International Horror Film Directors

Description

Horror films have for decades commanded major global audiences, tapping into deep-rooted fears that cross national and cultural boundaries in their ability to spark terror. This book brings together a group of scholars to explore the ways that this fear is utilized and played upon by a wide range of filmmakers. Contributors take up such major figures as Guillermo del Toro, Lars Von Trier, and David Cronenberg, and they also offer introductions to lesser-known talents such as Richard Franklin, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Juan López Moctezuma, and Alexandre Aja. Scholars and fans alike dipping into this collection will discover plenty of insight into what chills us.

 

The Onset of Global Fear

Danny Shipka and Ralph Beliveau

 

A Topology of Guillermo del Toro

Ralph Beliveau

 

Rahciard Franklin: Ozploitation Auteur, Hitchcock Heir, Cinema Underdog

Ben Kooyman

 

Kiyoshi Kurosawa: J-horror's Master Stylist

Leah Larson

 

Madness and Eroticism: The Films of Juan López Moctezuma

Budd Wilkins

 

The Serious Play of Alexandre Aja

Tracy Stephenson Shaffer

 

The Sapphic, The Sadean, and Jess Franco

Will Dodson

 

Sergio Martino: Master of the Filone

Mikel J. Koven

 

At the Margins of Taste, in the Mouth of Madness: The Case of Lars von Trier

Linda Badley

 

José Mojica Marins and Zé do Caixäo: Nightmares of Frankenstein in Brazil's National Horror Story

Jerry Metz

 

Dreaming Revolt: Jean Rollin and the French Fantastique in the Context of May 1968

Mario DeGiglio-Bellemare

 

Acquiscence, Canadian Style. The Early Cinema of David Cronenberg

Danny Shipka

Sujets

• Arts visuels
• Arts visuels
• Cinéma
• Cinéma
• Cinéma
• Cinema
• Film director
• General officer
• Art
• General
• Electronic
• Digital

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 10 décembre 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783206551
• Langue: English

