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Extreme Art Film: Text, Paratext and DVD Culture Simon Hobbs
Extreme Art Film: Text, Paratext and DVD Culture Simon Hobbs The thesis is submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of the University of Portsmouth. September 2014 Declaration Whilst registered as a candidate for the above degree, I have not been registered for any other research award. The results and conclusions embodied in this thesis are the work of the named candidate and have not been submitted for any other academic award. Word count: 85,810 Abstract Extreme art cinema, has, in recent film scholarship, become an important area of study. Many of the existing practices are motivated by a Franco-centric lens, which ultimately defines transgressive art cinema as a new phenomenon. The thesis argues that a study of extreme art cinema needs to consider filmic production both within and beyond France. It also argues that it requires an historical analysis, and I contest the notion that extreme art cinema is a recent mode of Film production. The study considers extreme art cinema as inhabiting a space between ‘high’ and ‘low’ art forms, noting the slippage between the two often polarised industries. The study has a focus on the paratext, with an analysis of DVD extras including ‘making ofs’ and documentary featurettes, interviews with directors, and cover sleeves. This will be used to examine audience engagement with the artefacts, and the films’ position within the film market. Through a detailed assessment of the visual symbols used throughout the films’ narrative images, the thesis observes the manner in which they engage with the taste structures and pictorial templates of art and exploitation cinema. -
Why Call Them "Cult Movies"? American Independent Filmmaking and the Counterculture in the 1960S Mark Shiel, University of Leicester, UK
Why Call them "Cult Movies"? American Independent Filmmaking and the Counterculture in the 1960s Mark Shiel, University of Leicester, UK Preface In response to the recent increased prominence of studies of "cult movies" in academic circles, this essay aims to question the critical usefulness of that term, indeed the very notion of "cult" as a way of talking about cultural practice in general. My intention is to inject a note of caution into that current discourse in Film Studies which valorizes and celebrates "cult movies" in particular, and "cult" in general, by arguing that "cult" is a negative symptom of, rather than a positive response to, the social, cultural, and cinematic conditions in which we live today. The essay consists of two parts: firstly, a general critique of recent "cult movies" criticism; and, secondly, a specific critique of the term "cult movies" as it is sometimes applied to 1960s American independent biker movies -- particularly films by Roger Corman such as The Wild Angels (1966) and The Trip (1967), by Richard Rush such as Hell's Angels on Wheels (1967), The Savage Seven, and Psych-Out (both 1968), and, most famously, Easy Rider (1969) directed by Dennis Hopper. Of course, no-one would want to suggest that it is not acceptable to be a "fan" of movies which have attracted the label "cult". But this essay begins from a position which assumes that the business of Film Studies should be to view films of all types as profoundly and positively "political", in the sense in which Fredric Jameson uses that adjective in his argument that all culture and every cultural object is most fruitfully and meaningfully understood as an articulation of the "political unconscious" of the social and historical context in which it originates, an understanding achieved through "the unmasking of cultural artifacts as socially symbolic acts" (Jameson, 1989: 20). -
Appalling! Terrifying! Wonderful! Blaxploitation and the Cinematic Image of the South
Antoni Górny Appalling! Terrifying! Wonderful! Blaxploitation and the Cinematic Image of the South Abstract: The so-called blaxploitation genre – a brand of 1970s film-making designed to engage young Black urban viewers – has become synonymous with channeling the political energy of Black Power into larger-than-life Black characters beating “the [White] Man” in real-life urban settings. In spite of their urban focus, however, blaxploitation films repeatedly referenced an idea of the South whose origins lie in antebellum abolitionist propaganda. Developed across the history of American film, this idea became entangled in the post-war era with the Civil Rights struggle by way of the “race problem” film, which identified the South as “racist country,” the privileged site of “racial” injustice as social pathology.1 Recently revived in the widely acclaimed works of Quentin Tarantino (Django Unchained) and Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave), the two modes of depicting the South put forth in blaxploitation and the “race problem” film continue to hold sway to this day. Yet, while the latter remains indelibly linked, even in this revised perspective, to the abolitionist vision of emancipation as the result of a struggle between idealized, plaintive Blacks and pathological, racist Whites, blaxploitation’s troping of the South as the fulfillment of grotesque White “racial” fantasies offers a more powerful and transformative means of addressing America’s “race problem.” Keywords: blaxploitation, American film, race and racism, slavery, abolitionism The year 2013 was a momentous one for “racial” imagery in Hollywood films. Around the turn of the year, Quentin Tarantino released Django Unchained, a sardonic action- film fantasy about an African slave winning back freedom – and his wife – from the hands of White slave-owners in the antebellum Deep South. -
