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Extreme Cinema: The Transgressive Rhetoric of Today's Art Film Culture

Frey, Mattias (2016) Extreme Cinema: The Transgressive Rhetoric of Today's Art Film Culture. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ, 288 pp. ISBN 978-0-8135-7649-7. (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:42191)

The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided.
Official URL:
https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/extreme-cin...

Abstract

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.

Item Type: Book
Subjects: P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN1993 Motion Pictures
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Arts and Humanities > School of Arts
Depositing User: Mattias Frey
Date Deposited: 09 Aug 2014 05:37 UTC
Last Modified: 17 Aug 2022 12:20 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/42191 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

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