Screening Statues: Sculpture and Cinema (Edinburgh Studies in Film and Intermediality)

Whereas sculpture is an artistic practice that involves not only static but also material, three-dimensional, and durable objects, the cinema produces kinetic, immaterial, two-dimensional, and fleeting images. However, the history of cinema amply illustrates the attraction of these opposites: statues coming to life in early cinema and disturbing the peace in Surrealist and trance films; the optical and haptic exploration of sculptural volumes in art documentaries and artists' films; the lure of the wax museums in horror films; the statuary metaphors of post-war modernist cinema; the mythological living statues of the peplum genre; and contemporary art practices in which film is used as sculptural medium.

Dealing with a wide range of magical, mystical, cultural, historical, formal, and phenomenological interactions between film and sculpture, this book examines key sculptural motifs in film and cinematic sculpture in eight chapters and an extensive reference gallery.