The Genealogy of Gesture: From Kira Muratova to Renata Litvinova

Abstract

The long-term creative collaboration between Kira Muratova and Renata Litvinova began with the film “Uvlechen’ya” (“Pastimes”, 1994), in which Litvinova took part both as an actress and a screenwriter. Since then, Litvinova has become one of the most striking personifications of Muratova’s ornamental film style, which brings about a specific regime of visibility by foregrounding the eccentric corporeality of non-professional actors, or gesturality as a category of bodily and speech performance. This article focuses on the primary scene of gestural genealogy linking the two directors: thus, the pathologist’s gesture from nurse Lilya’s monologue, written and recited by Litvinova in her inner eccentric manner in Muratova’s film, unfolds in a full-length film narration of “Rita’s Last Fairy Tale” (2012), with a phantasmagorical plot and spectacular visuals characteristic of Litvinova’s directorial style. The article addresses, on the one hand, this gesture, expressing concisely the manifold and bidirectional relation between Muratova’s and Litvinova’s films, and, on the other, discusses possible ways of theoretical conceptions of gesture in text and cinema. Gesture is conceived of as a borderline figure of speech and/or of body, aimed at an absent object, whereby the grasping function of the hand makes gestures to a figure of metalepsis which, translated into the language of cinema, emphasises the haptic character of the image. The missing object around which gesticulation arises leads to a discussion of the problematic status of gesture as a sign as well as to the disturbed process of signification during its interpretation. Since gesture only indicates and signals but does not signify, one can speak of the semiotic function of monstration. A gesture appears as a monster in the literal sense of the word, that is, the one who shows itself and, in so doing, warns. Thus, using gestures, to some extent requires adopting the position of a monster – to designate by putting oneself on the show, by making oneself the object of spectacle. Both films and the figure of Litvinova therein are viewed through the prism of monstrosity of gesture and language – it is through the disjunction between showing and speaking that gesture becomes exposed as a pure medium.