”, “dreamlike”, “eerie”, and “strange” Lynchian atmospheres by examining them through the lenses of Benjamin’s concept of the optical unconscious and his media theory.
