Presented to you through Paradigm Publishing Services
Rutgers University Press
Book
Licensed
Unlicensed
Requires Authentication
Extreme Cinema
The Transgressive Rhetoric of Today's Art Film Culture
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2016
About this book
Honorable mention, 2017 Best Monograph Award from the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies (BAFTSS)
From Shortbus to Shame and from Oldboy to Irreversible, film festival premieres regularly make international headlines for their shockingly graphic depictions of sex and violence. Film critics and scholars alike often regard these movies as the work of visionary auteurs, hailing directors like Michael Haneke and Lars von Trier as heirs to a tradition of transgressive art. In this provocative new book, Mattias Frey offers a very different perspective on these films, exposing how they are also calculated products, designed to achieve global notoriety in a competitive marketplace.
From Shortbus to Shame and from Oldboy to Irreversible, film festival premieres regularly make international headlines for their shockingly graphic depictions of sex and violence. Film critics and scholars alike often regard these movies as the work of visionary auteurs, hailing directors like Michael Haneke and Lars von Trier as heirs to a tradition of transgressive art. In this provocative new book, Mattias Frey offers a very different perspective on these films, exposing how they are also calculated products, designed to achieve global notoriety in a competitive marketplace.
Paying close attention to the discourses employed by film critics, distributors, and filmmakers themselves, Extreme Cinema examines the various tightropes that must be walked when selling transgressive art films to discerning audiences, distinguishing them from generic horror, pornography, and Hollywood product while simultaneously hyping their salacious content. Deftly tracing the links between the local and the global, Frey also shows how the directors and distributors of extreme art house fare from both Europe and East Asia have significant incentives to exaggerate the exotic elements that would differentiate them from Anglo-American product.
Extreme Cinema also includes original interviews with the programmers of several leading international film festivals and with niche distributors and exhibitors, giving readers a revealing look at how these institutions enjoy a symbiotic relationship with the “taboo-breakers” of art house cinema. Frey also demonstrates how these apparently transgressive films actually operate within a strict set of codes and conventions, carefully calibrated to perpetuate a media industry that fuels itself on provocation.
Author / Editor information
MATTIAS FREY is the managing director of the Centre for Film and Media Research, an editor of the journal Film Studies, and a reader in film at the University of Kent, UK. He is the author or coeditor of several books, including The Permanent Crisis of Film Criticism; Cine-Ethics; and Film Criticism in the Digital Age (Rutgers University Press).
Reviews
"Extreme Cinema delves into what it is that motivates these film makers and our general fascination with this body of film works that exploit sex, violence, and art in an almost voyeuristic way."
— Horrornews.net"[The book] arrives at a juncture in which one form of extreme cinema studies is perhaps at its end. Frey convincingly demonstrates how scholars’ appeal to an ideal spectator, use of unrefined affect theories, and overemphasis on aesthetics often generates tautological conclusions."
— Canadian Review of Comparative Literature“In this lively, detailed analysis of ‘taboo cinema,’ Mattias Frey views ‘extreme cinema’ from an entirely new angle, offering rich insights into contemporary violence and cruelty on the screen.”
— Wheeler Winston Dixon, author of Black and White Cinema: A Short History"Extreme Cinema is an outstanding addition to the body of works that investigate the intersection of art cinema, sex, and violence and the intricate relationships among the three."
— Cindy Hing-Yuk Wong, College of Staten Island, CUNY"Extreme Cinema enlightens the reader by example … Frey has given film connoisseurs a text book worthy of examination that may even inspire self examination."
— Genreonline.net"Frey’s well researched and precise discursive analysis on extreme cinema laid the first stone to further industrial and aesthetic investigations."
— Historical Journal of Film, Radio and TelevisionTopics
-
Download PDFPublicly Available
Frontmatter
i -
Download PDFPublicly Available
Contents
v -
Download PDFPublicly Available
Acknowledgments
vii -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Introduction
1 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
1. Transgression and Distinction: Filmmaker Discourses
16 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
2. The Aesthetic Embrace and the Cynicism Criticism: Reception Discourses
30 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
3. The Rhetoric and Role of Film Festivals
46 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
4. Discourses and Modes of Distribution
69 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
5. The Interpretations of Regulation
94 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
6. The Added Value of International Distribution
122 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
7. Sex, Violence, and Self-Exoticization
137 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
8. Aesthetic Innovation and the Real: Academic Debate over Sexually Graphic Art Films
159 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
9. A Discursive Approach to Hardcore Art Cinema
178 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Afterword
206 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Notes
213 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Select Bibliography
255 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Index
265 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
About the Author
287
Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
September 2, 2019
eBook ISBN:
9780813576527
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook ISBN:
9780813576527
Keywords for this book
film festival premieres; graphic depictions; sex; violence; visionary auteurs; transgressive art; Michael Haneke; Lars von Trier; global notoriety; competitive marketplace; discourses; film critics; distributors; filmmakers; extreme art house fare; generic horror; pornography; Hollywood product; exotic elements; European cinema; East Asian cinema; international film festivals; niche distributors; exhibitors; taboos; media industry.; Mattias Frey; Film; Media; Communications; history; censorship; Honorable mention; 2017; Best Monograph Award; British Association of Film; Television and Screen Studies; BAFTSS; Shortbus; Shame; Oldboy; Irreversible; international headlines; scholars; provocative; calculated products; transgressive art films; discerning audiences; salacious content; local; global; Europe; East Asia; symbiotic relationship; art; cinema; codes; conventions; media industry; provocation
Audience(s) for this book
For universities and colleges of further and higher education
