ReFocus: The Films of Abel Ferrara

A collection of critical essays on Abel Ferrara, one of America’s most unorthodox and distinctive film directors

• Discusses Ferrara’s oeuvre in dialogue with ongoing debates in film studies
• Situates Ferrara’s work within larger contexts and movements in American and transnational film history including cult cinema, ‘indiewood’, genre film and Italian-American filmmaking
• Considers the cultural, historical, and industrial significance of Ferrara with focuses on genre theory, film narrative, authorship, gender studies, philosophy and the formative influence of production contexts

Over his four-decade long career, Abel Ferrara has built himself a reputation as one of the most audacious and unconventional filmmakers in contemporary cinema. After his beginnings in the exploitation circuit of the late 1970s he become one of the central figures in the indie wave of the 1980s and 90s and is now an established arthouse director whose versatile oeuvre crosses the boundaries of cult, independent and Hollywood cinema. ReFocus: The Films of Abel Ferrara offers a comprehensive critical survey of the director’s work. The volume brings together a broad range of methodological, theoretical, historical and philosophical perspectives on Ferrara’s work, and case studies include Ms 45, The Driller Killer, Bad Lieutenant, Pasolini and Welcome to New York.