Georges Bataille's Philosophy of Transgression and the Cinema Of
Is Mark of the Devil an Example of Transgressive Cinema? Georges Bataille’s Philosophy of Transgression and the Cinema of the 1970s Marcus Stiglegger translated by Laura Melchior Abstract collective moment of fear, and raises the Witchploitation films of the late 1960s – like question of whether or not this could generate a Mark of the Devil (1970) – were often criticised ‘transgressive cinema’. And in particular it asks: for exploiting inquisitorial violence such as are witchploitation films transgressive? torture and rape for the sake of pure sensation. While the exploitative manner of dealing with Keywords: witchploitation, censorship, historically based violence is clearly an issue, at sensation, transgression, taboo, philosophy, the same time the question of what effect these Georges Bataille, exploitation film, violence, depictions of extreme violence might have on torture. the audience should be raised. Every culture has its own defined and accepted limits, which are made by collective agreement. Reaching and transgressing these limits amounts to the transgression of an interdiction, of a taboo. This article discusses the representations in the media of the act of transgression – commonly associated with the work of the French philosopher and novelist Georges Bataille – as a 21 The witchploitation films which followed the useful to delineate a theoretical key to success of Michael Reeves’s Witchfinder understanding this phenomenon. After General (1968) were often criticised for explaining the notion of transgression according exploiting inquisitorial violence such as torture to Georges Bataille, I will contextualise the and rape for the sake of pure sensation. In witchploitation films by analysing several Germany Mark of the Devil (Hexen bis aufs Blut movies relating to this concept and finally gequält, Michael Armstrong, 1970) was banned comment on the transgressive nature of till 2016, and in England this film was a well- Witchfinder General and Mark of the Devil. -
LAUREN BLISS the Cinematic Body in View of the Antipodes: Philip Brophy's Body Melt As the Bad Copy
Lauren Bliss, The Cinematic Body in View of the Antipodes: Philip Brophy’s Body Melt as the bad copy LAUREN BLISS The Cinematic Body in View of the Antipodes: Philip Brophy’s Body Melt as the bad copy ABSTRACT Through a wide ranging study of Philip Brophy's academic and critical writings on horror cinema, this essay considers how Brophy's theory of the spectator's body is figured in his only horror feature Body Melt (1993). Body Melt is noteworthy insofar as it poorly copies a number of infamous sequences from classical horror films of the 1970s and 1980s, a form of figuration that this essay will theorise as distinctly Antipodean. Body Melt will be related as an antagonistic 'turning inside out' of the subjectivity of the horror movie spectator, which will be read in the light of both the usurped subject of semiotic film theory, and the political aesthetics of Australian exploitation cinema. Philip Brophy’s Body Melt, made in 1993, is a distinctly antipodean film: it not only copies scenes from classic horror movies such as The Hills Have Eyes (1977), Alien (1979), The Thing (1982) and Scanners (1981), it also copies the scenes badly. Such copying plays on and illuminates the ‘rules’ of horror as the toying with and preying upon the spectator’s expectation of fear. Brophy’s own theory of horror, written across a series of essays in academic and critical contexts between the 1980s and the 1990s, considers the peculiarity of the spectator’s body in the wake of the horror film. It relates that the seemingly autonomic or involuntary response of fear or suspense that horror movies induce in a viewer is troubled by the fact that both film and viewer knowingly intend this response to occur from the very beginning. -
“No Reason to Be Seen”: Cinema, Exploitation, and the Political
“No Reason to Be Seen”: Cinema, Exploitation, and the Political by Gordon Sullivan B.A., University of Central Florida, 2004 M.A., North Carolina State University, 2007 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2017 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH THE KENNETH P. DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Gordon Sullivan It was defended on October 20, 2017 and approved by Marcia Landy, Distinguished Professor, Department of English Jennifer Waldron, Associate Professor, Department of English Daniel Morgan, Associate Professor, Department of Cinema and Media Studies, University of Chicago Dissertation Advisor: Adam Lowenstein, Professor, Department of English ii Copyright © by Gordon Sullivan 2017 iii “NO REASON TO BE SEEN”: CINEMA, EXPLOITATION, AND THE POLITICAL Gordon Sullivan, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2017 