Cinematic Memory and Neuroaesthetic: Cultural Memory Construction through Sensory and Emotional Resonance in Malayalam Cinema

Abstract

This study examines the intersection of neuroaesthetics and cultural memory theory to explore cinema’s active role in shaping collective remembrance through sensory, emotional, and cognitive engagement. Drawing on the frameworks of prosthetic memory, cultural memory, and multidirectional memory, this study examines how cinema transcends mere representation to become an affective archive, embedding historical narratives into the collective imagination. Through neuroaesthetic processes, neural regions are activating emotion, empathy, and sensorimotor simulation, which transform external stories into embodied, internalised experiences. Using the Malayalam film Odiyan (2018) as a case study, the research demonstrates how indigenous culture and ecological traditions are reanimated through cinematic aesthetics, generating neural-cultural feedback loops that reinforce cultural identity. The study highlights how early cinema practices, as articulated by Klippel, fostered collective memory through communal spectatorship, a function that persists despite the digitisation of film culture. Through synthesising cultural theory and cognitive neuroscience, the research underscores cinema’s role in fostering emotional salience, constructing prosthetic and multidirectional memories, and creating dynamic memoryscapes where tradition, trauma, and resilience are affectively encoded. Ultimately, the findings position cinema as a vital and evolving site for the negotiation of cultural memory, identity, and historical consciousness, affirming its centrality in the contemporary reshaping of collective pasts.