Gesture and narrative: the morphology of The Milky Way

Most of my films are about storytelling. I have never set out to create a film with a story, but have instead focused on the act of storytelling. My desire for a new film, The Milky Way, is no different. This paper describes the processes of making The Milky Way. It begins with the research on bodily gesture in non‐narrative film and compares it to the narrative qualities of the completed film. The result was a surprising rethinking of The Milky Way as compared to the non‐narrative film model I originally intended. This thesis is presented in three parts: (1) research on gesture in non‐narrative film prior to writing the script and during pre‐production for The Milky Way; (2) analysis of three key elements in The Milky Way: the surrogate, the landscape and social interactions, and the male figure, and (3) self‐reflections about the narrative of the film and how the final version of The Milky Way differed from my original intentions.