[Commlist] new book: Positioning Art Cinema

new book Positioning Art Cinema: Film and Cultural Value
I.B. Tauris.

It’s in hardback only initially at a high price, so I’m hoping people 
will order it for libraries to improve its chances of getting an 
affordable paperback release - a system I don’t really approve of, but 
that we seem increasingly to be stuck with these days.

I’m copying the cover blurb and endorsements below.


‘For too long, the term “art cinema” has suffered from slippery, 
I-knowit-when-I-see-it usage. Incisively and intrepidly, Geoff King 
dissects this contested category, deliberating on the diverse, yet 
codified ways of attributing cultural value to film drama.’ Mattias 
Frey, Professor of Film and Media, University of Kent, UK

  ‘Here’s a book film studies has long needed. Geoff King is sensitive 
to nuances of both text and context and he introduces fruitful terms 
like the “heavyweight” film. Essential reading for anyone interested in 
art cinema!’ Michael Z. Newman, Associate Professor and 
Chair, Department of Journalism, Advertising, and Media 
Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA

‘With Positioning Art Cinema, Geoff King deftly executes a 
delicate intellectual maneuver: writing nonjudgmentally about critical 
judgments. The book navigates the subjective and contradictory 
terminology that surrounds a range of films, filmmakers and modalities 
framed as distinct from perceived mainstream entertainments. Never 
drifting into schematic taxonomy, King shrewdly unpacks the 
proliferating categories that scholars, critics and filmmakers 
themselves have used to assign cultural value to cinema.’ Mark 
Gallagher, Associate Professor of Film and Television 
Studies, University of Nottingham, UK


‘Following his leading work in the fields of Hollywood 
blockbusters, American independent cinema and quality Hollywood films, 
Geoff King here shifts his attention to the often vaguely defined and 
understood field of art cinema. Through questioning established critical 
orthodoxies and with the help of his trademark close textual analysis of 
key recent titles, Positioning Art Cinema does a great job in laying 
bare the complex, culturally determined and often unspoken assumptions 
that help elevate this type of cinema to the top of cultural 
hierarchies. Superbly researched and utterly readable, the book will 
appeal to both experts in the field and art film novices.’ Yannis 
Tzioumakis, Reader in Film and Media Industries,University of Liverpool, UK


Art cinema occupies a space in the film landscape that is accorded a 
particular kind of value. From films that claim the status of harsh 
realism to others which embody aspects of the tradition of modernism or 
the poetic, art cinema encompasses a variety of work from across the globe.

But how is art cinema positioned in the film marketplace, or by critics 
and in academic analysis? Exactly what kinds of cultural value are 
attributed to films of this type and how can this be explained? This 
book offers a unique analysis of how such processes work, including the 
broader cultural basis of the appeal of art cinema to particular audiences.

Geoff King argues that there is no single definition of art cinema, but 
a number of distinct and recurrent tendencies are identified. At one end 
of the spectrum are films accorded the most ‘heavyweight’ status, 
offering the greatest challenges to viewers. Others mix aspects of art 
cinema with more accessible dimensions such as uses of popular genre 
frameworks and ‘exploitation’ elements involving explicit sex 
and violence. Including case studies of key figures such as Michael 
Haneke, Pedro Almodóvar and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, this is 
a crucial contribution to understanding both art cinema itself and the 
discourses through which its value is established.



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