This dissertation argues that we can best understand exploitation films as a mode of political cinema. Following the work of Peter Brooks on melodrama, the exploitation film is a mode concerned with spectacular violence and its relationship to the political, as defined by French philosopher Jacques Rancière. For Rancière, the political is an “intervention into the visible and sayable,” where members of a community who are otherwise uncounted come to be seen as part of the community through a “redistribution of the sensible.” This aesthetic rupture allows the demands of the formerly-invisible to be seen and considered. We can see this operation at work in the exploitation film, and by investigating a series of exploitation auteurs, we can augment our understanding of what Rancière means by the political. -
Vision, Desire and Economies of Transgression in the Films of Jess Franco
A University of Sussex DPhil thesis Available online via Sussex Research Online: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/ This thesis is protected by copyright which belongs to the author. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Please visit Sussex Research Online for more information and further details 1 Journeys into Perversion: Vision, Desire and Economies of Transgression in the Films of Jess Franco Glenn Ward Doctor of Philosophy University of Sussex May 2011 2 I hereby declare that this thesis has not been, and will not be, submitted whole or in part to another University for the award of any other degree. Signature:……………………………………… 3 Summary Due to their characteristic themes (such as „perverse‟ desire and monstrosity) and form (incoherence and excess), exploitation films are often celebrated as inherently subversive or transgressive. I critically assess such claims through a close reading of the films of the Spanish „sex and horror‟ specialist Jess Franco. My textual and contextual analysis shows that Franco‟s films are shaped by inter-relationships between authorship, international genre codes and the economic and ideological conditions of exploitation cinema. Within these conditions, Franco‟s treatment of „aberrant‟ and gothic desiring subjectivities appears contradictory. Contestation and critique can, for example, be found in Franco‟s portrayal of emasculated male characters, and his female vampires may offer opportunities for resistant appropriation. -
FLM201 Film Genre: Understanding Types of Film (Study Guide)
Course Development Team Head of Programme : Khoo Sim Eng Course Developer(s) : Khoo Sim Eng Technical Writer : Maybel Heng, ETP © 2021 Singapore University of Social Sciences. All rights reserved. No part of this material may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the Educational Technology & Production, Singapore University of Social Sciences. ISBN 978-981-47-6093-5 Educational Technology & Production Singapore University of Social Sciences 463 Clementi Road Singapore 599494 How to cite this Study Guide (MLA): Khoo, Sim Eng. FLM201 Film Genre: Understanding Types of Film (Study Guide). Singapore University of Social Sciences, 2021. Release V1.8 Build S1.0.5, T1.5.21 Table of Contents Table of Contents Course Guide 1. Welcome.................................................................................................................. CG-2 2. Course Description and Aims............................................................................ CG-3 3. Learning Outcomes.............................................................................................. CG-6 4. Learning Material................................................................................................. CG-7 5. Assessment Overview.......................................................................................... CG-8 6. Course Schedule.................................................................................................. CG-10 7. Learning Mode................................................................................................... -
Scheduled Live Screening Available on Demand for the Duration of the Festival Scheduled Live Panel Discussion / FREE I WEIRDO HUNTED DINNER in AMERICA
INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL August 20th to September 2nd 2020 VIRTUAL EDITION FANTASIAFESTIVAL.COM Available across Canada LIST CALENDAR 12 HOUR SHIFT CHASING DREAM COME TRUE TITLE TITLE #ShakespearesShitstorm Dir. Lloyd Kaufman / USA / 94 min. / Comedy Sat. 29 Aug. at 21:30 12 Hour Shift Dir. Brea Grant / USA / 87 min. / Comedy-Horror-Thriller Sat. 22 Aug. at 21:30 | Thu. 27 Aug. at 23:30 2011 Dir. Alexandre Prieur-Grenier / Québec / 89 min. / Experimental ON DEMAND Afrofuturism: Visions of The Future from “The Other” Side Artist Talk / 90 min. / FREE Fri. 21 Aug. at 17:00 Apprenticeship of Evil: Dennison Ramalho on José Mojica Marins Artist Talk / 90 min. / FREE Wed. 2 Sep. at 17:00 Air Doll Dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda / Japan / 116 min. / Classics / Romance ON DEMAND Alone Dir. Johnny Martin / USA / 98 min. / Thriller Thu. 27 Aug. at 19:00 Anything For Jackson Dir. Justin Dyck / Canada / 96 min. / Horror Tue. 1 Sep. at 19:00 | Wed. 2 Sep. at 15:15 At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul Dir. Jose Mojica Marins / Brazil / 84 min. / Classics / Horror ON DEMAND Baby : The Secret Diary of A Mom To Be Dir. Luk Yee-Sum / Hong Kong / 94 min. / Comedy-Romance ON DEMAND Beauty Water Dir. Cho Kyung-hun / South Korea / 85 min. / Animation ON DEMAND Bleed With Me Dir. Amelia Moses / Canada / 79 min. / Horror Wed. 26 Aug. at 19:10 | Tue. 1 Sep. at 15:00 The Block Island Sound Dir. Kevin McManus & Matthew McManus / USA / 97 min. / Horror Fri. 28 Aug. at 19:00 | Tue. 1 Sep. -
