[ecrea] new publication: Extreme Cinema: The Transgressive Rhetoric of Today's Art Film Culture

Extreme Cinema: The Transgressive Rhetoric of Today's Art Film Culture
Mattias Frey (Author)
298 pages, 25 photographs, 3 tables, 6 x 9

Rutgers University Press
http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu/product/Extreme-Cinema,5905.aspx


        Description

 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.
"/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

“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

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