Impact

Abstract

The fall tends inalterably to its completion: its inevitable end is the impact, a literally traumatic moment that is programmatically ‘censored’ precisely due to both the visceral and psychological violence that its explicit display would cause. Inspired by Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s short film 11’9”01, the chapter ‘Impact. Experiencing the unrepresentable’ describes the ways in which the film spectator experiences the non-representation of the cinematic human body hitting the ground, beginning with a reflection on the tragic events of September 11, 2001. A discussion of the amodal perception of occluded movements and its neural correlates will show that contemporary cinema adopts a series of formal strategies in order to negotiate with the trauma and make the ‘unrepresentable’ experienceable.