ABSTRACT

This paper establishes the motif of ‘child spectators’ within the self-reflexive tradition of modern European cinema since the 1940s and within discourses on the affinity of childhood and cinema, dating back to the beginning of the twentieth century. Through a close reading of The spirit of the beehive (Víctor Erice, 1973) and Jacquot de Nantes (Agnès Varda, 1991) that deals with the impact of the cinema experience on a child’s life, I analyze how this motif stages spectatorship, cinephilia, and filmmaking. First, I show how these films reflect on the impact of film experience and the process of film education as based on the existential being described by phenomenology. Second, I argue that this motif implies specific aesthetic strategies that are often linked to childhood and cinema. The child spectator calls for the understanding of childhood as a film aesthetical category and invites us to engage in a distinctive form of spectatorship. If the children in these films represent and address the phenomenological dimension of film experience, they also invite us, third, to reconsider aspects rarely addressed by phenomenology, especially the integration of imagination and materiality in film experience, and the interdependence of film experience and education.

摘要

本文在 20 世纪 40 年代以来现代欧洲电影的自我反省传统中以及在关于童年与电影的亲和力的论述中确立了“儿童观众”的主题，其历史可以追溯到二十世纪初。通过仔细阅读《蜂巢精神》（Víctor Erice，1973）和Jacquot de Nantes（Agnès Varda，1991）探讨了电影体验对儿童生活的影响，我分析了这个主题如何呈现观众、迷影和电影制作。首先，我展示这些电影如何基于现象学所描述的存在主义来反思电影体验的影响和电影教育的过程。其次，我认为这个主题暗示了通常与童年和电影相关的特定美学策略。儿童观众要求将童年理解为一种电影美学范畴，并邀请我们参与一种独特的观看形式。如果这些电影中的孩子们代表和第三，他们在探讨电影体验的现象学维度的同时，也邀请我们重新考虑现象学很少涉及的方面，特别是电影体验中想象力和物质性的整合，以及电影体验和教育的相互依赖。