Kurt Lewin in Film Theory and Culture

Film and media theories often draw their conceptual tools from psychology: in the first half of the 20th century these trajectories contributed to legitimate film theory as a cultural institution, and later they also reinforced single media-theoretical paradigms, like film cognitivism. At the same time, though, notions and ideas belonging to a particular psychological tradition disentangle themselves from the mere scientific status and gain a relevance that is less procedural and pertains to public opinion. Furthermore, film could be interpreted as a major psychological metaphor. Here, I will examine the case of Kurt Lewin, one of the founders of modern-day social psychology. My aim is, on the one hand, to illustrate how Lewin’s approach could be indebted to the contemporary (modernist) film culture, at least as far as concerns his influential Field Theory, which is basically grounded upon a visible behavior. On the other hand, my contribution aspires to weigh Lewin’s use of the film medium in his scientific practice: his approach will reveal itself to be noteworthy not only for the purposes of a cultural history of film and media, investigating the relationship between Gestalt psychology and the modernist debate, as well as the influence he exerted on later film theoretical debates, but also as a tool to understand the constraints posed by present-day audiovisual media, hopefully explaining how we can give some kind of order to the fragmentary, modular, multilayered images of the digital era as well as to our daily multimedia environment.