The role of horizon-consciousness in filmic experiences

To understand the structure of our originary film experience, Husserlian phenomenology provides fundamental insights, for in his writings Husserl speaks of the notion of horizon to express the unthematized aspects of our experience of the world and its objects. According to the philosopher, we are implicitly familiar with the world and this familiarity allows us to always know in advance the world we experience. Consequently, and in a similar way, in the filmic experience, we could also speak of a “horizontal framework” which would allow us precisely to be first acquainted with the structure of our encounter with the film and thus to have an implicit pre-knowledge of how to behave towards this “object”. Our objective in this paper is therefore to analyze how the internal structure of the films creates an original (affective) experience for the viewer to subsequently investigate the structure of this receptivity by the viewer.