Splinters of the Filmic Sentence: the intermedial dramaturgy of Peter Handke

Abstract: This article presents an analysis of the first phase in Peter Handke’s work. It focuses on a theoretical concept developed by Handke to highlight his filmic sentence. Upon analysis of several of his works, it appears that this aesthetic sensibility pervaded his theater, his novels, his debut as a filmmaker and the scripts he wrote in collaboration with Wim Wenders. As an interpretative summary of his work, the paper defends the existence of a link between the practice of ekphrasis and the emergence of an intermedial dramaturgy, in which the writing gesture needs to reinvent itself between languages borders, media, new technologies and materialities.