Touch and Gesture: On the Borders of Intimacy

Abstract

If the Internet might well claim to be the medium of public intimacy par excellence, with humans exposing their most intimate moments to legions of strangers and oft en receiving such warm and welcoming response that it feels like one really could be close to half of the world, then my own interest in the subject of intimacy is less “intimate.” Partly symptomatic and partly generic, it situates itself more on the meta-level of the discipline of fi lm studies and does not attempt to explore intimacy in the context of family, domestic space, and the inner life. Instead, I want to probe the intricate relationship between the cinema of intimacy and the intimacy of cinema.