What do you think?
Rate this book
New Blood in Contemporary Cinema: Women Directors and the Poetics of Horror
Since the turn of the millennium, a growing number of female filmmakers have appropriated the aesthetics of horror for their films. In this book, Patricia Pisters investigates contemporary women directors such as Ngozi Onwurah, Claire Denis, Lucile Hadžihalilović and Ana Lily Amirpour, who put ‘a poetics of horror’ to new use in their work, expanding the range of gendered and racialised perspectives in the horror genre.
Exploring themes such as rage, trauma, sexuality, family ties and politics, New Blood in Contemporary Cinema takes on avenging women, bloody vampires, lustful witches, scary mothers, terrifying offspring and female Frankensteins. By following a red trail of blood, the book illuminates a new generation of women directors who have enlarged the general scope and stretched the emotional spectrum of the genre.
Exploring themes such as rage, trauma, sexuality, family ties and politics, New Blood in Contemporary Cinema takes on avenging women, bloody vampires, lustful witches, scary mothers, terrifying offspring and female Frankensteins. By following a red trail of blood, the book illuminates a new generation of women directors who have enlarged the general scope and stretched the emotional spectrum of the genre.
256 pages, Hardcover
Published October 30, 2020
4 people are currently reading
56 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
April 3, 2023
Most valuable as fuel for your watchlist. Pisters covers the obvious and the obscure, tracking a line of blood red femininity through horror.
Perhaps guilty of an over reliance on other mediums due to the existing cinema landscape not quite providing what is needed. Though, the connections are interesting and the cross-media approach couches everything in a broad framework.
There is maybe a lack of a central thesis. There are distinct conclusions about what the female lens brings to horror but the book is really a selection of thematic chapters that break down key works. Often more summary than analysis, or analysis in separation. But what is summarised is fascinating.
The homework is well and truly done here and the results are fascinating.
Perhaps guilty of an over reliance on other mediums due to the existing cinema landscape not quite providing what is needed. Though, the connections are interesting and the cross-media approach couches everything in a broad framework.
There is maybe a lack of a central thesis. There are distinct conclusions about what the female lens brings to horror but the book is really a selection of thematic chapters that break down key works. Often more summary than analysis, or analysis in separation. But what is summarised is fascinating.
The homework is well and truly done here and the results are fascinating.
Displaying 1 of 1 review