Abstract

Outside the aesthetic and institutional framework of what was conventionally called classic cinematographic art, there was a thriving group of film acting performances — mostly experimental — whose aesthetic program was to take a thesis that pervades much of the acting theory to its performative dimension (in theater and cinema): his holiness, possession, or mysticism. This work intends, then, to make up a genealogy of acting forms in cinema that generated this thesis of transcendentality of the actor's work through Christian iconography, but degraded by its surroundings marked by violence, hunger and injustice. Thus, anticlericalism and a heritage of the visual arts serve as a methodological basis for accessing this proposal of a genealogical study of experimental film acting forms in three thematic fields: 1) revelation; 2) the crucifixion and the Christic figure; 3) the Pieta and the Mater Dolorosa.

Keywords
experimental film; film actor; mystical body; Christian iconography