New Extremism in Cinema

New Extremism in Cinema
Author: Tanya C Horeck
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2013-01-11
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 074868882X

Explosive images of sex and violence characterise what has come to be known as the 'new extremism' in contemporary European cinema. This collection of essays is devoted to the new extremism in contemporary European cinema and will critically interrogate t

Films of the New French Extremity

Films of the New French Extremity
Author: Alexandra West
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2016-05-19
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1476625115

The films of the New French Extremity have been reviled by critics but adored by fans and filmmakers. Known for graphically brutal depictions of sex and violence, the subgenre emerged from the French art-house scene in the late 1990s and became a cult phenomenon, eventually merging into the horror genre where it became associated with American torture porn. Decidedly French in flavor, the films seek to reveal the dark side of French society. This book provides an in-depth study of New French Extremity, focusing on such films as Trouble Every Day (2001), Irreversible (2002), Twentynine Palms (2003), High Tension (2003) and Martyrs (2008). The author explores the social implications of cinematic cruelty presented not as "violent films" but as "films about violence."

Brutal Intimacy

Brutal Intimacy
Author: Tim Palmer
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
Total Pages: 303
Release: 2011-07-21
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0819570001

Brutal Intimacy is the first book to explore the fascinating films of contemporary France, ranging from mainstream genre spectaculars to arthouse experiments, and from wildly popular hits to films that deliberately alienate the viewer. Twenty-first-century France is a major source of international cinema—diverse and dynamic, embattled yet prosperous—a national cinema offering something for everyone. Tim Palmer investigates France's growing population of women filmmakers, its buoyant vanguard of first-time filmmakers, the rise of the controversial cinema du corps, and France's cinema icons: auteurs like Olivier Assayas, Claire Denis, Bruno Dumont, Gaspar Noé, and stars such as Vincent Cassel and Jean Dujardin. Analyzing dozens of breakthrough films, Brutal Intimacy situates infamous titles alongside many yet to be studied in the English language. Drawing on interviews and the testimony of leading film artists, Brutal Intimacy promises to be an influential treatment of French cinema today, its evolving rivalry with Hollywood, and its ambitious pursuits of audiences in Europe, North America, and around the world.

Extreme Cinema

Extreme Cinema
Author: Kerner Aaron Kerner
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2016-06-14
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1474402917

Extreme Cinema examines the highly stylized treatment of sex and violence in post-millennial transnational cinema, where the governing convention is not the narrative but the spectacle. Using profound experiments in form and composition, including jarring editing, extreme close-ups, visual disorientation and sounds that straddle the boundary between non-diegetic and diegetic registers, this mode of cinema dwells instead on the exhibition of intense violence and an acute intimacy with the sexual body. Interrogating works such as Wetlands and A Serbian Film, as well as the sub-culture of YouTube 'reaction videos', Aaron Michael Kerner and Jonathan L. Knapp demonstrate the way content and form combine in extreme cinema to affectively manipulate the viewing body.

Extreme Cinema

Extreme Cinema
Author: Mattias Frey
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 299
Release: 2016-03-15
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0813576520

Received an Honorable Mention for the 2017 British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies (BAFTSS) Best Monograph Award 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.

The Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Digital Media

The Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Digital Media
Author: Carol Vernallis
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 833
Release: 2015
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0190258179

This collection surveys the contemporary landscape of audiovisual media. Contributors from image and sound studies explore the history and the future of moving-image media across a range of formats including blockbuster films, video games, music videos, social media, experimental film, documentaries, video art, pornography, theater, and electronic music.

Bodies in Pain

Bodies in Pain
Author: Tarja Laine
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2017-04
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1785335219

The films of Darren Aronofsky invite emotional engagement by means of affective resonance between the film and the spectator’s lived body. Aronofsky’s films, which include a rich range of production from Requiem for a Dream to Black Swan, are often considered “cerebral” because they explore topics like mathematics, madness, hallucinations, obsessions, social anxiety, addiction, psychosis, schizophrenia, and neuroscience. Yet this interest in intelligence and mental processes is deeply embedded in the operations of the body, shared with the spectator by means of a distinctively corporeal audiovisual style. Bodies in Pain looks at how Aronofsky’s films engage the spectator in an affective form of viewing that involves all the senses, ultimately engendering a process of (self) reflection through their emotional dynamics.

Feel-Bad Film

Feel-Bad Film
Author: Nikolaj Luebecker
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Total Pages: 299
Release: 2015-05-19
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0748698000

An analysis of what contemporary directors seek to attain by putting their spectators in a position of strong discomfort

The Believers are But Brothers

The Believers are But Brothers
Author: Javaad Alipoor
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 60
Release: 2018-01-24
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1786824329

We live in a time where old orders are collapsing: from the postcolonial nation states of the Middle East, to the EU and the American election. Through it all, tech savvy and extremist groups rip up political certainties. Amidst this, a generation of young men find themselves burning with resentment, without the money, power and sex they think they deserve. This crisis of masculinity leads them into an online world of fantasy, violence and reality. The Believers Are But Brothers is based on Alipoor's experiences of working with young people, and research he conducted online. The original show was performed at the Edinburgh Fringe and transferred to the Bush Theatre, London. The show envelops its audience in this digital realm, weaving us into the webs of resentment, violence and power networks that are eating away at the structures of the twentieth century. This bold one-man show explores the smoke and mirrors world of online extremism, anonymity and hate speech.

Race in American Film [3 volumes]

Race in American Film [3 volumes]
Author: Daniel Bernardi
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 1127
Release: 2017-07-07
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0313398402

This expansive three-volume set investigates racial representation in film, providing an authoritative cross-section of the most racially significant films, actors, directors, and movements in American cinematic history. Hollywood has always reflected current American cultural norms and ideas. As such, film provides a window into attitudes about race and ethnicity over the last century. This comprehensive set provides information on hundreds of films chosen based on scholarly consensus of their importance regarding the subject, examining aspects of race and ethnicity in American film through the historical context, themes, and people involved. This three-volume set highlights the most important films and artists of the era, identifying films, actors, or characterizations that were considered racist, were tremendously popular or hugely influential, attempted to be progressive, or some combination thereof. Readers will not only learn basic information about each subject but also be able to contextualize it culturally, historically, and in terms of its reception to understand what average moviegoers thought about the subject at the time of its popularity—and grasp how the subject is perceived now through the lens of history.