Brown University Presents Il Cinema Ritrovato,Film Review
Film Review: Investigation Of A Citizen Above Suspicion (1970) To follow up my previous piece about the great films showing at Il Cinema Ritrovato next week, I am reviewing another film that will be shown during the festival: Investigation Of A Citizen Above Suspicion, a fascinating, but somewhat forgotten thriller that won the best foreign film Oscar in 1971. Investigation… concerns a police detective who kills his girlfriend and leaves plenty of evidence behind to prove that he is indeed “above suspicion.” Even after the initial crime he goes out of his way to implicate himself and exonerate other suspects while slowly mentally unraveling due to the stress of not being caught. All of this is set to a backdrop of leftist protestors and widespread government spying, which is legitimized by the conservative government’s fear of the liberal left. Ultimately an expertly crafted satire, Investigation… is equal parts comedy, giallo and poliziotteschi, or for those who are unfamiliar with Italian cinema, comedy, murder mystery and investigation thriller. The writing is complex and intriguing while the acting is pitch perfect throughout, even though the tone of the film shifts from comedy to taught suspense. Fans of Italian cinema will certainly recognize two of the film’s stars Gian Maria Volonté (For A Few Dollars More, A Fistful Of Dollars) and Florinda Bolkan (A Lizard In A Woman’s Skin, Don’t Torture A Duckling). And while we’re on the subject of recognition, the score to this film was composed by none other than Ennio Moricone and is certainly one of the most memorable scores of his long and varied career. -
Here Are a Few Films from Male Directors, Screening out of Competition)
Thursday 14 April 1:00 Industry event - Festival Secrets 7:30 Red Carpet Drinks 8:00 SHORTS PROGRAM + Opening Night Party Friday 15 April 5:00 Industry event - The Attic Lab Pitch + Networking Drinks 8.00 Feature film - THE INVITATION + short film THE THINGS WE TAKE 10.00 Feature film - THE LOVE WITCH + short film INNSMOUTH Saturday 16 April 11:00 Symposium - Bad Dog! (Dominic Leonard) 12:00 Symposium - Old Age and Treachery (Erin Harrington) 1:00 Symposium - Spilling Her Guts (Alison Mann) 2:30 Industry event - Tasmanian Gothic Script Readings and Awards 3.00 Industry event - Horror Now Panel 4:00 Feature film - GIRL ASLEEP 7.00 Feature film - EVOLUTION 10.00 Feature film - MIDNIGHT SHOW Sunday 17 April 11.30 Feature film - FRANKENSTEIN 2:30 Symposium - Deidre Hall is the Devil (Jodi McAlister) 3:30 Symposium - Shock And Awe (Emma Valente) 4.30 Feature film - THE FORSAKEN + short film THORN 7.00 Feature film - CRUSHED 9:00 Farewell Drinks in the Festival Club Stranger With My Face International Film Festival is supported by the Tasmanian Government through Screen Tasmania. #swmfiff Well, we’re back. After a hiatus in 2015, Stranger With My Face Horror Film Festival returns for its 4th edition—and is now known as Stranger With My Face International Film Festival. Why the name change? Don’t worry, we’re still into horror. Personally, I did get sick of about talking about the defi- nition of it all the time though, or worrying about what could or couldn’t logically be screened under that label. Genre is only a label in the end, and is useful mainly for marketing. -
University of Southampton Research Repository Eprints Soton
University of Southampton Research Repository ePrints Soton Copyright © and Moral Rights for this thesis are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners. A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder/s. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given e.g. AUTHOR (year of submission) "Full thesis title", University of Southampton, name of the University School or Department, PhD Thesis, pagination http://eprints.soton.ac.uk UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON FACULTY OF HUMANITIES Film Studies Hong Kong Cinema Since 1997: The Response of Filmmakers Following the Political Handover from Britain to the People’s Republic of China by Sherry Xiaorui Xu Thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2012 UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON ABSTRACT FACULTY OF HUMANITIES Film Studies Doctor of Philosophy HONG KONG CINEMA SINCE 1997: THE RESPONSE OF FILMMAKERS FOLLOWING THE POLITICAL HANDOVER FROM BRITAIN TO THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA by Sherry Xiaorui Xu This thesis was instigated through a consideration of the views held by many film scholars who predicted that the political handover that took place on the July 1 1997, whereby Hong Kong was returned to the sovereignty of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) from British colonial rule, would result in the “end” of Hong Kong cinema.