Extrait

First published in the UK in 2017 by
Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2017 by
Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street,
Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright © 2017 Intellect Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Copy-editor: MPS Technologies
Cover designer: Holly Rose
Production editors: Jelena Stanovnik & Matt Greenfield
Typesetting: Contentra Technologies
Print ISBN: 978-1-78320-653-7
ePDF ISBN: 978-1-78320-654-4
ePUB ISBN: 978-1-78320-665-1
Printed and bound by Hobbs, UK
Financial support was provided from the Office of the Vice President for Research, University of Oklahoma and the College of Arts and Sciences at Oklahoma State University.
This is a peer-reviewed publication.
Contents
Introduction: The Onset of Global Fear
Danny Shipka and Ralph Beliveau
Chapter 1: A Topology of Guillermo del Toro
Ralph Beliveau
Chapter 2: Richard Franklin: Ozploitation Auteur, Hitchcock Heir, Cinema Underdog
Ben Kooyman
Chapter 3: Kiyoshi Kurosawa: J-horror's Master Stylist
Leah Larson
Chapter 4: Madness and Eroticism: The Films of Juan López Moctezuma
Budd Wilkins
Chapter 5: The Serious Play of Alexandre Aja
Tracy Stephenson Shaffer
Chapter 6: The Sapphic, The Sadean, and Jess Franco
Will Dodson
Chapter 7: Sergio Martino: Master of the Filone
Mikel J. Koven
Chapter 8: At the Margins of Taste, in the Mouth of Madness: The Case of Lars von Trier
Linda Badley
Chapter 9: José Mojica Marins and Zé do Caix󀃣o: Nightmares of Frankenstein in Brazil's National Horror Story
Jerry Metz
Chapter 10: Dreaming Revolt: Jean Rollin and the French Fantastique in the Context of May 1968
Mario DeGiglio-Bellemare
Chapter 11: Acquiescence, Canadian Style. The Early Cinema of David Cronenberg
Danny Shipka
Notes on Contributors
Index
Introduction: The Onset of Global Fear
Danny Shipka and Ralph Beliveau
Fear keeps us focused on the past or worried about the future. If we can acknowledge our fear, we can realize that right now we are okay. Right now, today, we are still alive …
Thích Nhất Hạnh
A cross an increasingly interconnected global environment, changes in technology have made it easier to be exposed to cultures far different from our own. For filmmakers and their audiences this means sharing a vast, diverse assortment of kinds of storytelling that is a reflection of different cultures. One of the most resonant themes these filmmakers explore is fear: fear of the unknown, fear of assimilation, fear of disease, many different manifestations of an emotion that is essential to the survival of a particular culture. In this collection of essays, readers can experience some incredibly powerful thinking about how this fear is explored among horror filmmakers, horror film viewers, and even horror film scholars. These essays invite readers to consider the complex relationship that the filmmakers have to their different local contexts, while at the same time offering a broad canvas of what the intersection of all of these filmmakers means to the world of horror storytelling.
The filmmakers discussed have produced a substantial body of work in the genre, and are of interest because of the way they have maintained a probing relationship to horror over a long period of time. Some have left the genre for part of their creative output, but the vast majority of their work fits easily within the confines of horror. This is not meant to be an exhaustive survey, since arguments could be made for why someone is not discussed in these chapters, and scholars would hope to see those arguments made in print one day. The approach taken in this book is not a final word, but is instead intended to initiate a continuing conversation as audiences and scholars see changes in participation in global fear. The chapters here look at the past, but there are still locations in the world that can be brought into the conversation in the future.
In this space of contradiction between the local and the intercultural, horror storytelling encourages a shared space that recognizes the human experience along with the cacophony that comes from the jarring effects of cultural differences. Sometimes these differences are the source of anxiety itself. We also share horrors, both real and imagined, and while it might seem that horrors would cause us to turn away, they instead have the power to bring us together. The nightmares that are shared, while at first perhaps unfamiliar, come to be recognized as a fluid way to understand both a distant culture and a shared vision of humanity. In his book Mondo Macabro , which extolls the virtues of horror and other types of fringe cinema from around the world, Pete Tombs said:
The kind of films we’re looking at […] are usually avoided by heavyweight histories. Which is odd, because in our encounters with Filipino action heroes, Hong Kong horror stars, and Japanese bondage queens, we’ve learned far more about their respective countries than from any number of serious art films.
(1997, 7)
As filmmakers have grown and shared their cinematic nightmares over the past half century or so, audiences have learned to enjoy both the similarities and the differences. Even though the ideas may come from other cultures, audiences seek to explore different cultures and learn how to make sense of these shared stories. At the same time, as discussed by Lobato and Ryan, the horror genre benefits from a production/distribution feedback loop:
(F)oregrounding the role of distribution within genre production generates a rather different model of how screen cultures and industries operate. In contrast to the conventional structural typology production => distribution => reception, a series of feedback loops originating in distribution and feeding back into production also become visible.
(2011, 200)
While the essays in this volume are organized around particular directors, the sources for their creative output and the industrial machinery that enables them, demonstrate the influence of distribution networks. Even though creative horror filmmakers are influenced by distribution, and distribution is influenced by technologies, successful distribution ultimately depends on the shared recognition of story-driven characteristics of the horror genre among audiences that encourage global fear.
At their core, audiences share many of the same fears—birth, death, sex, disease, terror, insanity, pain, mortality, monstrosity—and audiences explore them in all their cultural variations. The essays in this book argue that murder, mayhem, monstrosity, suffering innocents, and the grotesque are inescapable aspects of the very commonalities that can draw the audience’s experiences together.
The power of that attraction lies in an ancient proverb: “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Word travels about the common enemies of lives, bodies, relationships, and cultures. Horror storytelling reaches across boundaries to offer a shared experience. These essays can be seen as a conversation between the filmmaker’s point of origin and the many and varied points of intersection. This collection of essays continues the work encouraged in the Introduction to Schneider and Williams’ book Horror International . They argued that the expansion of global film distribution means that:
characterizations of the nature of horror films (narratively, thematically, stylistically, and economically) from various geographical and cultural locations are more fluid and transitional than ever before […] (But) recognition of this fact does not mean denying the existence of national features that affect and are reflected in particular horror films, whether from an artistic or reception standpoint. Instead, we must respect and seek to identify the diversity of factors bearing on specific works, as well as draw attention to neglected social, cultural, and ideological aspects of the horror genre’s appearance in its various national cinematic contexts.
(2005, 3–4)
Across cultures audiences are exposed to the essence of the other’s fears and—in the truly uncanny sense—they are recognizable and often shared, a collective fear, regardless of cultural boundaries. This does not mean doing violence to the individual characteristics of different cultures, as if to minimize their individuality. Instead, this is to recognize the common fears that help an audience understand the shape of any individual culture.
It is equally important to note that the careers discussed here are of men. This reflects historical conditions that have quite sadly limited who has participated in the genre over the course of a career. Women directors have been highly marginalized in the genre, as they have been in film production in its entirety. But this does not mean that there are no significant works that merit discussion, reaching back to silent cinema and across many different cultures. More work needs to be done in the filmmaking world to encourage the creation of horror by women, and in the scholarly world to analyze the meaning of this lack of work contextually, politically, and aesthetically.
Most of the focus in this volume is on the ways that directors have taken advantage of sharing their fears with the world. In the U.S. context, for example, the economy of film distribution and the need for cheap programming gave audiences the opportunity to view horror coming from other cultural perspectives. Dubbed horror from Spain, Italy, Mexico, France, and Germany as well as the un-dubbed work from England and Canada were in circulation in America, along with the American horror of Universal in the 1930s, Ameri