Abstract

This article considers the poetic documentary as a dispositif that does not think in language, but in touch-in rhythms, in auditory tensions, in visual suspensions where the image does not speak but endures. Taking Vid Hajnšek’s A Tree Grows in My Dreams Every Night (V mojih sanjah rase vsako noč drevo, 2024) as its central case study, the article explores how a film – when it relinquishes narration and representation – can create the conditions in which thought no longer unfolds as conceptual reflection, but as an embodied orientation in a world that emerges within the frame. Perception is not treated as mediation between subject and object, but as a mode of being in which the body lingers in affect. The key concept is hesitation – as a tension that does not interrupt, but reconfigures the relation between image and body. The film does not ask what truth is, but how it might act – not as explanation, but as presence. Merging a phenomenological framework (Merleau-Ponty, Sobchack, Marks, Massumi, Sontag) with formal analysis (of framing, rhythm, sound, and texture), the article proposes that the poetic documentary does not produce knowledge, but generates the conditions in which thinking can happen – as affect, as duration, as proximity.

Key Points

• The film creates conditions for thought to emerge as affect rather than conventional reflection.
• Key concept of hesitation reconfigures the relationship between image and body in the viewing experience.
• Observational analysis of Vid Hajnšek's film reveals how it embodies thought through rhythm and presence.
• Implications extend beyond traditional film analysis to explore perception as an embodied mode of being.